We all have an evil within. The difference is extent, not the kind.
Animal by Sandeep Reddy Vanga is a derby of all things evil. A dry universe where everyone is like broken glass; clear yet edgy. In it, Ranbir Kapoor plays the spoilt brat of a billionaire industrialist, inches of mental equilibrium-short of being the heir apparent.
An openly dysfunctional family, their backdrop is the recipe for conspiracies of the combustible kind.
Yes, the film is presented as a father-son tough love saga but in the grander schemes of things, it doesn’t matter. We’ll come back to this is in a minute.
Every filmmaker has a prerogative of making films. Vanga’s latest Animal is a statement made to critics and detractors alike who dismissed his last outing Kabir Singh and it’s polarizing values. Here Vanga is more invested in baffling his self assigned opposition with an action spectacle rather than nosediving into the meat of the conflict.
Vanga seems to have no plans of winning hearts but crushing them with a blade-laden roadroller. Hence, rather than being a saga of the most underrated and complicated relationship in the world of a father and son, Animal becomes 3 hrs+ long crusade of revenge porn.
It is a world of heightened drama, where emotions are tuned up to twenty. Girl falls for the guy who makes hard passes at her, they make the rare decision of kissing each other at peak of disagreement. The romance here is steamy, compassionate and cranky like a evening person woken up at dawn.
But what the audience fails to comprehend is the nature of communication of such films. When Vanga or any maker present a troubled character like Kabir Singh or this, the undercurrent, outlook or the message is to not be inspired or be one. The unsaid advice is that this is what you shouldn’t be.
Films like Animal are a warning, not a guide.
Moments of a character calling it a man’s world, physically abusing a woman doesn’t normalise but rather warn the audience.
For Animal at no point empathises with its protagonist. Every new conflict is a facepalm of self, advocating further why the protagonist’s skewed worldview is a bigger nemesis than the nute nomad lurking around the rafters with gunmen and a kitchen knife. The writing is on the wall.
The film is titled Animal because the character is not be idolised but to be loathed upon. Films as such thrive on the audiences condoning the acts of the protagonist. For every lead character doesn’t need to be the download of a saint but the reflection of an average, vulnerable human sitting either next to us or within.
Whenever films are made on themes and outlooks as wicked and contentious, the ideal approach is to accept them as warnings and not user manuals of life guides.
The space where Animal completely falls apart is in understanding it’s core. Never through the film does one empathize for the father-son duo as there’s no emotional investment staked into their arc. Vanga doesn’t seem keen on providing any food for thought on a broken relationship and it’s repercussions. He rather uses it as a licence, a gate-pass for toxicity and acidic behaviour for his prime intent appears to be creating impact and intensity with the gore and bloodshed at disposal.
This is not a film that internalises pain or acknowledges the grief sprouting out of it. But rather an exaggeration of the most self defeating response to pain – revenge. And with no high ferocity of emotions involved, you submit yourselves to the one peg that Vanga aces in, throughout the film. Violence.
Sandeep Reddy Vanga treats his film like a prime time news debate. Pitting two forces against each other, speaking for or at the powers above and making them yell at each other without saying much. For that’s where you stop using rational. Cos when we get angry or emotional, the first thing we do is stop thinking. And when you stop thinking, you start feeling things.
Vanga doesn’t want you to think how gunmen roam freely around Delhi -NCR but wants you to feel the wrath of an unhinged brat grow into a self-destructive monster. And just like a prime time news debate, he keeps the most vital contributor of movie, Bobby Deol’s Abrar Haque on mute. An extended cameo, a sacrificial lamb of a character used as the foundation for possibilities of a franchise.
The problem with modern day discourse is the evasion and complete bypass of the concept of discretion.
Just like watching pornographic content doesn’t turn one into a sex offender or consuming content on killers doesn’t inspire one to turn into a criminal, watching the story of a misogynist doesn’t turn one into that.
Films of these kind are given adult certificates for grown up individuals are expected to reflections and infections. The silent chuckles on the sexist dialogues and physical abuses in the film are ploys with which Vanga exposes the society in which we live today. He, with every film, promises a painting but sells a mirror.
Just for the fact that Vijay, Ranbir’s character in the film goes roughshod across continents with guns and goons followed by no legal or administrative action against him is enough to not take this film seriously and just witness the slasher drama unfold.
Animal isn’t a film about masculinity or manhood but the delusion of it. Stylised by Harshvardhan Rameshwar’s thumping BGM and Sonu Nigam’s eerily brilliant Papa Meri Jaan, the film is Vanga’s juvenile vendetta against critics and nor a sincere cinematic recital. I reiterate, films as such are warnings. Not life guides.
Amidst all the kerfuffle, Vanga, the smartest chap in the room, is laughing all the way to the bank by using the oldest trick in the societal playbook. Create a dispute, pull a crowd, make a it a ticketed affair, run thick and green to the bank. Even though it makes him the enemy #1.
Bura Jo Dekhan Main Chala, Bura Naa Milya Koye Jo Munn Khoja Apnaa, To Mujhse Bura Naa Koye.
We all have an evil within. The difference is extent, not the kind. Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal doesn’t sell out to evil. But rather cashes-in.
NOTE: THE VIEWS AND OPINION EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.
