“God is box office.” Cecil B. DeMille’s much-quoted remark perfectly describes the attitude of many filmmakers and producers working in the Indian entertainment industry. (I know, quoting the director of The Ten Commandments (1923) for a look at the tradition of the mythological cinema of India may seem antithetical, but it’s an apt corollary.) Given the current sociopolitical climate in India, where the Hindu nationalist party BJP has been in power since 2014, a movie like Adipurush must have held the promise of doing blockbuster business.
The movie is based on the Hindu epic Ramayana, which tells the story of Ram, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, who fights the demon-king Ravana in order to rescue his kidnapped wife Sita, with help from his brother Lakshman and the monkey-god Hanuman. Ramayana and the Mahabharata are two of India’s primary mythological narratives that have inspired several cinematic adaptations over the decades—-although the religion’s many other myths and stories find expression in myriad ways, ranging from daily ritual practice, art and iconography to theater and folk performances, and, of course, film.
The trailer for Adipurush suggested a more contemporary take on the mythological Indian film genre. Its central character Raghav is played by Prabhas, previously seen in the Bahubali films (a heavily CGI-rendered cinematic universe created by S. S. Rajamouli, the celebrated filmmaker behind RRR). His co-stars include Kriti Sanon as a lithe Janaki, Sunny Singh as an indignant Shesh, Devdatta Nage as the faithful Bajrang and Saif Ali Khan as a maniacal Lankesh.
In the trailer, Prabhas appeared to be channeling Amarendra Bahubali, the central character of the Bahubali films. In those films, he played a young villager, with rippling muscles and almost superhuman strength, who discovers that he’s heir to the throne of a make-believe kingdom in the distant past. He strides in slow-motion, followed closely by Sesh and Bajrang, while Sita looks beatific in Lankesh’s lair, spouting dialogue in chaste Hindi.
The fact that the central characters of Adipurush are given alternative names for Ramayana’s central characters Ram, Sita, Lakshman, Hanuman and Raavan, appears to be an attempt to circumvent any criticism the filmmakers may face in reprising a beloved epic in a modern cinematic idiom. There is a current appetite for films that carry a subtle saffron agenda—films that offer a revisionist view of a glorious India of yore or champion India as a contemporary global superpower, often displaying Muslim characters as people out to destroy a perceived Hindu nation state. The potential to cause offense looms large.
As it happened, when the first teaser dropped last fall, it faced wide criticism for the VFX being too childish and comicky, and not quite keeping up with the dignity of the characters it portrays. And when Adipurush was released this summer, it was castigated by critics and audiences alike. The VFX didn’t deliver, despite drawing heavily from popular culture; elements inspired by Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings and even Zack Snyder’s Justice League weren’t rendered with finesse. Some of the dialogue was so colloquial, and seemed so anachronistic and insulting, that writer Manoj Muntashir found himself on the receiving end of online backlash. It came to such a head that parts of the film needed to be re-written and re-dubbed. Even then, the audience wasn’t impressed.
If director Om Raut intended to update an ancient Hindu epic by giving it the slick cinematic treatment and slang-filled dialogue, he clearly did not understand the hold that this beloved epic has on the hearts and minds of many Indians, and the many ways in which it manifests in everyday Indian life.
The ideals presented in the Ramayana are aspirational, and not just for devotees of the gods and goddesses invoked in the story. Ram is often given as an example of an ideal man, despite the debates around his actions. A good son, husband, brother and leader. Every year, Hindus celebrate Dussehra and Diwali, to mark Ram’s victory over Raavan—good defeating evil—and return to his rightful kingdom Ayodhya. In fact, the rule of Ram was supposed to connote a golden age known as Ram Rajya, which was an ideal that Gandhi, and then several political leaders following him, invoked as a national objective for all of India’s citizens.
Neither did Raut seem to have considered the long tradition of Indian mythological films. India’s first national feature film was Raja Harishchandra (1913), which retold a story from the other Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. For Indians, who were accustomed to theatrical or oral performances of mythological stories and interpreting the miraculous powers of gods and goddesses through their imagination, these films were a revelation, according to the essay Seeing and Believing, Science and Mythology: Notes on the “Mythological” Genre by Chidananda Das Gupta.
“Until 1923, 70 per cent of Indian films were ‘mythologicals,’ reliably successful at the box office since they appealed directly to a diverse audience linked by the common undercurrent of their religious beliefs,” says Das Gupta. “The actors in the folk theater were too real; too often you knew where they lived, and saw them paint their faces before they entered the arena. The true play of the gods, impossible to disbelieve, was only manifest when the cinema arrived.”
The success of the low-budget Jai Santoshi Maa (1975), rivaling that of the famous Indian Western Sholay (1975), is another example of the hold that mythological films can have on their audience.
Jai Santoshi Maa told the story of a lesser-known goddess, who comes to the rescue of an ardent devotee, a young housewife Satyavati. The story featured jealous goddesses, conniving sisters-in-law and a meddlesome interlocutor who tests the devotion of Satyavati. In its depiction of Satyavati’s trials, as well as the domestic and religious rituals of fasting and praying at the temple, Jai Santoshi Maa appealed to middle-class Indian women who saw themselves reflected in Satyavati. The basic special effects created by stop-motion and fading from one scene to another were good enough for viewers to think of watching the film as an act of devotion—some taking off their shoes or offering flowers during their viewing.
A similar act of devotion took hold of audiences during the airing of the popular Indian TV series Ramayan, made by Ramanand Sagar. Sagar’s Ramayan aired weekly over the course of 18 months in 1987 and 1988, retelling the epic through 45-minute episodes. They were broadcast on Sunday mornings on what was then the only TV channel available on the state broadcaster Doordarshan. It became the most successful TV show in Indian history, “with popular episodes watched by a staggering 80 to 100 million people,” according to the BBC.
As a child growing up in India at the time, I remember with vivid clarity my grandparents watching the show with rapt attention, my grandmother’s hands often folded in respect. To me, the series was an interesting but bland show that brought Ramayan alive on screen. Prior to watching Sagar’s Ramayan, I used to watch the annual dance-drama based on the epic by a reputed Indian classical dance troupe at the Bharatiya Kala Kendra, and found that production to be much more compelling to my imagination. Nevertheless, like everyone else, I watched this TV version of the epic. There was literally nothing else to watch.
Today’s audience, on the other hand, can choose from a range of cinematic interpretations. There are the literal translations of epics such as Ramayan such as Adipurush, fictional stories inspired by elements of these mythological narratives such as Brahmastra, or dramatic films set against a contemporary human backdrop such as Mani Ratnam’s Raavan or Pa Ranjith’s Kaala. But as critics and audiences have seen, whether the film is good or not—or how it fares at the box office—is not up to the gods.
Aparita Bhandari is an arts and life reporter in Toronto. Her areas of interest and expertise lie in the intersections of gender, culture and ethnicity. She is the producer and co-host of the Hindi language podcast, KhabardaarPodcast.com. You can find her on Twitter. Along with Bollywood, Toblerone bars are one of her guilty pleasures.