On `Adipurush’
The negative reviews Adipurush has garnered are to some extent biased aided by some particular agenda. Actors in the previous recensions of the Ramayana have a soft corner towards their version of the work, which is perfectly understandable. And, I think most will agree that social media reviewers have in general zero credibility when it comes to judging a film without imposing pointless opinions.
One of the first points that are coming up is about video effects, which Hollywood watchers are not considering upto the mark. As for myself, I consider these type of unnecessary vfx in historical films an absolute nonsense, be it the primitive computerized arrowhead-clashes in Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana or as in here. Technologies might differ, but the status of its relevance, or rather ir-relevance, stays unmoved. Somewhere vfx might be necessary, let’s say when we want to depict a tsunami scene that better not be shot. But let us agree that if Rama would be shooting a fire-headed arrow, his option as a hopeless mortal like us would be to dip the arrowhead (wrapped with inflammable material like oiled silk cloth) into a fire and then throw it. (You can consider creating the fire using vfx if otherwise it poses risk to the shooting crew.) We have ample examples of such warfare in the past. Arun Govil, in his ABP News interview, I think got this point more or less aptly: even if required, vfx is a craft supporting the innate art, not art itself.
Now dialogues. I don’t think use of slangs by the characters should not be termed ‘unrealistic’. Because whatever language they spoke at that time, it must’ve had slang phrases that were bound to be used when one was confronting the enemy. Some people are arguing that use of Urdu-origin or broken Sanskrit words are inappropriate, but then they are those who believe that Sri Rama sopke in Hindi and that Hindi should be rashtra bhasha and bla bla blah... It is safe to accept that Rama spoke some dialect close to the literary form of Sanskrit, or some Prakrit tongue that evidently predates the earliest extant Magadhi Prakrit; while it might be possible that Rama spoke some earlier language predating the current literary form of archaic Sanskrit, probably having some Indo-European root. We have absolutely no idea what Ravana spoke. His parents were from different clans, and we have doubt regarding his maternal ethnicity. So, if the film is being made in Hindi, Telegu (might be in any other language as well) then we expect the theme and attitude of the dialogues to be kept same, while the dialogues are bound to be in the colloquial form of the language. While use of Persian origin loan words might in it be unacceptible from the point of view of linguistic purity, it is not specially so when spoken by Rama. And, guys, Rama was not a Hindi-speaker and Devanagari script had at least two millenia yet to be created!
Some people can’t simply overcome the nostalgia of DD’s Ramayana, and some makers of that one are feeding this bias. This has no reason, and it is also not necessary that any future film adaptation has to stay within the bounds Sagar Arts had defined. As a Bengalee who doesn’t blindly follow Tulsidas and has read 9 of the many versions of the Ramayana (Valmiki original, Valmiki-attributed Adbhuta, Ramopakhyana, Adhyatma Ramayana, Rama Jataka, Jain Ramayana, Bhagavata, Ramakien) and the two Bengali versions by Chandravati and Krttibas that predate Tulsidas by centuries and later interpretations including those by Swami Vivekananda, Buddhadeb Basu and Madhusudan Dutt, I find that the DD Ramayana was poorly researched and much more poorly adapated. The anime version is better but lacks the Indian touch. The DD version had its good points also, I agree. In itself, it had indeed touched millions of hearts. While we cannot forget the acting skills of Dara Singh, Sunil Lehri and Arvind Tewari, I find a tinge of disbelief in its believer makers: of the historicity of Rama (a criminal disbelief, really, propagated by certain sections even of the Hindu society). I think that the Star Plus adaptation of the Adbhuta and Adhyatma Ramayanas is better somewhat, who TV soap-ized. Poetic ornaments in the texts could have had clearer and more authentic depictions on screen. One more thing, considering Tulsidas Goswami as the ultimate institution of Ramayana would be a blunder. He wrote his adapation barely 400 years ago while the extant text by Valmiki should be at least 3000 years old, and the happennings farther in the past.
Let’s brief: Rama was a prince of a dynasty tracing back to the legendary Ikshavku (probably of Central Asian origin; it might be that Scythians shared a common ancestry and nominal origin). He was in exile (or military deportation) when his wife was kidnapped and his valour challenged. He entered the enemy dominions, made alliances with various tribes and annihilated some others and sent interpreters to argue the terms of a peace treaty with the enemy. Then he attacked the secluded state of Lanka, his men set fire to its cities, his army ravaged its administration with the help of a disowned child of the royal family who agreed to be his vassal post-war. Rama rescued his wife (his sibling according to Rama Jataka) and returned to his hometown. Futher episodes revolve round scandals of the royal family and politics within the enclosed sphere of capital-dwellers and bureaucrats.
I am a Hindu and pro- the cult of Rama worship. This is the godhood he has attained in millenia through bards and historians. I have nothing for or against Rama, if I have anything for him that is because my people have been challenged and persecuted by foreign invaders during the last millenium, and often on his name. My natural instinct will be to defend the one who has been cited as the bearer of the Indian flag among many others. I think that the demolition of the Babri Masjid is the most important positive landmark in Indian history in the second half of the 1900s, and it singifies the end of an era of foreign cultural domination and our meek acceptance of evil. Otherwise, Rama is an important king and political influencer of India, whose heritage has inspired many future rulers across south-east Asia till date.
But did the makers of Adipurush try to identify and undo the mistakes in Sagar Arts’ Ramayana? (Any work of epic proportions must have mistakes and future artists should correct them, that’s very normal and fine for both!) They did not. They did not come out of the sloppiness of a fairy tale-like storytelling. They bothered, if at all, much less about history. A historical film cannot have it’s storyline tampered by the maker, since it is not a fiction! And I absolutely don’t understand what the makers intended by changing the names of the characters.
Or rather I do! They did not want to accept the fact that they are making the Ramayana. Treating a ballad like Valmiki’s requires faith and self-respect (I mean respect in your motherland’s culture, whose product you are) which the makers did not have. They tried to attract the Americanized or even anti-Hindu audience in a superhero-film-like ambience. Even they argued something like that, citing some American franchise. The point they missed is that, those franchises are never adapting the Bible, which is how it should be as well! The Bible should be and is respected. Decent films are adapted from that, e.g., Ben-Hur or The Prince of Egypt.
So I should say that Adipurush did more harm to Hindu culture than good.
Some leftists had problem with the fact that the villain Ravana looked like Alauddin Khilji and they termed it as some justifiable reaction they nomenclatured as a certain ‘phobia’. I don’t literally understand their problem. Won’t they agree that Ravana was a far better personality than the Khilji demon? Coming to historicity, yeah, I don’t like it also-- though for an entirely different reason. Ravana was a devout Saiva and Sakta Brahmin, and his ethics were stricter than the best Sultan of Delhi.
I am understanding enough to see why Rama might have wanted to wear armours (traditionally made of rhinoceros skin according to literary evidence) or shoes while fighting. I also agree that in a fight he is as much prone to be at the receiving end of injuries as his enemies (in fact he was fatally injured several times!). I know it is natural for most men to grow beards and then the concerned guardian sad about being separated from his wife and anxious about her well-being must have forgotten to shave for days at end. Kshatriya kings kept fancy moustaches. But one must remember that Rama has since time immemorial being portrayed by Vaisnava artists, whose aesthetic standards have created the common perception of Rama today. Valmiki described Rama as a righteous and brave man with a strong physique, broad jawline, wide forehead, blue eyes, long hands reaching upto knees. As a trained warrior in practice, we can expect a somewhat exercised and maintained physique as well. Again, as an example, Krttibas Ojha-- the Vaisnava scholar who inspired Tulsidas (a Vaisnava himself) desribed Rama to be of a complexion like fresh grass (connected to SriKrsna) with crimson lips and physique as tender as newly-grown leaf; and Lakshmana to be white (of course he imagined the latter as Baladeva). If you want to make a fairy tale out of the Ramayana, you must follow the tradition of fairy tales already written on that subject. Or else, as the makers of Adipurush clearly did not intend to, one must take up a historian’s looking glasses.
The same stands for the slangs used. It is very natural that most people in India have a sentiment attached to the book’s characters. And that sentiment should not be disturbed, more so in front of those who cited sentiment while creating havoc in response to Nupur Sharma’s slip-of-tongue. While in future Charlie Hebdo is still under unlawful threat, I shall seriously condemn disturbing in any format the faith of the tolerant and unprotesting Hindus, in the context of Hinduism being under external attack since centuries.
One of the first points that are coming up is about video effects, which Hollywood watchers are not considering upto the mark. As for myself, I consider these type of unnecessary vfx in historical films an absolute nonsense, be it the primitive computerized arrowhead-clashes in Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana or as in here. Technologies might differ, but the status of its relevance, or rather ir-relevance, stays unmoved. Somewhere vfx might be necessary, let’s say when we want to depict a tsunami scene that better not be shot. But let us agree that if Rama would be shooting a fire-headed arrow, his option as a hopeless mortal like us would be to dip the arrowhead (wrapped with inflammable material like oiled silk cloth) into a fire and then throw it. (You can consider creating the fire using vfx if otherwise it poses risk to the shooting crew.) We have ample examples of such warfare in the past. Arun Govil, in his ABP News interview, I think got this point more or less aptly: even if required, vfx is a craft supporting the innate art, not art itself.
Now dialogues. I don’t think use of slangs by the characters should not be termed ‘unrealistic’. Because whatever language they spoke at that time, it must’ve had slang phrases that were bound to be used when one was confronting the enemy. Some people are arguing that use of Urdu-origin or broken Sanskrit words are inappropriate, but then they are those who believe that Sri Rama sopke in Hindi and that Hindi should be rashtra bhasha and bla bla blah... It is safe to accept that Rama spoke some dialect close to the literary form of Sanskrit, or some Prakrit tongue that evidently predates the earliest extant Magadhi Prakrit; while it might be possible that Rama spoke some earlier language predating the current literary form of archaic Sanskrit, probably having some Indo-European root. We have absolutely no idea what Ravana spoke. His parents were from different clans, and we have doubt regarding his maternal ethnicity. So, if the film is being made in Hindi, Telegu (might be in any other language as well) then we expect the theme and attitude of the dialogues to be kept same, while the dialogues are bound to be in the colloquial form of the language. While use of Persian origin loan words might in it be unacceptible from the point of view of linguistic purity, it is not specially so when spoken by Rama. And, guys, Rama was not a Hindi-speaker and Devanagari script had at least two millenia yet to be created!
Some people can’t simply overcome the nostalgia of DD’s Ramayana, and some makers of that one are feeding this bias. This has no reason, and it is also not necessary that any future film adaptation has to stay within the bounds Sagar Arts had defined. As a Bengalee who doesn’t blindly follow Tulsidas and has read 9 of the many versions of the Ramayana (Valmiki original, Valmiki-attributed Adbhuta, Ramopakhyana, Adhyatma Ramayana, Rama Jataka, Jain Ramayana, Bhagavata, Ramakien) and the two Bengali versions by Chandravati and Krttibas that predate Tulsidas by centuries and later interpretations including those by Swami Vivekananda, Buddhadeb Basu and Madhusudan Dutt, I find that the DD Ramayana was poorly researched and much more poorly adapated. The anime version is better but lacks the Indian touch. The DD version had its good points also, I agree. In itself, it had indeed touched millions of hearts. While we cannot forget the acting skills of Dara Singh, Sunil Lehri and Arvind Tewari, I find a tinge of disbelief in its believer makers: of the historicity of Rama (a criminal disbelief, really, propagated by certain sections even of the Hindu society). I think that the Star Plus adaptation of the Adbhuta and Adhyatma Ramayanas is better somewhat, who TV soap-ized. Poetic ornaments in the texts could have had clearer and more authentic depictions on screen. One more thing, considering Tulsidas Goswami as the ultimate institution of Ramayana would be a blunder. He wrote his adapation barely 400 years ago while the extant text by Valmiki should be at least 3000 years old, and the happennings farther in the past.
Let’s brief: Rama was a prince of a dynasty tracing back to the legendary Ikshavku (probably of Central Asian origin; it might be that Scythians shared a common ancestry and nominal origin). He was in exile (or military deportation) when his wife was kidnapped and his valour challenged. He entered the enemy dominions, made alliances with various tribes and annihilated some others and sent interpreters to argue the terms of a peace treaty with the enemy. Then he attacked the secluded state of Lanka, his men set fire to its cities, his army ravaged its administration with the help of a disowned child of the royal family who agreed to be his vassal post-war. Rama rescued his wife (his sibling according to Rama Jataka) and returned to his hometown. Futher episodes revolve round scandals of the royal family and politics within the enclosed sphere of capital-dwellers and bureaucrats.
I am a Hindu and pro- the cult of Rama worship. This is the godhood he has attained in millenia through bards and historians. I have nothing for or against Rama, if I have anything for him that is because my people have been challenged and persecuted by foreign invaders during the last millenium, and often on his name. My natural instinct will be to defend the one who has been cited as the bearer of the Indian flag among many others. I think that the demolition of the Babri Masjid is the most important positive landmark in Indian history in the second half of the 1900s, and it singifies the end of an era of foreign cultural domination and our meek acceptance of evil. Otherwise, Rama is an important king and political influencer of India, whose heritage has inspired many future rulers across south-east Asia till date.
But did the makers of Adipurush try to identify and undo the mistakes in Sagar Arts’ Ramayana? (Any work of epic proportions must have mistakes and future artists should correct them, that’s very normal and fine for both!) They did not. They did not come out of the sloppiness of a fairy tale-like storytelling. They bothered, if at all, much less about history. A historical film cannot have it’s storyline tampered by the maker, since it is not a fiction! And I absolutely don’t understand what the makers intended by changing the names of the characters.
Or rather I do! They did not want to accept the fact that they are making the Ramayana. Treating a ballad like Valmiki’s requires faith and self-respect (I mean respect in your motherland’s culture, whose product you are) which the makers did not have. They tried to attract the Americanized or even anti-Hindu audience in a superhero-film-like ambience. Even they argued something like that, citing some American franchise. The point they missed is that, those franchises are never adapting the Bible, which is how it should be as well! The Bible should be and is respected. Decent films are adapted from that, e.g., Ben-Hur or The Prince of Egypt.
So I should say that Adipurush did more harm to Hindu culture than good.
Some leftists had problem with the fact that the villain Ravana looked like Alauddin Khilji and they termed it as some justifiable reaction they nomenclatured as a certain ‘phobia’. I don’t literally understand their problem. Won’t they agree that Ravana was a far better personality than the Khilji demon? Coming to historicity, yeah, I don’t like it also-- though for an entirely different reason. Ravana was a devout Saiva and Sakta Brahmin, and his ethics were stricter than the best Sultan of Delhi.
I am understanding enough to see why Rama might have wanted to wear armours (traditionally made of rhinoceros skin according to literary evidence) or shoes while fighting. I also agree that in a fight he is as much prone to be at the receiving end of injuries as his enemies (in fact he was fatally injured several times!). I know it is natural for most men to grow beards and then the concerned guardian sad about being separated from his wife and anxious about her well-being must have forgotten to shave for days at end. Kshatriya kings kept fancy moustaches. But one must remember that Rama has since time immemorial being portrayed by Vaisnava artists, whose aesthetic standards have created the common perception of Rama today. Valmiki described Rama as a righteous and brave man with a strong physique, broad jawline, wide forehead, blue eyes, long hands reaching upto knees. As a trained warrior in practice, we can expect a somewhat exercised and maintained physique as well. Again, as an example, Krttibas Ojha-- the Vaisnava scholar who inspired Tulsidas (a Vaisnava himself) desribed Rama to be of a complexion like fresh grass (connected to SriKrsna) with crimson lips and physique as tender as newly-grown leaf; and Lakshmana to be white (of course he imagined the latter as Baladeva). If you want to make a fairy tale out of the Ramayana, you must follow the tradition of fairy tales already written on that subject. Or else, as the makers of Adipurush clearly did not intend to, one must take up a historian’s looking glasses.
The same stands for the slangs used. It is very natural that most people in India have a sentiment attached to the book’s characters. And that sentiment should not be disturbed, more so in front of those who cited sentiment while creating havoc in response to Nupur Sharma’s slip-of-tongue. While in future Charlie Hebdo is still under unlawful threat, I shall seriously condemn disturbing in any format the faith of the tolerant and unprotesting Hindus, in the context of Hinduism being under external attack since centuries.
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