2.25/5
The Ramayana is an epic I grew up with. Tales of Rama, Hanuman, Lakshmana, and Sita, along with the picturization of the Ramayana through the Doordarshan serial and animated movie Hanuman, rang around my house. So when I heard that Prabhas, a Telugu star I had also grown up with, was making the Ramayana, it was bound to bring a level of excitement and expectation. Despite the teaser which shocked the world with its Pogo visuals, despite the characterization of Ravana as a more modernized, Lord of the Ring-esque villain, the songs and anticipation of a big movie kept me going. With the movie on the cusp of a release, I went in with the level of expectation of every single big movie- with hype and fervor. And I come out disappointed. Because I didn’t expect a masterpiece and I can overlook the VFX being bad, but I can’t overlook the lack of soul- something that the Ramayana has woven into every line of it. PS- I watched it in 2D standard. I do think 3D or IMAX would have improved the visuals, discussed later.
PLOT:
It’s the Ramayana, so we can go over it quite quickly. Raghava (Prabhas), who has been exiled from the Kingdom of Ayodhya for 14 years, has his wife Janaki (Kriti Sanon) abducted by Raavana (Saif Ali Khan) after Sesh (Sunny Singh) gets fooled by Raavana’s Maya. With his brother, Raghava goes in search to bring back his wife in the kingdom of Lanka. With the help of the Vaanara Sena and Bajrang (Devdutt Nage), the story follows Raghava conquering Raavana and fulfilling his god-written destiny.
WRITING:
One of the biggest things with Adipurush is that the story is literally given to them, an advantage and a disadvantage with taking a movie. The advantage is that the story is given to them; every character has their own arc, the threads have all been satisfactorily wrapped up and represented well for ages now, and the story follows many complexities throughout its journey to present the befitting tale of a God, who took the form of a human king to defeat evil in its core. Om Raut, who has previously written and directed Tanhaji which had a similar structure. The disadvantage is that Raut only has 3 hours. There are so many intricacies woven into the Ramayana that you have to pick the parts but expand upon them correctly to properly unveil the soul of the movie and still narrate it very convincingly. It’s clear from the get go that Adipurush has taken a modern approach, something that won’t go too well with traditionalists, but a different vision from Om Raut. All throughout, I was hoping that despite the visuals going south the soul of the movie, very well conveyed by the song Tu Sheetal Hai Dhara/Priya Midhunam, of Janaki and Raghava would be shown effectively to keep the story moving.
And thats exactly where Om Raut has ruined the entire pot. In his process to narrate most of the Ramayana convincingly and span the 5 part epic into 3 hours, he has hastily narrated some portions and omitted out other ones. The omitting, such as Hanuman in Lanka and the process he goes through to meet Ravana or the dynamic of Vibheeshana, Kumbhakarna, and Raavana, results in many important parts of the story going amiss. We do not have the same emotional connection that resolves overall throughout the movie to the story of Janaki and Raghava, but worse, we do not get connected to the struggle and journey that the Ramayana underflows so beautifully. Even when not comparing int to the epic, as a standalone movie there are so many scenes that fall short. The screenplay in the second half comes to mind completely; there aren’t any of the scenes that follow the struggle and outline what Rama and his vaaanara sena take. Conflicts are resolved at the bate of an eye and the war scenes do not hold any of the gripping narration that is required of it.
Even the scenes that are there do not hold any bite for the most part. There is a proper amount of buildup and slow simmer for each of the scenes that requires a certain heft to be held, with the character and their relationship taking an arc that makes us feel the impact when the payoff comes to shove. This doesn’t happen at all in Adipurush. Let’s go back to the Hanuman in Lanka scene. Hanuman comes, meets Seeta, speaks in Telangana stang?, gets captured, has his tail set on fire, burns two things, and flies back. Thats it. Where is the elaboration? Hanuman is known to be a jokester; where is that sense of humor to add flair to the proceedings? Even then, I want to know more of the interactions that I’ve seen in the Ramayana and that I know are there. Or Raut could have added his own touch.
Instead, Raut chooses to add his own touch to make Lanka seem very dark and devilish, something that will be touched upon visuals more but will also be discussed here. He has written in scenes that are completely representative of a very dystopian fantasy villain rather than a king Raavana, taking the demon part of his characterization a bit too literally. The flying dragon comes back with vengeance and has a payoff too that works, but still doesn’t take away from how odd it seems in the Ramayana. Ogres, some tackily designed minions, a Flash like Indrajit (why?), these touches just accentuate the odd feel throughout but don’t add the desired affect.
Characters aren’t written memorably at all. Lakshmana, or Sesh in this movie, is reduced to a talking caricature who asks the most simplistic questions. Rama himself isn’t shown for much and rather just wavers with a very underwhelming Prabhas. Saif Ali Khan starts off well with his character; I liked the deft touches of veena playing and writing that show his education and talents, but turns too weird with the entire snake massage scene (you’ll know it when you see it). Characters are the rock of the Ramayana and needed to be written well; they are not.
There is some good to the writing. The screenplay in the first half thankfully keeps to a flow and makes sure to go across to each event without staying too much on one, something that doesn’t provide any depth but makes sure to keep the story moving. The scenes with Jataaayu and Hanuman initially work really well; not only do they have the buildup but they also leave an impact because of how organic they come across. I wish there was a level of that naturality to the writing and arcs overall. Theres very few nuances, but in the few there are some that I liked. For example, as Raavana comes out to war, Mandodari (Sonal Chauhan) comes out in a white saree with no kumukum, an indication she is about to become a widow. Nuances like these speak much more to the conflict and weight of the writing, but unfortunately are one too few.
DIRECTION:
Raut’s direction is slightly better, but ends up messing up towards the end. Some scenes have been directed well, particularly in the first half. I liked how Hanuman was introduced and come to realize his powers, suffering from severe edits that lead to a disconnect in the writing but shot well. Songs like Shivoham was shot well, but one wonders whether placing it right before the battle as Indrajit fights Lakshmana would have worked better.
Sadly, the direction ends up suffering a lot too from brevity. Raut doesn’t want to show various angles and try to make us truly empathize with the characters, but rather present the events and just get out of there as soon as possible. On an efficacy level, this leads to none of the events making an impression on our mind as the audience. The Ramayana’s USP is how the small moments can be shot well, but even then they don’t have the level of nuance and grip thats needed for an epic like this.
Particularly, the war sequences come to mind. They have been messily directed from the first frame, with scenes such as the golden Lake confrontation of Indrajit and Lakshman juxtaposing the main battle of Raghava and Raavana on paper but directed so badly that its very hard to keep track. Interest gradually begins to wane as the movie ends up messily finishing the last few frames and the war ends up as a mess with the below par visuals. Raut gets the last 5 minutes down, but then again thats 5 minutes.
The narrative style also was very mixed, personally me not being a big fan of it. Rather than pacing through the story well, Raut ends up narrating about 70% of the story in the first half, leaving him almost nothing to work with in the second half. This is where not only the writing takes a hit but the direction also becomes pointless. Scenes just end up floating around and do not have the same intrigue factor that the movie initially does. Eventually, it just paces unevenly and keeps disconnecting with us as an audience.
Ultimately, the direction is what keeps the movie entertaining and intriguing initially and doesn’t leave it too unbearable. Raut wanted to get into and out of every scene as quick as possible because of the content, which eventually resulted in the inevitable loss of directorial skills for specific scenes.
VISUALS:
It’s important to take a specific section to just talk about the visuals, which have been already well debated. First things first, with the budget they had, while it was not used well I’d like to believe they really tried to bring good visuals. For a motion capture movie like this, a budget close to 80-90 million USD was used for Rise of the Planets of Apes in 2011. Adipurush has 67 million USD (500 cr) in 2023, even less when factoring remunerations. This is something to keep in mind along with the fact that the visuals alone do not decide the movie and how it turns out.
With all that being said, the visuals are a huge minus to the movie. The graphics unfortunately do not come across at all; it seemed way too cartoonish especially with the Vaaanara sena. Animals have a weird mix of cartoon and real to them, with the only well fleshed animal as Jataayu the eagle. The rest of the animals are established in a medium where the graphics become inherently obvious. The fight between Sugreeva and Vali brings this out into the open; it looks straight from a PS5 with a very subpar level of graphics.
Lanka suffers from the same thing. There’s clearly a symbolism with bad or demonic features being represented by blue, carrying over from Raut’s Tanhaji, and dharma or righteousness represented by orange (is there a political ploy? Seems convenient). As a result, Lanka’s rakshashaas now become ogres distorted entirely, and the dragon becomes Raavana’s chariot. His ten heads resolve clay figures and don’t hold an inch of realism. Even with that budget, its poor how they have designed Lanka so dark.
Sets themselves have been put forward somewhat well; they are the better of the lot other than Lanka. Despite this though, the visuals being so lacking takes away so much, especially when the direction goes south in the climax. With that dark tint, the graphics being sharper would have avoided confusion and made it more focused; instead, it adds to the confusion. Safe to say, the visuals unfortunately are a huge drawback, a surprise considering the efforts put into them.
PERFORMANCES:
As said, characters themselves have not been developed much. But in that scope, the performances are mixed. Prabhas’s screen presence worked somewhat of the time, but emotionally man he’s missed the mark. He carries the same expression and the same dialogue delivery with dilutes the impact of so many scenes. I respect the man for his hard work but the level of expectations around Shri Ram, someone whom many include my father idolize, hits the sky, and Prabhas hasn’t reached that. Kriti Sanon does well as Sita/Janaki in the time she has, especially the climax. She holds Sita’s grace very well. Sunny Singh as Lakshman does well with his scope. Devdatta Nage really stole the show for me; his expressions and ability to generate energy in whatever small time he had was fantastic. Saif Ali Khan was actually not bad as Raavana; he started well and carried the menacing aspect throughout, even when the character design went south. Bettered my expectations. Vatsal Sheth as Indrajit goes a bit overboard. The rest of the characters don’t make much of an impact at all.
TECHNICALITIES:
Technically, we’ve already talked about the visuals, but music is a huge savior. Ajay-Atul’s songs keep the movie going, especially Shivoham and Tu Sheetal Hai Dhara/Priya Midhunam. Picturizations could have been better but they’ve done their best. Their BGM is also beautiful and correctly sets the mood of each scene. Karthik Palani’s cinematography is limited considering most of the movie is digitally rendered, but in the limited sense its not too impressive. Editing could have been a lot better; the second half runs too long. Dialogues were subpar; where did a Telangana accent pop up from? Dubbing was clearly Hindi-dubbed for most, taking away from the bilingual feel. Production values are to the best of their abilities.
SUMMARY:
So does Adipurush get the job done? It does pique interest of the Ramayana in the coming generations and showcase the movie with a new lens. But is that new lens effective? Sadly, not much. If anything, the first half’s use of some scenes, the music, some of the scenes writing, Hanuman and his efforts, and Saif Ali Khan in some scenes works well. But everything else goes south; omissions, subpar direction and narration, no soul and no connect. It truly is a sincere attempt gone wrong. I hope the movie does well, which if the families connect to it will. The openings are thunderous and let’s hope it continues, irrespective of the quality.
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