Some thoughts on Animal

Another terrible and toxic entry in the Vanga Boys Universe

Animal is a bizarre and impotent concoction of hyper-stylised violence and never-ending misogyny. Which is ironic, considering how much the lead character likes to brag about his sexual prowess and virility. Sandeep Reddy Vanga is so obsessed with cranking up all the worst instincts of Kabir Singh to eleven that he forgets to treat this film like a film. At 200-odd minutes, it is an overindulgent mess. At the outset, the film is a revenge drama where a son sets out to avenge a life-threatening attack on his father. What follows is a series of barely coherent, vaguely connected sequences which move back and forth in time. The film opens with an old Ranvijay Singh (Ranbir Kapoor) telling a vulgar parable with suggestive gestures to his crotch, to the people in his office at Swastika Steel. Seems like the director was trying to send out a message to his detractors from last time around. That first scene sets the tone for the juvenile approach to filmmaking that is present throughout. It has no connection with the rest of the film. Dig a little deeper, and it all comes down to daddy issues. There’s an African proverb- A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. Ranvijay grows up desperate for his father’s Balbir’s (Anil Kapoor) validation and that desire manifests itself in extremely violent and sociopathic ways.

But it is hard to root for his character or even empathise with him. In the beginning, one might enjoy the unhinged nature of his antics. It brings some semblance of excitement to the proceedings. But that shtick gets old very quickly. It is hard to romanticise anything that he does. The man’s idea of flirting is complimenting a woman on a pelvis big enough to accommodate healthy babies. And what’s worse is that it works. Geetanjali (Rashmika Mandanna) breaks off her engagement and elopes with him. In a K3G-esque manner, they go to his father who does not acknowledge them, following which they leave for USA. Only to return 8 years later when Balbir Singh is shot by two unknown assailants. The film also ends in a Bizarro version of K3G-kinda conversation where both father and son berate each other for not reaching out first. Once he’s back, Ranvijay takes on the responsibility of avenging his father’s death and declares on national television that he’ll slice the throat of the man responsible for the attack. While raising his hands in a quasi-Nazi salute with a Swastika behind him. Is Sandeep Reddy Vanga trying to draw a parallel between his vigilantism and Neo-Nazism? One could make that argument but that will be giving the director too much credit.

There are some good moments. The long action set piece before the interval makes for compelling viewing. It can be broken into three distinct sequences. In an Oldboy-inspired sequence, Ranbir Kapoor chops and hacks his way through tens of men with an axe with Arjan Vailly playing in the background. Oddly enough, the song is being sung by bodyguards. It would have more sense to have it playing in the background. The sequence is derivative but is elevated by the background music. It is bookended by two other sequences, which are fun enough but definitely could have used some tighter editing. Hundreds of men are killed by a machine gun mounted on a vehicle. John Wick-like numbers. Not the same excitement but these blood-soaked interludes are created with precision. The background score is pretty decent. And Bobby Deol provides the much needed animalistic vibe to the proceedings. In what is essentially a cameo, Deol comes across as genuinely feral and menacing. The final hand-to-hand combat between him and Ranbir Kapoor is impressive and well-shot. However, after sitting for three hours, the final scene seems rushed and hastily done.

Now for the bad bits. Which is pretty much the entire film. It’s a vile, vile film. Hard to know where to begin. It revels in its misogyny and senselessness. At one point in the film, Ranvijay orders a Rolls Royce the colour of his lover’s hickeys and asks the people responsible to take photos in good lighting so that they get it right. The same lover is asked to lick his boots moments later. Vanga doesn’t get the love part right either. His idea of course-correction for the infamous slapping scene from Kabir Singh is to make the woman slap the man. Never mind the fact that in the same scene, the man brings a rifle in the bedroom and shoots the wall.

The female characters are barely fleshed out. None of them would pass the Bechdel test. All the conversations revolve around the men in their lives. Geetanjali has no identity outside of her husband. She praises him for taking care of him without complaining while she was pregnant. But that is his job? And that is somehow supposed to make up for his otherwise disgusting behaviour. Then again, this is a woman whose reasonably placed anger is assuaged by making her listen to the audio first time she and her husband had sex. Even very minor characters such as Abrar’s (Bobby Deol) wives ask each other why they married Abrar at his third wedding. One would expect such conversations to be already out of the way. In the same scene, Abrar decides to have sex with his latest wife in the wedding hall after finding out that his brother died, and killing the messenger. What kinda coping mechanism is this?

Vanga has some really misplaced ideas about what constitutes masculinity. Ranvijay making fun of his wife for changing four sanitary pads a month when this alpha male with a punctured lung, failing heart, and a catheter is changing fifty pads daily is one of those ideas. Or him walking around naked in the compound of his palatial mansion to celebrate his healthy return from the hospital. Fittingly enough, this was the moment that an infant started wailing in the theatre I was in. Summed up my feelings about the scene and the film in general. And there’s a lot of talk about underwear and hard-ons and groins. The crass obsession with the phallic is present throughout. It is odd that some of these pointlessly vulgar and off-putting dialogues were not edited out in the interest of time, if nothing else.

The plot of the film is already very thin, even with its supposedly clever twists. It does not merit the long runtime. Whatever charm (and I use the word loosely) it may have had in the first half completely evaporates in the second. The film spends a painful amount of time on Vijay’s recovery from the hospital and on his catheter. Goes back to the film’s obsession with the area below-the-belt. For all the provocation and baiting, it is a dull film. And draining. I was squirming in my seat waiting for it to finish. After a point, the director probably gave up on coherence and decided to incorporate all kinds of haphazard scenes and ideas to pad up the plot. And how did any of Vijay’s violent antics not have any legal ramifications? The man killed hundreds of people. One of these incidents took place in full public view, in a conference. Maybe like the song Arjan Vailly points out, vi thalla rakha police sarkari (he keeps the police and govt beneath his feet).

The whole point of the film seems to be to trigger and provoke people. It is an empty film otherwise with nothing to say. Vanga acts like a petulant teenager desperate for attention, both from his admirers and detractors. The worst part is that he will succeed.