The much-anticipated movie of this year, ‘Animal,’ was released on December 1 with a bang. Social media has gone crazy about this film, and cinema lovers are divided over what is depicted. When the first announcement of the movie came, and the bloody, messy look of Ranbir Kapoor was revealed, everyone was shocked. Although we’ve seen Ranbir in different shades of character, this broke his lover-boy stereotype persona. It was also a significant gamble for Ranbir, as his previous two action movies, ‘Bombay Velvet’ and ‘Shamshera,’ were total disasters at the box office.
But hold on, hold on, this time the captain of the ship is Sandeep Reddy Vanga (Yes, “vada wao wao vada wao” can be heard in the background). His film ‘Animal’ fundamentally breaks the stereotype of men portrayed for decades in Hindi cinema. For the first time, we see a hero who doesn’t make us recall the old heroes—cute, simple, righteous, idealistic, ideal husband, ideal boyfriend, etc. Many people claim that the movie ‘Tere Naam’ first showed this kind of character, but wait a bit until we get to the end.
Now, usual Bollywood movies have established the notion that a hero is nothing but a saint, and a villain is nothing but evil. Sandeep Reddy Vanga attempts to portray a hero who is neither a saint nor evil. The hero is as vulnerable as someone in our real life. The hero can be impulsive, aggressive, short-tempered, do what he wants to do, not want to understand anyone but what he believes, tries to fix things that make things worse, is a narcissist, is also egoistic, and does self-harm to hide his mental pain. The fact is, don’t we see this kind of character in our real lives? Don’t we see a neighbour who is very short-tempered but loves his family very much? Don’t we know a friend who would beat another person to a pulp just because he misbehaved with you? Don’t we see that crazy lover who would cut his vein to get married to the love of his life but also would not hesitate to cheat on her after some years of marriage? Now the question is, does this kind of hero exist in cinema, or should it be glorified?
The problem is that we humans are creatures who can’t easily accept the ugly side of our personalities. We always want to represent ourselves as saints without any flaws and want to hide the ugly part, especially in the current world where social media has become the standard of perfection. Here we can see an imbalance; everything everywhere is just good and perfect. We are creating a society where the slightest imperfections will make the world disgrace you and turn you into meme material. I think Sandeep Reddy Vanga wants to portray that part of a personality that we want to bury in the deep.
Now, many of you might think it’s a movie review post, why I am not talking about it until now. Well, in that case, I am guessing whoever is reading this post has already watched the movie or knows about it, and come on, the movie’s story is not rocket science; it’s a simple story of a man who wants to take revenge for his father’s assault and will go to any extent to do that. The same story we’ve seen in thousands of movies. The main thing here is not about the story; it’s about the character and its various dynamics. The movie proudly shows a flawed character and says that yes, that is the reality, and this type of person exists in your real life. Maybe the person is you, or there are some traits of this personality you can resemble with your inner self, which you buried somewhere inside you or you don’t want to accept.
Now, I will come to the point of what I said about the movie ‘Tere Naam.’ You can see that that movie was never about accepting your bad side; it was a typical movie where the bad guy turned into a saint because he fell in love. But in the case of ‘Animal,’ ‘Arjun Reddy,’ or ‘Kabir Singh,’ the character is in love but never loses his characteristics because characteristics are not built only by love and will not change only by love.
And last but not least, who is saying that this movie is promoting misogyny and cheating? I mean, come on, the movie’s name is ‘Animal,’ it is not ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain.’ What do you expect? You guys have to understand that the movie is saying the character is flawed; so there is no point in searching for perfection in it.