First, credit where credit is due. The scale of Ramayana (the waterfalls, the forests, the palaces, the creatures)… it’s all quite decently realised. This isn’t a film you watch for three hours and fifteen minutes and come out complaining about the CG. That whole Pushpaka Vimanam sequence, especially, looked cool: the movement of the vehicle, the camera angles, the texture of Jatayu’s body, the claw slicing through Ravana’s head… But there’s a difference between giving something texture and giving it… life. Kumbakarna, for instance, looks large as a Potter troll, but his eyes and expressions feel strangely dead, no? I thought this was true of the whole film in a sense.

I felt surprisingly little throughout. Not the awe the film wanted me to feel when Ranbir Kapoor first walks in as Rama. Not the warmth when Sai Pallavi’s Sita first gazes at him. Not the sorrow when Dasaratha awkwardly collapses as Rama leaves Ayodhya. Not even the surge of feeling when Ranbir, as Rama, yells his oath to rescue Sita. And I wondered: Why was I feeling this distance?

The temptation is to blame familiarity. We have grown up with this story, watched television adaptations, heard episodes getting narrated over and over. We know who lifts the bow, who demands the exile, who kidnaps Sita. But knowing what happens needn’t necessarily diminish the pleasure of watching it happen… What does this Rama feel? What does his Sita see in him? What happens to a family when a promise becomes more important than the happiness of everyone in it? What if it causes the death of a good king?

Somewhere at the beginning, I thought director Nitesh Tiwari had a new approach. He begins the film with Ravana and his clan being treated as slaves. We see young Ravana as a boy practising music, but then, his mother, played by Shobana, humiliates and goads him towards weapons and war. There’s something compelling in that beginning: a mother’s ambitions for her son, a son turning to war to please his mother…

So, of course, Ravana goes into a frightening penance, receives boons from Brahma… But then, the film tamely switches to Ayodhya for Rama’s birth, suddenly happy to settle into a procession of familiar milestones. Rama’s training. The swayamvara. Kaikeyi’s demands. The exile. The characters existing just as tools to get us from one episode to the next. If Mandharai poisons Kaikeyi’s mind, I’d have liked to know where such bitterness comes from. If Kaikeyi moves from adoration for Rama to demanding such a terrible punishment for him, what fear has become more powerful than that affection? The film gets her to the decision required by the story. I would have rather seen the terrible process of Kaikeyi arriving there.

Something similar happens with Rakul Preet Singh’s Soorpanakha. We see her grief over her husband’s death, and later, her desire for Rama. Those feelings needn’t contradict each other; desire is perhaps an escape from grief and loneliness. But the film doesn’t help you make these connections, making Hanumanesque leaps between emotions, leaving us to imagine the connections.

This is perhaps why I was most alive when the film sat with Ravana. Yash brings investment and swagger, certainly, but he also gets something the others are rarely allowed: a mind that pulls in different directions. My favourite idea in this film is the reinterpretation of his ten heads as voices within him, voices that argue, tempt and rebuke. Here, finally, is a character whose internal life becomes part of the drama.

One of his voices rebukes him for giving up music. I loved the possibility contained in that moment. What happened to the boy with the instrument? Does he miss that life? Does his mother recognise what her ambitions have made of him? How has their relationship changed now that he has achieved what she wanted? We glimpse this softer Ravana, but get no time to really stay with him.

There are some minor choices I liked. Like Sita getting to do a bit of fighting. Like Sita questioning Ravana about the Vedas, so he can prove his assumed identity. These details give the characters something to do beyond occupying their familiar positions in the story. So it would be unfair to say the film invents nothing. But these inventions unfortunately don’t translate into richer, emotional experiences. And it’s sad because I have been convinced for a while that the beauty of our mythology lies not as much in battle and scale, but in intimate conflicts, in desire and suffering, in greed and punishment, in attachment and loss. There may be public events of great magnitude, but they often result in such private pain.

Take Rama’s commitment to honouring a promise. We understand why it makes him noble. But surely the drama lies in what that commitment costs him, in the feelings he must live through while choosing to do what he believes is right. His goodness needn’t make him emotionally inaccessible, coldly stoic. If anything, the strength required to act justly despite anger, temptation or sorrow ought to make him more moving. And his decision affects so many others. Rama leaves for the forest, but it becomes Sita’s life too, it snatches Lakshmana from his family. Their willingness needn’t make their sacrifice smaller. What does Rama feel about the people who love him accepting these hardships alongside him?

There’s a moment, presented as a love scene, when Rama talks about how Sita’s presence makes the exile almost enjoyable for him. She blushes. It’s a lovely thought, but I’d rather have experienced it: the hardship her affection eases, any small joys they find together, the fulfillment being together brings all three of them. Instead, the film rushes to the next story beat.

Ranbir seems strangely flat. It’s hard to tell what’s happening within him. This attempt to play straightfaced nobility has somehow turned into opaqueness. When he yells an oath at the end, it feels uncharacteristically loud. And it’s not like there isn’t enough time to establish Rama, considering much of the first half tracks his birth through his adulthood, marriage and banishment at such rapid pace. After interval, it suddenly remembers to slow down, like with the Vidyutjihva confrontation. But as much as the fight allows for more Yash time (and that’s always a good thing), why linger over this fight rather than the consequences of the exile? Why not create opportunities for the deity to feel more… human?

While on battle scenes, the Jatayu battle is quite the spectacle, but as the great concluding movement of this first part, I got thinking about another first-part film which ends with the death of a creature loyal to the protagonist: Dobby in Deathly Hallows 1. That film, of course, has the advantage of affection accumulated across earlier films. But the comparison just reminded me how much a scene of sacrifice depends on what we bring into it, and not the act itself. Rendering can only do so much.

Perhaps that’s what kept me at a distance throughout Ramayana. It knows these moments are important. It knows we know they are important. And it seems to think this shared knowledge is enough. It expects that the feelings are all already there and expects that scale and music will summon them, even if they aren’t earned within this film. But with any adaptation, I want to see what this specific telling has discovered within the original story: in a mother’s ambition, in a brother’s loyalty, in a wife’s companionship, in a great man’s difficult choice. This film really needed life and intimacy. And these qualities, no money can buy, not even thousands of crores.