A Moral Review

Arjun Reddy/Kabir Singh: A right movie for the wrong audience or vice versa?

Lately a friend of mine suggested me to watch Kabir Singh, a remake of the original Telugu movie
Arjun Reddy. This movie is about a temperamental young surgeon with anger management issues
who loses his girlfriend and eventually pushes himself into a phase of self-inflicted pain, suffering
and destruction. Kind of relatable. Except that, at the end, he gets her back and everything is happy-
happy thanks to her habit of taking an evening walk in the park and the fact that it is an Indian movie
and we want everything to be happy-happy at the end. However, in real life you may not get that
lucky though. Despite the happy ending, it could not make the so-called socially conscious
professional movie critics any happy. They labeled it as misogynist, disrespectful towards women
and some even said the movie glamourizes “toxic masculinity” and hence, is dangerous to the
society. Maybe they are right.

In a country like India, where violence and oppression against women is a commonplace, such
detestation towards a movie, wherein a self-obsessed protagonist exudes a sense of ownership on
his girlfriend referring to her as his and his alone, is certainly expected and very much justified. But,
is this what Arjun Reddy really about? Elevating an arrogant asshole to heroic levels? Or is it about
the intensity of personal suffering one would go through when they are bereft of the person they
loved, truly and madly? Those who has gone through that phase of personal suffering would greatly
connect with this movie thanks to the intensity in the film the director has achieved. And those who
never loved or were never loved, this movie would be another crass demonstration of male
domination. So, is this movie, a misfit to the society or is it a movie that is misunderstood by the
society? For a debutant, the director mastered the art of compelling storytelling and is certainly an
inspiration to many aspiring filmmakers. But, I’m not here to tell you how nicely he mastered all the
24 crafts of filmmaking or how good the production values of the film are et cetera et cetera. As I
mentioned at the top, it is a moral review and not a movie review. Therefore, I want to address the
elephant in the room – moral obligations on filmmakers.

This is not the first movie that challenged the societal definitions of what is good and what isn’t nor
it will be the last. But of all the movies that came in the recent past, I couldn’t think of a movie
better than Arjun Reddy that sits so perfectly at the crossroads of morality and artistic liberties. Do
the filmmakers have a moral obligation to ensure that their movies do not have any negative
implications on the society? On the other hand, should the filmmakers look at this moral obligation
as a hindrance on their creativity? Or, should the filmmakers be held responsible for how the
audience perceive their movies?

The aim of any director is to be a great storyteller. He uses the movie as a tool to take his viewers to
the world he imagined and make them connected with the characters and situations he created. He
tries his best to bring out the emotions in those characters and make you feel for them. Now
emotions need not necessarily mean the Bollywood style happy-happy emotions. We humans are
capable of lot more than just being happy-happy all the time. Love, hate, anger, calmness, joy,
sadness, lust, greed, anger, empathy, envy, kindness and a lot more. Every emotion, if genuine,
makes up for a compelling storyline. Arjun Reddy is certainly about the love, anger, arrogance and
suffering of a flawed man. But, even those flawed men have great stories that need to be told.
Talking about flawed men, I can’t think of a more evil person than Adolf Hitler. But even he is
capable of great emotions. Be it his love for Germany or his hatred for Jews or his aggression
towards his enemies, he is indeed an emotional person and his stories are equally compelling. But
that doesn’t necessarily make him a hero. It is very much important to underline the evilness in him
and tell why it is not a good thing. So, here’s the bottom line: filmmakers have every right to make
movies about anything that inspires them, good or bad, but it is equally important to justify why it is
good or bad. Filmmakers do have that moral responsibility.

Arjun Reddy creatively rather very artistically shows the flaws and suffering of the protagonist but it
somewhat fails to underline that such characters are not definitely hundred percent perfect. When
my friend asked me to watch this movie, she put a caveat asking me not to imitate it in real life. Can
we expect every viewer to be as matured as her and look at it just as a movie and nothing more?
Directors do have an obligation to clarify on storylines that rakes up such questions. Moreover, it
does not stop only with filmmakers. Authors, editors, reporters, journalists, politicians and even we
as individuals on social media have an obligation to take a stand on such morally conflicting
circumstances. And we need to take that stand in the best interest of the society. After all, we are a
part of that society.

- Shiva Rao
9th of July’ 19