Swanand Kirkire on Animal: Felt pity for women of today’s generation

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/actor-swanand-kirkire-on-ranbir-kapoors-animal-felt-pity-for-women-of-todays-generation-after-watching-the-film-13458922.html

Actor Swanand Kirkire on Ranbir Kapoor's 'Animal': 'Felt pity for women of today's generation after watching the film'

In a series of tweets on X, the actor and writer spoke about the problematic aspects of the Sandeep Reddy Vanga directorial in detail

FP Staff December 03, 2023 12:43:45 IST

Ranbir Kapoor’s Animal is doing monstrous business at the box-office and has collected over Rs 113 crore at the box-office in just two days. However, actor and writer Swanand Kirkire has a critical opinion of the film. In a series of tweets on X, the actor and writer spoke about the problematic aspects of the Sandeep Reddy Vanga directorial in detail.

He said, “Shantaram’s Aurat (In his last post, he corrected that Mehboob Khan made Aurat), Guru Dutt’s Saheb Biwi aur Ghulam, Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anupama, Shyam Benegal’s Ankur and Bhumika, Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala, Sudhir Mishra’s Main Zinda Hoon, Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish, Vikas Behal’s Queen Shoojit Sarkar’s Piku, and many such films in Indian cinema that taught me how to respect a woman, her rights and her autonomy and even after understanding everything, there are still many shortcomings in this age-old thinking. I don’t know whether I succeeded or not, but even today I am constantly trying to improve myself. All thanks to cinema.”

शांतराम की – औरत , गुरुदुत्त की – साहब बीवी और ग़ुलाम , हृषीकेश मुखर्जी की – अनुपमा , श्याम बेनेगल की अंकुर और भूमिका , केतन मेहता की मिर्च मसाला , सुधीर मिश्रा की मैं ज़िंदा हूँ , गौरी शिंदे की इंगलिश विंगलिश , बहल की क्वीन सुजीत सरकार की पीकू आदि , हिंदुस्तानी सिनेमा

— Swanand Kirkire (@swanandkirkire) December 2, 2023

He added, “But today after watching the movie Animal, I really felt pity for the women of today’s generation. Now, a new man has been prepared for you, who is more scary, who does not respect you that much and who aims to subdue you, suppress you and feels proud of himself. When you, the girls of today’s generation, were sitting in that cinema hall and applauding Rashmika, I in my mind paid tribute to every idea of ​​equality. I have come home desperate, dejected and weak!”

Kirkire concluded- “concluded, “Ranbir’s dialogue in which he defines alpha male and says that those men who not able to become alpha, they become poets to get the pleasure of all women and start making promises of breaking the moon and stars. I am a poet! I do poetry to live! Is there a place for me? A film is making a lot of money and the glorious history of Indian cinema is being embarrassed. In my understanding, this film will determine the future of Indian cinema afresh, in a different, terrible and dangerous direction.”

After watching Aamir's clip where he said "These are a few emotions that are very easy to provoke in the audience. Violence is one of these emotions and sex is another. These two emotions are most easy to provoke in a human being. The directors who aren’t that talented in creating a story and in showing emotions and creating situations, they depend heavily on violence and sex to make their films work. They think that if they show a lot of violence and sex in the film their film will be successful. I think this is a very wrong thinking. It is possible that they get success sometimes by doing this but this harms the society very much and I think it is a wrong thing to do. Those who are in the cinema are morally responsible to a certain extent. The audience, youngsters who are watching us, it definitely affects their minds. We should keep this in mind when we make a film that we don’t show something that leaves a bad impact on the new generation. I don’t say that there should be no violence in films. It depends on the subject but there are ways of showing."

I prefer the older actors and older directors at least they felt a moral responsibility, while creating a movie.

I see and reflect on this side of the argument too. Movies are just movies but a couple years ago apeing Kabir Singh was trendy. We can’t gauge the psychological/ sociological impact in numbers but his movies do minimise the woman’s agency. Vanga shows women as very devolved characters that I can see as problematic

Originally posted by: Petrichor80

After watching Aamir's clip where he said "These are a few emotions that are very easy to provoke in the audience. Violence is one of these emotions and sex is another. These two emotions are most easy to provoke in a human being. The directors who aren’t that talented in creating a story and in showing emotions and creating situations, they depend heavily on violence and sex to make their films work. They think that if they show a lot of violence and sex in the film their film will be successful. I think this is a very wrong thinking. It is possible that they get success sometimes by doing this but this harms the society very much and I think it is a wrong thing to do. Those who are in the cinema are morally responsible to a certain extent. The audience, youngsters who are watching us, it definitely affects their minds. We should keep this in mind when we make a film that we don’t show something that leaves a bad impact on the new generation. I don’t say that there should be no violence in films. It depends on the subject but there are ways of showing."

I prefer the older actors and older directors at least they felt a moral responsibility, while creating a movie.

Really amir said this after watching animal is it? Such mature thought

I never felt amir khan can be so mature in thoughts

Till 2000 or 2010 director actor and producers had some moral responsibility towards what was shown in movies and edited what could trigger impressionable young adults

I never saw sunny deol, ajay devgan or sunil shetty or even SRK promote their characters or the random killing in movies although they did violent movies in 1990s early 2000s

And earlier they usually avoided too much violence hero would never hurt enemy family parents, kids, wife, sisters etc for revenge and mostly went to jail or died in end of movie like ghayal, baazigar, badal etc nowadays its free for all for heroes

Originally posted by: myviewprem

Really amir said this after watching animal is it? Such mature thought

I never felt amir khan can be so mature in thoughts

Till 2000 or 2010 director actor and producers had some moral responsibility towards what was shown in movies and edited what could trigger impressionable young adults

I never saw sunny deol, ajay devgan or sunil shetty or even SRK promote their characters or the random killing in movies although they did violent movies in 1990s early 2000s

And earlier they usually avoided too much violence hero would never hurt enemy family parents, kids, wife, sisters etc for revenge and mostly went to jail or died in end of movie like ghayal, baazigar, badal etc nowadays its free for all for heroes

It was an old video of Aamir that went viral. https://x.com/hindu_samaaj/status/1730657035904315785?s=46&t=IGu4IMPfQ74glqp5iF7tIA Thanks to IamLuvBolly for sharing this in another topic. I am surprised by Aamir's maturity too.

I don't disagree totally with it, but in 80s and early 90s ki movies ... 90% of them use to have r*pe/harassment scenes of hero's sister, mother or wife.

Surely today they are making much better movies if we compare that

We are also getting movies like Pink or Darlings today which were uncommon 10 years ago.

Telugu cinema is infamous for poorly written women characters who have no autonomy in their love life and career.Not all. Mind you, I've seen some wonderful Telugu movies with very well fleshed women characters who take responsibility for their life.

But Kajol in DDLJ is the golden standard. The woman's fate is decided by her boyfriend and father. I've seen a couple of movies where the heroine claims that she'll marry a dog if her father commands her. Vanga just brought that aspect of Telugu cinema to Hindi cinema.

Telugu mainstream cinema always had women portrayal as weak and only for glamour or to prop up the hero.

This is extremely sad as Telugu had very strong women actors and characters till the 90s.

Unfortunately films like Arjun Reddy, Pushpa have done well in the north belt and for big hits the Bollywood actors are falling on the wagon.

Yes we need masculine heroes but we can have heroes with strong female characters too that would create a better story arc.

Heroes can be dark and anti hero you can create very dark characters but why don't you also creat strong women characters.

Originally posted by: capricornrcks

Telugu cinema is infamous for poorly written women characters who have no autonomy in their love life and career.Not all. Mind you, I've seen some wonderful Telugu movies with very well fleshed women characters who take responsibility for their life.

But Kajol in DDLJ is the golden standard. The woman's fate is decided by her boyfriend and father. I've seen a couple of movies where the heroine claims that she'll marry a dog if her father commands her. Vanga just brought that aspect of Telugu cinema to Hindi cinema.

Actually Simran's fate is - imo - decided by the faith that love is more powerful than questionable traditions. The boyfriend's decision in the first part had been to respect the girl and care for her well-being... in the second part to marry her with the father's consent to give their marriage a future including harmony with both family sides.