Review of Ramayana - the film

 

You go in with expectations. You go in expecting to be entertained. Your mind has already told you that you are going to love this film because you have made the effort to get out of the house, drive to a theater, and sit in a mildly comfortable seat - for 3 hours. In this day and age, that is a massive commitment of time and attention. So, your mind is preconditioned to love the film. 

Then, the film begins. 

Dear Ramayana:

You got Hindi grammar wrong? How??? (Sita's dialogue to Ayodhya residents at the time of vanvas departure is grammatically incorrect. In many other places, the words used are not used together in practice. It was just jarring to listen to)

The technical team deserves special mention - the CGI is patchy (at best), the dialogues and their delivery is flatter than still water in a glass.

This is not a film. This is some dialogues in between action sequences. There is no story telling. The 3 mothers of Ram, the father of Ram, the brothers of Ram, hell, even Ram has no personality.

The costumes are unbelievable

(like, we cannot believe you got them so wrong.. There is a book called History of Indian costume. Please get someone in your team to read that.),

The lighting is lacking

(you cannot get a sunlit sky right? All light looks AI generated and not natural at all. An outdoor scene needs to look like an outdoor scene!)

The art direction is artless

(Why do Lankan palaces have Greco Roman pillars and volutes and large floral balusters? Why do Indian palaces have nonspecific sculpture? Indian palaces were rich in sculpture and had a lot more decoration than this random, oddly non-specific appearance. Even Amar Chitra Katha does it better.

Why is there high-altitude vegetation in a temperate, plains-based forest? In which imagination do asuras look like Denisovans? Why does the Pushpak viman look like a Turkish hot air balloon on a lotus? In no part of vimana shastra is the vimana a balloon.) 

The action sequences are choreographed by some AI that was trained on Avatar? 

You have to remember that we have watched Avengers for maybe 20 years, we have grown up on Ramleelas and Ramanand Sagar's Ramayana since the 1980s. We have set imagery in our mind. We expect the story to reproduce something similar to be credible. And our fights do not involve run and chase. They always involve sophisticated weaponry. That's the difference between Western and Indian action sequences. 

I won't comment on the background score bcs it was pretty unremarkable. And there were no songs to take home.

The only technical aspect that works well is the sound. That is well balanced. 

This is just the technical team. 

Now to the storytelling and what is called "creative" 

If the director had a vision, it is not coming through. 

If story telling was intended, that has not happened. 

Casting, though a tech feature, is being mentioned here because so much of a story depends on the actors telling it. Ranvir is usually a very expressive actor. But in this film, the director has completely muted his performance. Not ONE scene gives you goosebumps. Not the death of Dashrath, not Bharat milaap, not even the vanvaas. Even the neighbourhood Ramleela does it better. 

The rest of the cast is either poorly chosen or poorly directed because not ONCE does an actor portray through their eyes and face. At many places, it looks like AI is playing the character bcs the real actor would do things differently. 

Ravana is being praised in many reviews but his character is basically unidimensional. As is everyone else's. The dialogues are SO BAD. The delivery is flatter than still water in a glass. There isn't ONE memorable dialogue or song that leaves the theater with you. 

Some of the events have been reimagined. Ram's search for "Why was i born?" is refreshing. It may not work for everyone, but it worked for me. However, "Only this vanvas will tell me what destiny really has in store for me" is kind of... flat. Doesn't come through. 

Ram making the ekpatnivrat to his fil at his wedding also makes no sense. 

Everyone has already mentioned that the first half crawls and the second half at least manages to walk. Even for me, the second half was better paced than the first.  

That's it. That's the review. 

It takes serious effort to take a story as beautiful, nuanced, and layered as Ramayana, to have the power of money, CGI, and AI, and then to get basics like tech, dialogues, and casting wrong. Amazing!!