Panthera uncia

Not so long ago, one could go to the movies and leave either disappointed or moved, cheated or entertained. But now Gramsci, Foucault, and their neo-Marxist successors, assorted professors of the humanities, have left a legacy wherein every movie has to be analyzed for structures of power and hegemony and then used as a pitchfork in culture wars fought on the interwebs. Progressives were once the only ones who did this. But now, even the extreme right has appropriated the vocabulary of critical theory to drain whatever little happiness we had in our lives into judgment and counter-judgment. Nothing can be good or bad; everything must be seen through the lens of religion, race, gender, and structures of oppression, and loving or hating a movie is not so much about the movie as about yourself, or rather your position in the partially ordered set of privilege. So I will lay it out straight. I loved Ramayana, or rather, Namit Malhotra’s Ramayana. The adjective is important, just as it was for Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag, because whether you love or hate Ramayana, originally titled “Ramayana: Rise of a Legend,” depends on whether you are expecting a popcorn action fantasy or a religious experience. Even more importantly, it depends on whether you think that an epic must be told the same way forever and any departure from canon is sacrilege by definition. Or whether you believe that the unique nature of an ancient epic is that it may be retold, reimagined, and reinterpreted. And that the very epicness of an epic lies in its ability to serve as an eternal canvas on which new stories may be told using the elements of the familiar, reflecting the spirit of the times in which the audience lives, even if that means a Sita who fights and a Laxman who apologizes. Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” aroused the same passion in many Euro-nationalists who felt that his creative liberties, driven by “woke politics” in casting and theme, reduced Homer to a travesty. Elon Musk, the world’s richest herald of Western cultural superiority, vowed that Grok would make an Odyssey of its own to counter Nolan’s propaganda. Like most of Musk’s latest investments, it sank into the ocean of AI slop. It was also seven minutes long. Namit Malhotra is better than Gen-AI, but he is no Nolan. And he does not want to be. His ambition is to create an Indian fantasy franchise that rivals the best of Marvel in scale and maximalism, and, surprise of surprises, he does it better than most of Marvel's recent entries. But then why is Ravana humanized? Why is a serial abuser of women, whose record as the ruler of an island would shame even Jeffrey Epstein, shown as the leader of a righteous rebellion? Why are the asuras shown as slaves? Why does Ravana speak like Mamdani about income inequality? Very simple. It is the same reason Thanos is the greatest villain Marvel ever produced and Infinity War is its pinnacle. Thanos is not a “Muhahaha” bad man bent on conquest, the cardboard cutout that fills the junk heap of average franchise fare the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become. He is capable of love. He wants to save the universe by imposing fairness on who lives and who dies, stripping privilege out of the lottery of catastrophe, and once his mission is accomplished, he retires to farm and does not even fight for his own life. Is he a villain? You bet he is. The Joker works the same way, towering over every Batman movie he appears in because his malignance is not about self but about anarchy, a mirror held up to a random universe and the cosmic joke at its heart, which makes him the idol of every angsty teen of a certain kind. When the villain is interesting, has an arc, has a personality, and is ambiguous, that is when the hero can be established in opposition. A great hero needs a great villain. Otherwise, there is no conflict. And without conflict, there is no franchise. And for all his posturing, Ravana is not exactly running a paradise for the asuras. He alone owns a Pushpaka Vimana, he has more gold than anyone else, and he lives in the grandest palace of them all, which makes him just like every other Communist ruler we have seen. And as with them, he will end by sending his own people to die for the cause. Which is Part 2. The thing about a good story is that the line between good and bad must be sharp and simple. Batman and the Joker are close to equals, except that one stands for order and the other for anarchy. Ravana and Rama are similarly matched in power, and the contrast between them is just as well defined. Rama’s highest ideal is sacrifice. Ravana does not understand it; for him, the highest ideal is ego, and he has ten of them. One of my favorite parts of this Ramayana is when Ravana debates among his ten selves and struggles with the same questions of destiny and fate that Rama does. This is way more sophisticated than I expected when I settled into my reclining seat at the theater with the 270-degree projection, my hopes at their lowest after the underwhelming trailers, and memories of Adipurush, a cosmic wound to the soul. The criticism that this Ramayana does not have bhakti-bhaaav is real. It does not. And that is by design. Namit Malhotra is not going for the religious domestic market. He should not. The Ramanand Sagar original cannot be topped in that genre. But the opposite charge, that it is a JNU PhD thesis in disguise, is also ridiculous. Malhotra is trying to make a crossover franchise, the way “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was a crossover hit, but for popcorn rather than Oscars. He is not Ang Lee, of course, and a lone cello over a bamboo-forest duel is not his thing, but he knows his limitations, stays within his lines and colors within them, though for some there may be too much color and brightness. The movie has a lot of flaws, no doubt. Some people may have issues with the VFX. But I felt it was no worse than the Hulk in the latest Spider-Man movie, who looked as digital as the asuras here. The Parshuram scene is the worst. And any time Rakul Preet Singh is on screen, the overall quality of acting takes a nosedive, with the lowlight being her anger at being mutilated by Laxman, which comes across, as my daughter noted, like an entitled lady angry at the barista for messing up her latte. (By the way, why did she not lose her nose? That is one creative liberty I did not understand, unless she wrote it into the contract that she has to look good all the time.) But for every appearance of Rakul Preet and for every "I wish they had done this differently," Ramayana packs in more than enough amazing moments of splendor and scale that need to be experienced on the largest screen possible. And while no depiction of the epics we grew up on will ever match the one in our imagination, Namit Malhotra has shown the courage to draw the bow before the whole world. He may not have hit the eye of the fish (and I know I am mixing my epics), but he comes close, with the flight of the arrow of his ambition the true spectacle.