In an ancient time where a battle erupted between the power-seeking Asuras and the godly Devas, The Devas manage to come out on top, but the princess of the Asuras, Kaikashi (played by Shobana Chandrakumar Pillai, or Shobana) instructs her son, Dashanan (played by Naveen Kumar, or Yash) to gain enough power to overthrow their reign, leading him to embark on a multiple year journey that ends with him obtaining near immortality. After toppling the Devas rule, renaming himself Ravana, and naming himself the king of all three realms, hope seems lost but a young prince of the kingdom of Ayodhya named Rama (played by Ranbir Kapoor) is chosen to be the new avatar of Lord Vishnu and might hold the power to topple Ravana with time. Raised with extreme skill and proving his worth by defeating two demons, Rama is set for a prosperous life, but a feud regarding his ascension to the throne forces the young prince into exile, with his wife, Princess Sita (played by Sai Pallavi) and his loyal brother, Lakshmana (played by Ravi Dubey) following behind him. With Ravana comfortably in power and Rama living in the wilderness, these two are destined to meet eventually and will result in a clash that will echo throughout history
RAMAYANA: PART 1 is an ambitious project that went all out and managed a pretty memorable cinematic experience, but you can feel its roots as a mythological story hindering how connectable it is (for any audience member from any culture). The performances are grand, the story is not as hard to follow as expected, and the production value, effects and combat sequences are truly remarkable, but it can feel a bit hollow due to the style-over-substance mentality, bland main character and prioritizing set-up over pay-off.
The Ramayana was a Hindu poem from ancient India written by the legendary sage Maharishi Valmiki, and was incredibly influential to the Hindu culture, even being compared to Homer’s, Odyssey, in terms of being a foundational pillar of literature and shaping how human’s tell their stories. A story of such magnitude that breathes with mythological grandeur would make for an interesting visual adaptation, but the feasibility of such a task was the problem, with the various deities, mythical creatures, and large-scale battles posing a problem for the Indian film industry who had made big budget effects-heavy movies previously, but never to this extent. This didn’t stop film producers, Allu Aravind, Namit Malhotra, and Madhu Mantena from announcing a planned trilogy (later turned into a duology) in 2017, and with plans to make it a multilanguage project that also had Hollywood assistance, it actually seemed like RAMAYANA could be brought to the big screen.
Filming two movies back-to-back, Ramayana is a gigantic film that proudly portrays its Hindu-specific story in a way that doesn’t erase its culture and unique style but manages to have surprisingly broad appeal and isn’t gatekeeping international audiences. The opening does throw you in the deep end and will require some knowledge of Hinduism and Indian culture, but the basis of the story is pretty quick to grasp, watching an evil man conquer the world and witnessing a pure soul go through trials to eventually find his way to overthrow him.
Keeping pretty close to the original poem, the screenplay written by Shridhar Raghavan and the film’s director, Nitesh Tiwari, nicely condenses this epic tale in a concise fashion, managing to make a set-up that effectively only provides build up for the more action-heavy second part, still enjoyable, enriching, and distinct from other pictures of its type. It isn’t particularly nuanced, but it’s well directed, written, performed and visualized.
With that said, RAMAYANA ironically suffers from an issue that plagues even traditional Hollywood film epics, which is their preference for giant spectacle over personal engagement, and while this movie does still have memorable characters and an effective enough narrative crux, it isn’t delivered in a way that lets the characters believably respond to their situation, constantly needing to move and react in a flamboyant fashion that isn’t really in-depth or introspective. It doesn’t feel hollow necessarily, but the source material’s narrow-minded focus on wholehearted spectacle rather than fulfilling character dynamics are felt, truly feeling more like a cinematic legend rather than a story.
With a gigantic story comes a gigantic cast, and this film has a ton of characters, most of whom aren’t allowed to be much beyond their established archetypes, but the performances really help make them likeable and memorable. This is felt the strongest in the background roles, as no one feels forgettable and every person is able to leave their mark and define a sense of character through their pronounced but not over-the-top delivery. People like Kunal Kapoor, Shobana Chandrakumar Pillai, Adinath Kothare, and Sheeba Chaddha, leave their mark very nicely, and more prominent supporting roles from people like Arun Govil, Lara Dutta, Rakul Preet Singh, and Anupam Kher really help bring a presence and weight to the story being told.
The clear faces of the film are Ranbir Kapoor as Rama and Yash as Ravana, but ironically, Ravana is shown far less, whilst Rama has a majority of the over three-hour running time dedicated to him, and he sadly is easily the worst character in the movie. Largely being a consequence of the kind of story being told, Rama is an incredibly generic and boring deific figure who is presented as so wholly good, altruistic and accepting of any negative thing thrown his way, that he comes across as highly unrelatable and therefore, not very interesting. The actor is trying his best, but the writing is so barren that it leaves him feeling like a stick figure the story is puppeteering around.
Yash was actually dubbed over by Sharad Kelkar due to his Hindi accent apparently sounding rough (which is also the case for Sail Pallavi as Sita who was dubbed over by Ami Trivedi), but this doesn’t take away from the genuine presence the actor brings to Ravana, and with his more fleshed out past and intimidating presence, he’s easily the more memorable focal character. Sita is a simple but likeable enough female support as she and Rama do share believable chemistry, and Ravi Dubey is very good as Lakshmana, helping bring some believable apathy to a main cast that are a little too good-natured and wistfully accepting for their own good.
With a budget of ₹4,000 crore (US$430 million) split over both films, RAMAYANA was taking a big risk, as the films would only be able to make their money back if they performed well on a global front, and while they’re off to a good start internationally and especially domestically, it’s still hard to tell how it’ll pan out for them in the long run. What’s nice is that this is a very good-looking movie that is using its budget effectively with genuingly impressive effects, but they also aren’t bound to looking realistic and seem more interested in looking grand and cool, which they do. Several Indian films in the past have used extensive visual effects, but even some of their biggest movies that tried to hit a global market had questionable CGI inclusion, with RAMAYANA being one of the first that genuingly feels on the level of Hollywood, which makes sense given they did have a hand in making it.
With the VFX handled by DNEG (who have provided Oscar-winning effects work for films like Interstellar, First Man and the Dune series), the visuals are very well delivered, providing environments that look very pretty and colorful when paired against the equally fantastic sets and costumes, and bringing monsters and demons to life in a vein that isn’t on the level of Avatar or Gollum from Lord of the Rings, but is extremely expressive and textured, it’s remarkable work.
The action is strangely not that prolific nor as extreme as would be expected of an Indian feature based on gods and demons, with only the intro offering anything that feels grand and over-the-top (it does involve a near-immortal man punching a gigantic flying elephant, so that’s at least fresh), but this is likely being saved for the final part, and what is offered isn’t bad, with good pacing, energy and choreography handled by Guy Norris. The musical score is also insanely loud and grand, being composed by A. R. Rahman and Hans Zimmer (in his Indian cinema debut), and while it feels and sounds fantastic, it can be a little self-aggrandizing at times, overplaying a moment with bombastic heaviness to the point that it feels like a little too much.
RAMAYANA: PART 1 is a big win for Indian cinema and will hopefully be the first step in allowing international films the same kind of global praise and budget usually expected of most Hollywood features, but with this new podium, comes the same kind of critical examination, and RAMAYANA has many things good and bad about it. As its own thing, this movie is a film epic through and through, with impressive scale, glorious visuals, memorable performances, and a simple yet easily identifiable story that taps on a culturally specific tale without leaving others out to dry (although whether it has been properly adapted is up to that culture to decide). With that said, the film does struggle with a style-over-substance mentality, with a very weak main character and a heavier focus on set-up than pay-off which might leave some folks disappointed, but it’d be hard to think of anyone leaving this movie not at least a little perplexed about what’s going to happen next.
