Adipurush – Controversy or Confusion?

Adipurush is finally out in the theatres, and the controversy around the movie shows no sign of coming to rest. Despite a lot of negative publicity around its dialogs, the movie took a very good start on the Box Office over the weekend, but it seems to be coming down on Monday. Are the people opposing the movie without any reason or are they not watching it with an open mindset? I watched the movie today to find out for myself and here is what I felt about the film after watching it.

Somehow, the movie failed to impress me, and when I tried to pinpoint the reason, there were more than one. Overall, it seems to be a poorly made film, with bad storytelling, patchy effects, and feels like a khichdi with stuff blatantly copied from many movies and cartoon films.

But the key flaw in the movie is lack of clarity about the purpose of making this movie. It was not clear if the filmmakers wanted to tell the story of Rama or just wanted to make a blockbuster film like RRR or Bahubali with a fictional story. This lack of clarity resulted in the havoc that is making people angry about it.

Case 1 - Movie is depicting Ramayana

Let us first assume the case when the filmmakers are trying to tell the story of Rama. Before the release of the film, film makers also gave a statement that they have depicted Ramayana as it is, which supports the above assumption. However  people are already well familiar about all aspects the story and there are several blunders in the movie that offends and hurts the sentiments of the people:

• The offensive getup of characters, trying to modernize the look with haircuts, tattoos, no crown, etc
• Vaanar sena having monkeys of different looks, borrowed from western movies. 
• Tapori dialogs from the people who are worshipped as God
• Movie style fights in the name of war
• Ravan riding a Bat, feeding it red meat, repairing his own sword, getting a massage from Pythons
• Liberties taken with the plot at several places, depicting events that are not there in Ramayana, or showing them incorrectly.

These are some of the aspects that does not allow this film to qualify as a version of Ramayana. It is not  surprising that people who are watching the movie with this mindset are getting disappointed and offended.

Case 2 - Movie is not about Ramayana

Recently, the film makers changed their stand and made a claim that this is a fictional story of Raghav, loosely inspired by Ramayana, but it should be seen as a fresh story, not as a version of Ramayana. Let us review the film with this mindset. First of all this argument is not very convincing for many reasons:

• Chanting of Jai Shri Ram in the background
• All characters with 1-1 mapping with Ramayana, Ram, Sita, Lakshman, Ravan, Mandodari, Sugriv, Bali, Vibhishan, Shabri... there cannot be so many coincidences.
• All places mapped to Ramayana - Lanka, Ayodhya, Ashok vaatika
• A seat reserved for Hanuman ji in every show 

While watching the film, you do not get a feeling that the makers are trying to tell a fictional story not connected to Ramayana. The film needed much more effort in that direction to steer clear of any controversy. 

If you try to compare the film to a Bahubali or RRR, it is nowhere close to them in terms of the production quality, storytelling, or entertainment value. The writer-director takes no attempt to introduce and establish any of the characters in the film. Somehow they assume that people know the characters already, but if people are watching it with complete open mind, how can you expect them to apply their knowledge of Ramayana? Even Rama’s aura was not adequately established. There is no adequate explanation of the magical powers of different characters. The film’s plot is very basic, not able hold the viewer’s interest, and the unduly long fight sequence fails to get the audience involved and hold their interest. 

Overall, it seems that this is a poorly executed attempt to make a regular commercial movie, and the touch of Ramayana is added as a crutch to cover the poor execution, and a marketing gimmick.

Will the movie succeed in exploiting the religious faith of crores of people for commercial gains? Initial trends show that the attempt has boomeranged, but let us wait and watch as the saga unfolds.