The “pan-Indian” cast, the passable CGI and the action sequences were held together not by the vision of a director, or even the performances of the actors but by the fact that the Mahabharata has near universal resonance.
The problem with Kalki 2898 AD — a Box Office behemoth that garnered well over Rs 1,000 crore in theatres and is now topping the India chart after its OTT debut last week — is that it does not tell a story. Or, to put it more accurately, it does what so much of Indian cinema, television and media as a whole has done since its inception — and in doing so, loses any hope of originality.
What is the purpose of art? There is the almost mundane, modern aim of “self-expression” and reflection — with all its accompanying self-indulgence. It elevates some, brings down others at galleries with critics and experts. This form of art-as-product, as a commodity, has its nuances and brilliance, but it rarely sets up a world and makes something from nothing. The “greats” apart, it is small, tied off from the world, its effect, even by the most successful, is at best a trickle-down, slowly seeping into the broader society as aesthetics and taste.
“The problem with the play,” goes the joke about what a philistine said after watching Hamlet, “is that it’s too full of clichés”. Great art — works so powerful that societies cannot escape their idioms and is, in fact, shaped by them — has its own set of issues. Indians are lucky that despite efforts by powerful, ideological forces, there are hundreds of Ramayanas and Mahabharatas across the country. That, unlike the Iliad, for example, these stories are not “discovered” and just taught in classrooms, they are a part of who we are.
But we are also trapped by them.
Too much has already been written about Kalki’s blatant “borrowing” from sci-fi films around the world — the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the Dune films, Mad Max, Bladerunner and much else besides. Enough has been said about the fact that its first half is boring — sinfully so, given the talent and budget involved.
Why, then, was it so successful? How was Amitabh Bachchan’s performance enough to make the second half resonate with viewers? How, without any “world-building” did the film manage a cliffhanger ending, setting up room for the sequel? The answer lies, as it does with so many stories in the Indian subcontinent, with the great epics.
Simply put, the film did not need to tell a story because it piggybacked on the Mahabharata. The “pan-Indian” cast, the passable CGI and the action sequences were held together not by the vision of a director, or even the performances of the actors but by the fact that the Mahabharata has near universal resonance: Bachchan is Ashwathama, cursed to immortality by Krishna, and Prabhas (spoiler alert) ends up being Karna. The “Complex” where evil genius Kamal Haasan (Supreme Yaskin) rules, is clearly a Lanka-like trope from the Ramayana and Yaskin is Raavana. The film — set in the distant future — does not create a new world because it does not need to. It just knows that we, the audience, will know.
The question, of course, is: What’s wrong with relying on and reimagining characters and stories that we know so well? Isn’t the Matrix trilogy just the Jesus story retold, the messianic figure pervasive in Hollywood and beyond? The MC and the comics it is based on repurposed gods, heroes and angels for great profit and entertainment. Are we so Westernised, our mindset so “colonial”, that we must baulk at the Ramayana and Mahabharata (the latter tends to have more dramatic value) being retold?
Hollywood does indeed recycle familiar tropes for profit. But its cinema is all the poorer for it (Martin Scorcese wasn’t completely off the mark when he called superhero films theme-park rides). As Indian cinema evolves, it need not always go backwards and emulate America’s mistakes. Besides, as seen recently with superhero films, in the long run, a lack of originality gives diminishing returns.
The second problem is deeper. The influence of the Mahabharata and Ramayana on saas-bahu serials and Sooraj Barjatya films, sci-fi novels and film series such as Kalki, Baahubali and Brahmastra and so much else isn’t just about making story-telling simpler. Unfortunately, they do not search for layers of meaning or different versions of the tale. More often than not, the simplest, most regressive telling of the epics will be their “inspiration”.
Isn’t it time, then, that we had new archetypes? From politics to business, too many people fancy themselves kings and avenging angels. And cultural products, unable to find an original story or voice, only strengthen these tendencies.
The Ramayana and Mahabharata will always be a part of who we are. But the values they sometimes prop up might not be what the 21st century needs.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that I won’t watch Kalki 2.
aakash.joshi@expressindia.com
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 27-08-2024 at 16:00 IST
