Ramayana: Part 1 has the muscle, but lacks a certain epic soul
Mega-budget adaptation of Hindu myth feels like it's hurrying you along
Growing up in Toronto, my family got our Indian cinema fix in the late ‘90s by renting bootleg VHS tapes from the basement of a shop on Lawrence Avenue.
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Usually, that meant fanciful Bollywood romances, but occasionally we'd pick up an episode of an 1987 TV series depicting the ancient Hindu epic poem, the Ramayana.
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It was full of telenovela-esque facial reactions, tinfoil jewelry and my favourite: arrows that transformed into other things through the awesome magic of jump cuts.
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It was appointment viewing for millions of people in India, where it originally aired, and for the diaspora for years to come.
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And despite how visually impressive and modern it is, it's missing the soul
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Believed to have been written several thousand years ago, the Ramayana is a story rooted in Hinduism.
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But it extends beyond one religion, culture or country.
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Generally, it's the journey of Prince Rama, a god in human form, as he is drawn into a war with the villainous King Ravana, who abducts the noble princess Sita.
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who → draw → Sita
The film was directed by Nitesh Tiwari with actors from across Indian cinema — the Hindi-language A-lister Ranbir Kapoor, the Kannada-language star Yash and the Tamil- and Telugu-language actor Sai Pallavi, respectively.
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The story's details change across South and Southeast Asia so much that, to quote the scholar A.K. Ramanujan, "one conception [of the story] is quite abhorrent to those who hold another.
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And yet the characters are part of everyday life for millions of people, says Aparita Bhandari, an arts and culture reporter in Toronto who grew up in New Delhi.
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"You go to the temple, the idea of Ram/Sita, this whole thing is just there in your kind of collective consciousness," she said.
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Ranbir Kapoor stars as Prince Rama, a god in human form who is drawn into a war with the villainous Ravana.
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Beyond entertainment, the story is full of parables, dealing with struggles and ethics.
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For example, Prince Rama sacrifices his birthright to be king to his brother, Bharat, and accepts an unfair exile to satisfy his stepmother.
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But even with a runtime of over three hours for the Hindi version — and much less for the English dub — some major characters had to be erased or sidelined.
"They had to really cut a whole bunch out of it.
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You know, like Kaushalya and Sumitra just never spoke," Bhandari said, referring to Rama's birth mother and another stepmother.
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Shiv Reddy, a film reviewer who watched both the Hindi and English versions, says the latter even removes a scene with Bharat begging his brother to come back.
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A shadow puppet theatre group performs the Ramayana in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Feb. 9, 2025.
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Southeast Asian cultures have many versions of the myth, which are told in various ways.
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"It immensely changed my perception of Ranbir Kapoor's performance as Rama, and also his duty as a king," Reddy told CBC News from Orange, Calif.
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"And to remove it entirely feels like that conflict that [Rama] faces is removed also.
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The end result feels like it's hurrying audiences along, with characters rarely dissecting their motivations, instead telling you something to get you to the next part.
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From the opening moments, we're greeted with a fantastical battle of angels and demons on an icy battlefield, with war rhinos and a flying elephant battling like Lord of the Rings met God of War and 300.
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A flying war elephant arrives on a frigid battlefield in a scene from Ramayana: Part 1.
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Loud and crunchy sound design, punctuated by a score from Hans Zimmer, who co-composed it with the equally legendary A.R. Rahman, helped drive these scenes.
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For a kid who grew up on that ‘80s series and comic book adaptations, the graphics were impressive (save for a few facial expressions of some demons).
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Meeting the moment
The film is timely not just because it's out in theatres for the Diwali weekend — a holiday that celebrates Rama's victory.
It also meets a need for international audiences expecting grand action from the Indian film industry ever since S.S. Rajamouli's RRR in 2022 — and in the process brought together talent from across India and the world to work on both films, which together reportedly cost $500 million US.
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Nana Patekar, star of Salaam Bombay!, Bollywood films, dead at 75
- Nothing is Foreign
Beyond Bollywood: RRR and the future of Indian film
Part 1 is playing in more than 50 theatres across this country.
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Part 2, which has a lot more of the story to cover, has now been delayed to 2028.
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"The ambition helped…to tell this grand story," Bhandari said, adding that the money went to a whole wall of artists featured in the end credits.
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"There's a lot of people that have put a lot of effort into making this work.
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And I guess to a certain extent, it shows.
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But one aspect of the film that some critics feel missed the mark was the use of AI, in post-production, to try to give this story more universal appeal.
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In the English dub, which used human voice actors, AI changed the mouths of the actors on-screen to appear as if they were speaking English.
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Tiwari, the director, said during the L.A. premiere that this was to "present the film to the world in their language."
For Reddy, it didn't work.
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"It's uncanny, for sure," Reddy said.
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"Because the face is also changing, it feels like it's just not their performance."
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Ramayana: Part 1 feels like an AI-generated summary of the ancient epic.
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You get the gist, you get the polish, but none of the depth until you choose to seek it.
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