Addressing The Animal In The Room

Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Ranbir Kapoor-starrer has again raked up conversations around the portrayal of problematic characters as well as violence on screen

- Ananya Ghosh

Plot: The film is the story of a young man who is both psychotically violent and obsessively in love with his father, who banishes him abroad because of his anger issues. Years later he comes back to India to exact revenge from people responsible for his father’s death.

“I believe that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” — Joyce Carol Oates

It seems, Sandeep Reddy Vanga has bridged that gap between art and mass entertainment! There is no denying the fact that his Animal has definitely provoked a large chunk of the population. Breaking the concept of hero versus villain stories he drops a movie about a villain and an ultra-villain. Here nothing is black and white – black is a rainbow and the rare patches of white are spattered with blood red.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

The film has branded its protagonist as ‘Animal’. And Vanga boy never promised you a civilized/domesticated animal. His Animal is a raw, uncouth brute force of nature that is high on blood and gore and low on softer emotions like empathy and kindness. He is supposed to be odious. Just like the Joker or Tony Montana, he is written as an unhinged character.