Yup, saw Adipurush, and it’s not even half the crap it’s being made out to be!
It’s hard to imagine the levels that Prabhas’s stardom would’ve hit, if national audiences, indeed, equated him with Lord Ram (named Raghav), in Adipurush
While I’d been outta the country for a week, and out of circulation, being unwell, for another week—guess the first thing I wished to do, having returned to normal? Watch the movie, Adipurush!
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Oh, no, why? Because that’s how movie buffs earn cred. Not by sitting through loved/recommended pix. Everybody does that. By walking into movies in gigantic theatres, knowing the world has hated it already! Which creates a FOMO of its own, since everybody’s discussed it still.
And, so what, if it’s a badly made Bollywood movie, let alone on the Ramayan—last checked, that was the norm, not a crime. Or maybe, we should check again, on whatever’s going on in Allahabad High Court. Maybe the writer-director (Om Raut), chosen cast/crew, or the Censor Board, will be pulled up for committing literary/mythological/religious offence.
And this singularly makes me wanna defend the three hours of the theatrical epic—that’s not even half the shit it’s been made out to be. Which isn’t a surprise, since nothing is as crappy or great, as publicly anointed, anyway.
Depends on who you ask. And if they’re last in the line of people, who’ve offered the same opinion—this bloke feels pressured to go the way of the wind, agreeing that something was masterpiece or moronic, because others said so! That’s how judgements on social media get formed. They feel final. They’re not. Hurt sentiments work similarly, too.
Do they reflect in box-office collections, meaning footfalls of movies, as well? Well, nobody’s cracked that art and commerce correlation, yet. Even obvious quality is not a fool-proof parameter for attendance/clicks. What to speak of the rest?
Either way, the dagger in mainstream cinema falls on the lead actor/superstar, once a film ‘flops’! This is natural, since they draw the craziest salary, and equally take home all the credit, if the film is a commercial success.
It’s hard to imagine the levels that Prabhas’s stardom would’ve hit, if national audiences, indeed, equated him with Lord Ram (named Raghav), in the R500 crore production, Adipurush. It’s immaterial, for a moment, that he also led Baahubali (2015, ’17). Making him a ‘pan-India’ star—a phony, post-pandemic term for a South Indian movie that does well in North Indian cinemas.
Never mind that he’s delivered duds from Hyderabad, Saaho (2019), Radhe Shyam (2022) since, that only I watched in Bombay. The only pan-Indian star, for now—even if Yash (KGF)/Allu Arjun (Pushpa) prove otherwise—is director SS Rajamouli (Baahubali, RRR), and to some extent, Mani Ratnam (Ponniyin Selvan), who’s been around forever!
We barely saw Prabhas promoting Adipurush, that he headlined, after all—as more of a sullen, warrior king, than a smiling ‘maryada-purushottam’ (dignified soul). Which is just as well.
Prabhas is a bit of a Big Moose. I remember interviewing him once—over email, since he was in the US, right after Baahubali 2—and not publishing it. How many times can an interviewee go, “Yes, no, maybe; no, yes, yes, no….” Screw it; get us SK, AK, SRK, any day.
Who was the most public face of Adipurush? An absolute rando, self-named, Manoj Muntashir, who writes lyrics otherwise, and had typed dialogues of an existing Ramayan, which he then also had to retract! He had one job. And he thought, when I met him once, it was to flaunt his proximity to the Prime Minister’s Office.
As you could also tell from a bunch of BJP chief ministers—mere mortals, who wrangle votes to stay in power—apparently getting listed in the film’s credits, as upholders/endorsers of India’s greatest,
ancient mythology.
“History”, as director Raut, termed it to me. In which case, everybody is right to behave like reporters from the era, fact-checking Adipurush on clothes, props, speech, diction, as if there is some journalistic proof to tally against!
Most of India visually knows Ramayan, from the 1987, Ramanand Sagar series, on Doordarshan, personally commissioned by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (an irrelevant political fact). Umbergaon in Gujarat, where Sagar shot Ramayan, has been Indian TV’s mythological capital since.
Siddharth Tiwari’s Ram Siya Ke Luv Kush (2021), at a reported budget of Rs 650 crore, was the last Ramayan shot there (for Colors TV). I know this from having hung out with the cast-crew in Ayodhya, at its glitzy launch. Adipurush would be eons ahead of that production.
It’s certainly more coherent, therefore the better film than Brahmastra (2022); even Raut’s Tanhaji (2020). Which was his Hindi directorial debut—also with Saif Ali Khan, killing it as the Joker-like villain.
As Saif does, playing Ravan, in Adipurush—welding for pleasure, chilling with anacondas for back massage, feeding his ‘pushpak viman’ with animal meat, slaying it with a trident for light sabre!
The motion capture action sufficiently recreates wide battle scenes, through Lanka, the kingdom of darkness. The sea that Ram/Raghav’s monkey-army wade through, itself appearing as a physical embodiment, is fine touch, alright. Adipurush, amateurish in parts, otherwise, feels dimly lit.
But that’s just the problem with 3D as screen tech anyway. It’s still the same story—that we’ve have been telling ourselves as a society, for centuries—listening/preaching as ‘paath’, katha, pravachan.
What was so blasphemous/offensive about doing the same thing, differently, on the big screen, again?
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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