An Epic Travesty (Movie Review - Adipurush)

When we were in the second year of our Engineering course, we were treated to the spectacle called "Troy", starring Brad Pitt as Achilles, and Eric Bana as Hector. While the movie was enjoyable, we were left with a wistful wish - why can't some Indian movie maker pour in a huge budget, and do such a treatment of our own epics. 

Well, we must be careful what we wish for, for it may come true, and how!

The movie opens with a shot of dementors on the lake, like in Prisoner of Azkaban. Guided telepathically by Night King from Game of Thrones! The protagonist, who is described in the scriptures as an Archer, eschews the bow, and tackles the dementors in wrestling bouts. No doubt Twitter is incandescent with rage!

For a three hour run time, (that denied us a meal post the show, despite our choosing a 730 pm show), a large part of the epic story is omitted. Movie starts at the Shoorpanakha incident and stops at the rather bizarre end of Lankesh (For some reason, the movie makers have decided not to use the proper name of the characters, but the next common eponyms - why? Plausible Deniability? There is no chance of that working.) In between those elongated 3 hours, we have gems like Dhakad-aasur (धाकड़ासुर)! (Shudders), मैं तुम्हे धो दूंगा (in Bombaiya Tapori language), and Ravana (sorry, Lankesh) giving up the fabled Pushpak (which makes a cameo at the end of the movie, don't worry), for , what can be best described as an overgrown bat-dragon hybrid. Then there is overuse of very pedestrian level CGI. Even the ground our characters stand on looks synthetic. The fabled Golden Lanka seems made of coal, especially the way the towers catch fire. Worse is the treatment of Vanara sena. No homogeneity is observed in what is supposed to be a common clan - there are langoor type foot soldiers, while the major Vanaras look like a low price copy of the Planet of the Apes. Bajrang (their version of Hanuman ji) does not even look like a Vanara, but like a ham faced actor with air blown in the mouth to puff the cheeks - only the "wrapped towel prop as a baby" in Shamshera would be a worse cop out in recent cinematic history. Overall, the Vanaras are portrayed quite pathetically. For lifelike animal characters with human voices, they need not have looked farther than the recent version of Lion King. For much better CGI and VFX, they need not have looked beyond Prabhas' own Bahubali, made around a decade back! Sadly, the makers seemed too enamored with themselves and their imagination.

All is not bad. The lead pair does a sincere portrayal of the divine couple. The 'romance' part is handled tastefully, and the romance song would be watched on YouTube a lot. Some of the VFX was good - the artillery bombardment by Lankan forces, and the serrated yo-yo like defense weapon were showed well. And, for a change, Ravana's (sorry, Lankesh's) fabled sword actually looks like Chandra-haas (crescent moon). In 3D, in an otherwise strangely bestial-porn like scene of Ravana (sorry, Lankesh) getting a massage from huge snakes, there is a moment where a snake seems to break the fourth wall - that had a good jump scare factor.

The story has been violated quite liberally, and the anger of the devout is quite justified. However, for yours truly, it is an even bigger disaster cinematically. The wait for the Indian answer to Troy continues. Maybe Ranbeer Alia duo will deliver. We can only hope.