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(RNS) — As the release date for the “Ramayana: Part 1″ movie approached, Khonika Gope grew more eager to watch it with her 7-year-old daughter. “I was excited that people would know that this is the soul of India: the message that good will defeat evil,” she said.
An immigrant from Bangladesh now living in Oregon, Gope, like many Hindus, grew up hearing the ancient stories of the Ramayana and using their lessons as a moral guide. So as she and her daughter settled into the theater for the three-hour, 15-minute screening, she had high hopes.
The movie, part one of a $500 million two-part series that its creators said aims to bring the Indian epic to a global audience, features ample computer-generated imagery and an exhaustive string of fight scenes. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari and starring Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi, Ravi Dubey and Yash, this adaptation of “Ramayana” is the most expensive film production in the history of Indian cinema.
In its first week, the movie grossed almost $100 million worldwide, setting records for the biggest global debut for an Indian movie and achieving the biggest single-day viewership for an Indian film overseas.
But Gope and some other Hindus left the theater disappointed that the original premise had been distorted. The demon Ravana, who is meant to epitomize evil, was portrayed as more of a hero, she said. Online, reviewers echoed the sentiment, dubbing the movie the “Ravayana.”
“If you mess up the core message,” said Gope, “then it’s just like a Godzilla story without a soul.”
The “Ramayana” is an epic poem composed by the sage Valmiki around 750 BCE. In a story sacred to Hindus, the epic follows Ram, who is the eldest prince of the ancient city of Ayodhya, the seventh avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu and the ideal king, ideal husband and ideal devotee.
Over the course of the epic, Ram is sent into exile by his stepmother, and while he is living in the forest, the demon Ravana abducts his wife, Sita. Ram and his brother travel to Ravan’s kingdom of Lanka to rescue Sita and then return to Ayodhya. Throughout the epic, Ram embodies the principles of ‘dharma,’ the Hindu concept of moral law or righteousness.
The Valmiki “Ramayana” alludes to its own timeless power, including a Sanskrit verse roughly translated to “As long as the mountains stand tall and the rivers continue to flow across this sacred earth, the divine story of the Ramayana shall endure in the hearts of humankind.”
The Ramayana is omnipresent in Indian culture. Indian scholar AK Ramanujan famously wrote that, “In India and Southeast Asia, no one ever reads the “Ramayana” or the “Mahabharata” for the first time. The stories are there, ‘always already.’”
“It’s a story that’s been retold so many different times in different languages, in different regions, in different religious traditions and through different mediums,” said Arun Brahmbhatt, a professor of Hindu studies who teaches a class on the “Ramayana” at Syracuse University. “It’s told in painting. It’s told in performance traditions. It’s told in dance. You can see the story on temple walls.”
Brahmbhatt added that there are Jain, Buddhist and Muslim retellings of the “Ramayana.” Each version of the story portrays different characters, moments, scenes and decisions, Brahmbhatt said. As an example, he explained that the Valmiki “Ramayana” does not include Ram’s brother, Lakshman, drawing a line of protection for Sita, whereas that motif is deeply embedded into Hindu consciousness.
In this blockbuster retelling of the “Ramayana,” Tiwari and producer Namit Malhotra said they wanted to bring the epic to a global audience, creating cuts for an Indian audience and an international one. They used VFX and CGI to bring scenes of armies, ancient palaces and nonhuman characters to life, which some viewers criticized as too heavy-handed, drowning out the moral teachings of the epic with their attention-grabbing presence.
“It’s all about emotions,” Tiwari said in a prerelease interview. “We had to strike a perfect balance between emotions and the grandeur with which we were trying to tell the story. The technology, the VFX, or the grandeur — everything has been used as a tool to enhance the emotions.”
In addition to the dramatic visual effects, Gope opined that the demon Ravana was portrayed as a hero in a manner unfaithful to the Valmiki “Ramayana,” referring to scenes where Ravana frees his people, the asuras, from slavery, promises his kingdom the same luxuries he enjoys as king and defends a slave girl being harassed by his brother-in-law.
But Brahmbhatt said there is a historical precedent for emphasizing the complexity of Ravana’s character rather than flatly portraying him as an evil villain. In the Valmiki “Ramayana,” Ravana is presented as a good king, ruling over a prosperous kingdom where the Vedas are regularly chanted.
“It’s up to people to decide whether they think a change that a reteller makes is too far,” Brahmbhatt said.
“As a scholar and teacher of the ‘Ramayana,’” he added, “I think any version of the text that is going to get people to interact with the narrative is a good thing.”