A year after Animal's release, here’s what stayed with us!

Inspite of being released a year ago, none of us have reeled from Animal nor have we stopped discussing it; here’s why!

There have been many movies in pop culture that have stayed with us for decades. But they became cult classics because they still seem relevant and bring us the same joy. Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal showed us the other extreme end of this spectrum! It showed us how films can trend all over social media and break box office records all over the country for all the wrong reasons. Tons of women came out of the theater feeling disappointed, disgusted and wanting to delete the film for their memory. If you take a step back and think about it, we’ve actually discussed this film way more than we should have! It’s been a year and the conversation still stands about whether this was a film that should have been made or not! Regardless, what we know for sure is that there are many lessons to be learned and do better the next time we show any kind of violence on-screen. 

Also Read: I Want To Talk review: Abhishek Bachchan is the highlight of this silent but impactful film!

Here’s everything from Animal that still makes it to our conversations even today!

If you’re showing violence and misogyny against women, don’t glorify the character who’s doing it

While it’s important to show dark characters and all sorts of stories should exist in the world, how you approach the narrative still plays a crucial role. Instead of showing Ranvijay as the demon that he was, he was glorified and celebrated for the havoc that he created and that is the most alarming thing that Sandeep Reddy Vanga's done.

Your male characters can be larger than life but learn to write your female characters better

A constant element in Sandeep Reddy Vanga films is that while he gives the meatiest of parts to his hero, there’s very little to do for the heroine. In fact, forget the screen time, there’s such little respect the character gets throughout the film. Geetanjali served as nothing more than a shadow to Ranvijay who verbally, mentally and emotionally kept abusing her, and her job was to just take it. Maybe if Vanga and many other filmmakers today wrote their female characters just as wholeheartedly as they write their heroes, Animal would be a completely different story.

It’ll be shown as an example of why therapy is important

Ranvijay was violent and aggressive on the surface but the more you watch him, you realize how deeply disturbed he was. He craved his father’s attention all his life and never got it. His father believed in tough love and not paying attention to his son’s needs and as a result of that he created an emotionally stunted monster. There was a point where his father himself was so scared of Ranvijay and what he was capable of doing. With all the daddy issues that he had, he severely needed therapy but of course a real 'man' would never talk about mental health, right?

Movies are a reflection of society and vice versa

It’s true that movies show what’s happening around us but this also goes both ways. In a country like India where Bollywood is taken so seriously and has been impressionable for decades, making a movie so heavily reliant on violence is a rather risky move. And come to think of it, looking at the reaction of the masses for this film, it feels like India as a whole is not ready for films that have domestic violence at all. Bollywood has repetitively shown violence for decades and normalized it so much that most people have become numb to watching it on-screen and actually find it okay to practice something like this. The amount of young teenagers watching this film and enjoying it was insane and it’ll be heartbreaking to know if they felt it’s okay to treat a woman like that.

As messed up as this movie was, Ranbir Kapoor’s performance was so good that he made us all hate him with passion

The story, the direction of it all was misogynistic and should be called out for all the right reasons but we also cannot deny that Ranbir Kapoor gave a phenomenal performance in this one! He fully immersed himself into the role, to the point where we all saw him as one with the character and hated him with all our heart. Ranbir has always kept a very composed image of himself in the media and hence to see him rebel and burst out like that was a shocker for us all! If the movie is still talked about for all the wrong things it glorified, Ranbir’s performance is also one thing that people haven’t forgotten.

The songs and the BGM were probably the only bearable thing about this film

Jamal Kudu and Satranga are still widely played at parties or used for Reel edits on Instagram. They're probably the only good thing about the film that stayed with us a year later as well.

It’s a polarising film and has been responsible for some heated debates even today

Remember when the film initially came out and everyone who was praising it was questioned or cancelled? Well, one year later, nothing much has changed. Animal has somehow become the standard benchmark for filtering out red flags who liked the film and it is still talked about in many roundtables and discussions where people have polar opposite opinions on it. Some topics have a never ending conclusion to them and let’s just say this film is one of them!

Have you watched the film? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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