Bajrangbali (1976) User Reviews (2)

Excellent rendering of the Ramayan story through the eyes of Hanuman

[Ambalika · 10/10 · 2 February 2006]

The movie starts out with Hanuman having received his tuition of the Sun God and Hanuman asking the Sun God for a return-favour so as to pay him back for the tuition he received. The Sun God being estranged with his own son, Shani (Saturn), asks Hanuman to bring him out of the continuous anger and into 'the light'. This is followed by some traditional knocking down of doors etc which leads to a fight and finally with the son coming to his senses due to Hanuman 'knocking' some sense into him.

After this, Hanuman is sent back to earth so as to visit his mother, Anjani and he's duty-bound by his mother to go help Sugriv (the monkey-king) whose wive has been stolen by his bigger brother Bali (with a little help from Raven).

On his way to find help defeating Bali, he's instilled with the love of Ram like he was in his youth (when he was a animal-friend of Ram) by the whole of the Devic folks living in the Himalayas's with Shiva and Parvati. The wonderful song: Bhajle Ram inspires Hanuman to seek out Ram again and soon he encounters them in.

After deceiving them first in his guise as a rishi he gages their insight in the dharmic laws and afterwards prostrates himself to the endless glory of Ram. The story takes a faster pace from this moment on, where the role of Bajrangbali is reduced to that of Ram's messenger and fiercest fighter and Ram takes the main-spotlights away from Bajrangbali. It's only at the specific parts after the Lanka-kand, that Bajrangbali, gets his own 'mischievous' nature back and performs his 'lila'.

Things missed in this 180 minute marvel are the stories about the patal-encounters which are recounted in yet another movie (title: Hanuman Vijay) where his relations with Makri, Makar-Dhwaj and all the others are given more depth.

All in all a wonderful tribute to Hanuman and a wonderful starter for anyone interested in Hindu mythology and specifically the 'lila' of Hanuman.

Interminable

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 8 December 2016]

I'm all for watching Indian fantasy films, and I find it a pity that they're so hard to get hold of in the west; I've only seen or had access to a couple in all my decades of movie watching. Sadly, while LORD HANUMAN has plenty of cheesy potential in its 1970s-era story of the monkey god and his trials and tribulations among the celestial entities, at three hours this film is nothing more than interminable.

I'm always interested in the parallels between this kind of Hindu mythology and that seen in China, particularly the inimitable Monkey seen in the classic JOURNEY TO THE WEST; surely the two characters of Monkey and Hanuman are one and the same? In any case, LORD HANUMAN is a cheesy, low budget fantasy piece padded out with endless musical numbers and endless shouted dialogue.

The whole story feels episodic and repetitive, with the main character going from one situation to the next. The silly action scenes seem to have been filmed with kids in mind and the adventures feature Hanuman having people pull on his tail and set it on fire - it's that kind of production and I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to be laughing along with it or not. The acting is exaggerated and the whole film has a surreal feel to it. Unfortunately the pacing is very slow and my energy flagged about an hour in, making it a real slog to get to the end. I also found the main character's prosthetics oddly creepy.