How Brahmāstra became the antithesis to everything it was meant to be.
Eight years ago, as I watched an interview of Ayan Mukerji post the mammoth success of his sophomore film, Yeh Jawaani Deewani, I was quite taken by a throwaway comment he made regarding the direction he saw his career heading in back then. He said he wanted to make the Star Wars of India.
The statement stayed with me, particularly because I thought here was a new hope to actually begin to bridge the gap between the fluff of mainstream Indian cinema and western high-concept storytelling. And who better to do it than Dharma’s blue-eyed boy? On a hot streak and backed by Karan Johar’s plentiful resources, if there ever was a chance to take a stab at making a proper fantasy film in India, Ayan Mukerji was probably it. I could see our collective pipe dream for a massive Indian IP finally coming true.
Cut to: 2022. A painfully prolonged gestation period, the wedding of its lead cast, and an entire pandemic later, we get Brahmāstra: Part One – Shiva.
And it’s the absolute antithesis of everything I expected it to be.
For a film that swears by its high-concept flights of fantasy and audacious scope, it’s curious how deeply unimaginative and intellectually empty Brahmāstra really is. A named character who’s a space scientist (on top of being a proponent of ancient Indian magic) is offhandedly monikered precisely that, scientist. Later, an artist is constantly referred to as artist by everyone else. And the wise old man character is called guru. You catch my drift. If you still don’t, try and guess what their pursuant killers are termed.
On the other hand, the strictly by the book hero’s journey of Shiva is also about as tepid as they come. He is called into the unknown and, following some reluctance, a single revelation makes him switch gears to execute the most underwhelming training montage you'll ever see in a motion picture. And voila! Shiva is battle-ready, all thanks to a song and some slapped-on backstory. There is no ordeal here, no entering the abyss. It’s as if Luke never went inside the cave on Dagobah and saw his own face under the Darth Vader helmet, like the Fellowship never visited the mines of Moria and encountered a Balrog. It is all just a lethargic exercise in ticking the right boxes but never attempting to tell a real story. Like a child cooking up fun dream scenarios on a lazy afternoon, not a prestige project powered by a creative throughline and planned out for the better part of a decade.
But what truly puts me off about Brahmāstra is that this astonishing dearth of fresh ideas and inventive storytelling in fact pervades all other aspects of the film as well. From the poor camerawork, which is riddled with shoddy coverage that fails to nail even a half-decent establishing shot for any key setpiece; to the bizarre editing that disconcertingly zips between extreme wides and close-ups, across one location and another, and absolutely refuses to let the audiences follow any single action beat without half a dozen intermittent cuts and inane inserts. From a technical standpoint, the finale in particular is an unbearable mess that betrays no sense of action, spatial – or even logical – continuity.
And then there’s the dialogue. The atrociously godawful unhinged cringe of Hussain Dalal’s verbal turd-hurtling. For the first few minutes I was convinced I was watching a Hindi dub, of what they now like to call a ‘pan-Indian film’, rather than an actual Hindi movie where Shah Rukh Khan addresses his attackers by animal names based on their physical attributes, like an unfunny playground bully. The quick one is christened cheetah and the burly one rhinoceros (because elephants are apparently nice).
For Ayan Mukerji to begin from the lofty endeavors of mythmaking and worldbuilding, even invoking the good name of James Cameron on his press tour, and end at the pitiful nadir of writing his female lead as an exposition-instigation device is remarkably telling of how poorly his vision for Brahmāstra has unraveled. And for that female lead to be played by Alia Bhatt of all people – who is literally told she’s merely meant to press the buttons that make her hero turn super – is especially damning. Her character’s sole contribution to Brahmāstra is relegated to engaging in expository banter with Shiva, to the extent that she’s conspicuously inserted in the middle of a raging inferno just so they could explain the mechanics of the climactic showdown to each other (and us, of course). Even her name, Isha, is in service to the leading man, as it complements Shiva. Indeed, Brahmāstra is only the latest and most unabashedly insincere instalment in Ranbir Kapoor’s “help me help myself” Manchild Cinematic Universe.
What’s even more surprising, however, is that Ayan hasn’t been half-bad at writing compelling modern characters in the past. From Aisha to Aditi, from Avi to Bunny, he manages to eke out emotion and honesty from even the most frivolous of SoBo fops. But that’s not the case here. With Brahmāstra he struggles to create even one interesting character amid a roster of awkward plot drivers. From cartoonish villains to a couple of Gully Boy rejects, they all appear about as well thought-out as the tropey nicknames some of them come up with.
Yet, the cardinal sin that Ayan commits in mounting Brahmāstra as a veritable franchise spinner is not in his stunted vision but borrowed voice. In a world where Indian audiences have been long exposed to all of his massy influences, he certainly needs to do better than simply repurpose them into a barebones story carrying the patina of Indian mythos. From a premise riffing on The Boy Who Lived (more like the Boy Who Was On Fire) to visual cues from a number of MCU titles, Brahmāstra is a pop culture pastiche that hinges on a twist from 1980. This is more Drona: Redux than the franchise that was promised.
Credit where it’s due, though. Brahmāstra's visual effects do look solid and lightyears ahead of anything ever attempted domestically. Employing the services of some of the world’s foremost visual effects artists over at DNEG, here’s something that money and time can certainly buy a movie. But while the execution of the effects sure is top notch, they are flawed on a more fundamental level with every battle being more a light and sound spectacle than a cogently plotted action sequence. The unbridled overuse of visual effects to illustrate Brahmāstra's Vedic wizardry certainly pulls you out of the whole experience and once again, ties into the impaired vision for this film. There seem to be more particle effects fired throughout the film than mentions of agni, astra, and light combined, which is saying a lot. And from the tiniest of embers to the gigantic fissures of light at the climactic explosion of the brahmāstra's true power, the effects seem polished to a fault. But when you spend more than 400 crores building your visual spectacle, I doubt subtlety would be your weapon of choice.
But I would have gladly written off everything I’ve said up to this point and walked out of that theater basking in the film’s incredible feat of achievement-through-existence alone. I would have happily supported Brahmāstra in success or failure, and sang praises for the filmmakers’ commitment and resolve to create an unprecedented movie event in all of Indian cinema. That is if only the filmmakers too would have shown the same faith in us – the fans, rather than resorting to the desperate appeasement of an unseen mob’s empty threats and brigand whims in a bid to safeguard their film’s smooth release.
A few years after his initial Star Wars admission, it was reported in the media that Ayan Mukerji’s ambitious third project would be a superhero film titled Dragon. Once again, my excitement was piqued. There was news that it would follow an ordinary joe who discovers he has fire-based powers. It was years later that the film was officially announced as Brahmāstra. And even later still when its first trailer dropped, doubling down on a more mythologically-rooted narrative. And there is absolutely nothing wrong in basing an Indian fantasy film in Hindu mythology. That premise writes itself. It was when I watched the film that the word finally popped up again and ticked my Peter Tingle. Dragon – that’s the moniker Amitabh’s Guru gives Shiva (and the only decent one in the film). Even an old totem of great significance for Shiva and the film’s plot has a dragon carved on it. So, why – and at which point – did the filmmakers decide to ditch the original title and rename the film from ‘Dragon: Part One – Love’ to ‘Brahmāstra: Part One – Shiva’? One can only wonder.
But despite rebranding the film on the sly and plastering Hindu iconography on every promotional material, Brahmāstra eventually found itself in the crosshairs of majoritarian purists who finally dug up a reason to trend #BoycottBrahmāstra on social media. It was an old interview where Ranbir Kapoor confessed to enjoying eating beef that did him in. And so, even as the Brahmāstra appeasement tour reached a temple in Ujjain – an unlikely stop for a movie promotion – fringe fanatics were already amassed in huge numbers to refuse them entry. It’s ironic that a film which crafted its entire marketing campaign to suit the majoritarian narrative would be attacked by the flagbearers of the very same ideology.
This incident, more than any previously, marks the proverbial rock and hard place where mainstream Bollywood finds itself today. With all the selfies and the propaganda movies, they have walked on eggshells to write themselves into a corner. And while these coordinated calls for boycotts could very well be effete threats that have little bearing on the box office, they do force filmmakers to take decisions not in favor of their original intent and creative freedoms.
And the antidote to combating this new age boycott culture? Well, it’s simple really: make your movie so goshdarn good that no one dares miss it. Ah, here’s a lesson and a prayer for Brahmāstra: Part Two.
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