I walked into Ramayana: Part 1 wanting to be surprised and emerged impressed by how thoroughly surprise had been engineered out of it. That is not the same as saying the film is incompetent. It is large, polished and reverent. Its release on 5 November and principal cast are recorded in the November release calendar, while the broader international positioning appears in the Associated Press fall-film guide. The scale is not in doubt. My quarrel is with what the scale is protecting.
Reverence can become creative insurance
The Ramayana is not fragile. It has survived centuries of retelling, regional variation, performance and argument. Yet contemporary Hindi cinema approaches it with the nervousness of a corporate legal department. Every choice feels pre-cleared, every emotion underlined, every icon presented with the expectation that recognition itself will produce awe.
I understand the caution. A production this expensive cannot casually antagonise an audience that regards the story as sacred. But art created under fear of interpretation becomes illustration. The classics endure because each generation asks them fresh questions. A film that merely confirms what viewers already believe may be devotional, but drama requires friction.
Ranbir Kapoor’s challenge is not looking noble. Hindi cinema has costume departments for that. The challenge is making virtue dramatically alive rather than statically photogenic. Sai Pallavi’s challenge is greater: Sita must possess an interior life beyond suffering beautifully. Yash, as Ravana, must resist the expensive temptation to turn complexity into entrance music.
The star system hides behind cultural duty
Bollywood is fond of presenting major mythological projects as national service. Conveniently, national service comes with the industry’s most bankable stars, vast marketing commitments and sequel architecture. I do not object to stars. I object to the piety that makes commercial choices sound morally unchallengeable.
A lesser-known actor might have allowed Rama to arrive without accumulated celebrity baggage. But the industry does not trust story alone, even when the story is the most recognisable in India. It wants mythology, spectacle and familiar faces—a stack of insurance policies tall enough to block the view.
This is where nepotism and star culture intersect without being identical. Ranbir Kapoor is talented; denying that is silly. Yet Bollywood repeatedly reserves its largest opportunities for people already certified by lineage or market position, then cites the opportunity’s pressure as the reason only an insider or established star could bear it. The circle closes neatly.
Spectacle has become a defensive language
Indian cinema learned useful lessons from the pan-India blockbuster: audiences will embrace conviction, regional texture and unapologetic scale. It learned a less useful lesson too—that every emotion improves when surrounded by digital weather and a swelling score.
The best older mythological cinema understood stillness. A face, a pause and a moral choice could carry cosmic weight. Here, technology frequently announces significance before the actors earn it. Visual-effects teams have done formidable labour, but a perfectly rendered kingdom does not automatically become a lived-in world.
I am not asking for theatrical austerity. I am asking for variation. Grandeur works when intimacy gives it contrast. If every scene arrives as a monument, the film becomes a guided tour of monuments.
The adaptation question
Any Ramayana adaptation must choose among traditions. Pretending otherwise merely conceals the choice. Which episodes receive psychological attention? Which ambiguities are softened? Whose viewpoint controls exile, loyalty, war and duty? These are not hostile academic questions; they are the substance of adaptation.
The film’s safest instinct is to convert complexity into universally consumable virtue. That will please many viewers, and I do not begrudge their pleasure. But cinema can honour faith without flattening human conflict. Indeed, treating revered figures as capable of thought rather than only iconography is a deeper form of respect.
The two-part structure should provide room. Yet franchises often use room to expand incident rather than deepen character. A longer runtime can still hurry emotionally if scenes exist mainly to deliver familiar milestones.
What the film gets right
I should acknowledge the achievement. A Hindi epic made with technical ambition can employ craftspeople, create production knowledge and expand international curiosity about Indian storytelling. The film’s confidence matters in a global market where Western studios repeatedly recycle their own myths without apology.
There are passages where performance cuts through machinery and the familiar story regains ache. Those moments reveal the film I wanted: one less anxious about magnificence, more attentive to the moral cost carried by individuals.
Audience response will decide the commercial verdict. It should not decide the critical one. Box-office success proves that people bought tickets, not that every adaptation choice was wise. Bollywood too often converts revenue into retrospective artistic immunity.
Our epics deserve risk
I am glad Indian cinema can mount a production this large. I wish it trusted the source enough to take greater interpretive risks. The Ramayana has been sung, danced, televised, painted, disputed and localised. It does not need cinema to preserve it in amber.
My fear is that success will teach the industry to raid mythology for pre-awareness while avoiding the imagination that kept mythology alive. We will get bigger weapons, longer universes and more solemn posters. We may get fewer genuine perspectives.
Ramayana: Part 1 is a formidable object and a cautious work of art. I admire the labour. I resist the assumption that expense is courage. The classics do not ask us merely to recognise them. They ask us to meet them anew.
