Epic Disaster

A 600 cr budget and sizeable political backing could not save Adipurush at the box office

- Deepak Nagpal

JALEGI tere baap ki...- never in one's wildest thoughts or dreams can one imagine Lord Hanuman, a towering figure in the Hindu pantheon, speaking these words. But in a film that liberally uses so-called tapori ('street') language, anything is possible. Pre-release, Adipurush was touted to be an epic cinematic reproduction of the widely-revered Hindu epic, the Ramayana. However, post-release, the film has triggered waves of anger and disgust, not just among the right-wing Hindu audience, but also among liberal followers of the religion who worship the figures of Ram and Hanuman the stand-out characters of the epic-as infallible deities.

Adipurush is a movie which has gone wrong on multiple levels, be it in its intent or its very essence. Torn apart by critics and audiences alike for the shoddiness of the script and the film's 'B-grade' look, the movie, as one critic described it, is "part Planet of the Apes, part King Kong".

Directed by Om Raut with dialogues written by Manoj 'Muntashir' Shukla, the makers of the movie have floundered at every possible step post-release-from justifying the 'cringey' dialogue and then altering parts of it post outrage, to asserting that their film was "not at all based on the Ramayana but was just inspired by the epic," thereby backtracking on how they had initially advertised the film as a retelling of the epic.

Protests erupted on the streets of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and other states against the dialogues attributed to the character of Lord Hanuman, as well as Lord Ram's character's 'angry young man' persona, a depiction that is quite at odds with his widely accepted demeanour of being calm and collected. Even the portrayal of the demon king Ravana was a laughable deviation from how the antagonist is usually depicted. His 10 floating heads-a double-decker situation with 5 heads on top of 5 heads-was something no one in the audience would have ever imagined.