BENGALURU – You know the film has got you when you sob over the death of a talking vulture-god at the hands of a demon king.
The scene occurs towards the end of Ramayana: The Rise Of A Legend, the latest Bollywood movie based on the centuries-old mythological epic.
As the demon king Ravana cuts off Jatayu’s wing in a computer-generated aerial combat, it evokes Raja Ravi Varma’s 1895 painting of the scene, comic book publisher Amar Chitra Katha’s graphic depiction, and the feathered-costume-wearing actor in the legendary 1987 TV series.
Most Indians know this story, this scene. And this very familiarity heightens the heartbreak. We know it marks the point where Lord Rama decides to go to war with Ravana, just as we know every twist and turn in this much retold story of good versus evil.
Watching the film in a Bengaluru multiplex cinema, 60-year-old Ramamani, who gave only one name, told me: “I know the story. Nothing is new. But it still moved me.”
Next to me, a young man squealed in delight as Rama caught an axe flung by an enormous avatar played by the same actor. He exhaled the names of characters, anticipating their entry on screen.
Starring Ranbir Kapoor as warrior prince Rama, Sai Pallavi as his wife Sita, and Yash as the antagonist Ravana, the movie was released worldwide on Nov 5 and 6, a few days before Deepavali. The timing is fitting, as many Indians celebrate the festival of lights to welcome Lord Rama’s return to his kingdom after a 14-year forest exile and a celestial war of goodness against arrogance.
Ranbir Kapoor stars as warrior prince Rama in Ramayana.
PHOTO: SONY PICTURES
The filmmakers have marketed the first of a trilogy as India’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s epic The Odyssey and the James Cameron blockbuster Avatar.
Everything about it is grand: a large pan-Indian cast of actors, soundtracks by Hans Zimmer and A.R. Rahman, and world-class visual effects (VFX) by Indian producer Namit Malhotra’s company, DNEG, best known for Dune, Inception and the Harry Potter movie series.
In my Bengaluru cinema hall, Adishesh BS, a 31-year-old software engineer, said it “felt like divine immersion”.
Apologising for “nitpicking”, he added, however, that some digitally rendered giants did not meet his standards, as set by Hollywood and shows like Game Of Thrones. I, too, felt that the uniquely superpowered demons of the epic all looked like Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk.
With a US$500 million (S$642 million) budget, Ramayana is India’s most expensive film ever. It was released in 50,000 screens in about 100 countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, Australia, China, the United Kingdom and the United States. Running 3 hours and 15 minutes in India, the film’s global version is 2 hours and 45 minutes long and dubbed in English with AI-based lip-sync.
The Sanskrit epic estimated to be composed in 750 to 500 BCE by the sage Valmiki has inspired many retellings for hundreds of years across Asia. It has been depicted in all-night theatre performances in North India, shadow puppetry in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Indonesia, sculpture, painting and folk songs.
“The quality of an epic in any part of the world is such that multiple stories and ideas spring from it,” said Chennai-based playwright Mangai.
The 12th-century Tamil translation by the poet Kambar depicts Ravana not as an unalloyed demon, but as a sophisticated Vedic pundit, a Shiva devotee and a beloved ruler whose ego does him in.
Poet Tulsidas’ 16th-century Awadhi adaptation, Ramcharitmanas, is the version most people in Hindi-speaking areas know. In it, Rama is not Valmiki’s ideal human hero but a divine incarnation. This text influenced the 1987 television series by Ramanand Sagar, which was screened by the state-owned public broadcaster, Doordarshan.
Bihar’s Mithila region privileges Sita as the epic’s heroine, producing folk songs that taunt the son-in-law Rama. A Jain version has Rama choosing non-violence instead of waging war.
A still from Ramanand Sagar’s 1987 Ramayana.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF INDIAN EXPRESS
“There are flourishing academic and literary critiques of Rama from the lens of patriarchy and imperialism,” Mangai said.
Telugu writer Volga’s On The Banks Of The Pampa is a feminist retelling of the epic from the perspective of Sabari, an old tribal woman Rama encounters in the forest.
“The popular Ramayana today is a mix of classical, vernacular, folk and oral retellings,” said Ramayana scholar and translator Arshia Sattar.
Even today, before Deepavali, drama troupes across India perform the Ramlila, traditional theatre performances of the Ramayana – often low-budget productions with ill-fitting velvet costumes, musty wigs and cardboard swords.
Even non-Hindus get involved in the tradition. Since 1972, the Bakshi Ka Talab Ramlila in Lucknow is famous for Muslim actors playing key roles, symbolising India’s composite culture.
Any adaption of the Ramayana runs the risk of offending audiences. But it does not stop makers from finding new ways to tell the story.
A 1993, Indo-Japanese Ramayana: The Legend Of Prince Rama fused manga, Disney and painter Raja Ravi Varma’s drawing styles in a stunning animated feature film. In Raavan (2010), Tamil director Mani Ratnam set the epic in present-day central India, with Ravana reimagined as a tribal militant and Rama a policeman.
A bizarre 2023 adaptation, Adipurush, tanked at the box office as it both tickled and enraged Indian audiences with its third-rate digital graphics, trash-talking thuggish Hanuman and a cartoonish Ravana.
The monumental 2024 theatrical production Humare Ram, however, won over sceptics and conservatives with its progressive dialogues and booming performances.
“Indians have internalised the Ramayana’s story so much, and in so many ways, that it is rare for any contemporary reading to satisfy everyone. But an international audience might take it as it is presented, since they don’t already have a narrative they claim as the right one,” Sattar said.
“Every Ramayana reflects the time in which it is told,” he added.
During the late 1920s, social reformers in the Dravidian anti-caste movement in South India critiqued the epic as Brahminical. In the past decade, Bihar’s backward caste politicians have alleged that the Ramcharitmanas contains socially discriminatory lines and called Rama “imaginary”, upsetting devout Hindus.
Today, Lord Rama is the favoured god of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Modi inaugurated a temple in the god’s name at Ayodhya in 2024, on the site of a mosque Hindu fundamentalists demolished in 1992.
The Hindu right wing rejects the multitude of Ramayanas. The 1987 book 300 Ramayanas by A.K. Ramanujan, which explores how different communities have retold and adapted the epic across 2,500 years, was removed from the Delhi University’s history undergraduate syllabus in 2011, after a Hindu right-wing student body said it made offensive claims about Sita and Rama.
The BJP’s more strident supporters today shout the slogan “Jai Shri Ram” to declare Hindu supremacy or even attack non-Hindus. The battle cry is a recent contortion of the softer greeting “Jai Siya Ram”, used widely in North India, invoking the blessing of the divine couple Rama and Sita. Saffron flags depicting a macho Rama with six-pack abs and an angry Hanuman car sticker are now fashionable symbols of Hindu resurgence.
“I don’t know how a story of goodness and righteousness became one that could inspire hate,” Sattar said.
“I have spent my life with the Ramayana. I love the text. But it has, of late, become hard for anyone to admit this because it seems to signal an allegiance with the Hindu right wing. That is how completely they have made it their own,” Sattar said.
Ravana, Hanuman and Sita according to Tholu Bommalata, the shadow puppet tradition of Andhra Pradesh.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF WIKI COMMONS
However, Nitesh Tiwari’s new film steers clear of contentious politics and is a straightforward retelling of the ancient epic, as if mindful of a knowing audience’s worst fears about a Ramayana adaptation in these polarised times.
It is cautious about Rama and reserves its creative flourishes for Ravana. It gives Sita some sword skills, borrowing from the epic’s previous iterations. In its narrative reticence though, it skips the human dilemmas at the epic’s core, making the movie enjoyable but not emotive enough.
But these safe choices came as a relief to viewers like school teacher Uttara Sriram, 35, who wanted no more than “a beautiful story with no political agenda”.
The movie’s opening disclaimer says: “The Ramayana has no one teller”. In that willingness to accept multiplicity lies its beauty.