ANGELS vs DEMONS

Two movies Animal and Sam Bahadurwith radically different male leads make one ask: What does heroism mean to us anymore?

- POOJA BIRAIA JAISWAL

Who is a hero? Is it someone who performs an act of valour? Or is it someone who inspires adulation in others? Opinions differ widely. A Byronic hero, for example, is a “melancholy and rebellious young man, distressed by a terrible wrong he committed in the past”. To American poet Walt Whitman, a hero is someone who does a good deed to make the world more beautiful.

But, perhaps, the definition of a hero is not as fixed as these bards believed it to be. Historian Marshall Fishwick might have been closer to the mark when he said that the hero is always a barometer to the national climate of opinion. “Every hero mirrors the time and place in which he lives,” he said. This might explain why a movie with a toxic 'alpha male' as its hero is doing significantly better than another about a decorated war hero. After all, we live in times when trolls are the most vocal 'aficionados' on most subjects, and words like 'dystopian' and 'deep fake' are the most searched words of the year.

Two movies which released on the same day (December 1) feature radically different heroes: Animal, a fictional story about Ranvijay, a man determined to avenge his father's attackers; and Sam Bahadur, inspired by the true story of India's first field marshal, Sam Manekshaw. It is telling that even before the release of the films, trade experts predicted that Animal, directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga and starring Ranbir Kapoor as Ranvijay, would earn more than Sam Bahadur, directed by Meghna Gulzar and starring Vicky Kaushal as Manekshaw.