The Jungle Book
Director: Jon Favreau
Voice cast: Neel Sethi, Bull Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyongo, Scarlett Johansson, Christopher Walken, Giancarlo Esposito
For any spectacled movie-goer, wearing those enormous IMAX 3D glasses is a battle in itself. However, a bigger problem is if you end up getting your eyes moist. And I did tear up a couple times while watching The Jungle Book. Maybe it’s the wildlife enthusiast in me, just thrilled to be transported to a once-existing forest land that has now become a fantasy. Maybe it’s the magic of computer generated imagery that invokes more emotions in us than human actors. Maybe it is actors such as Bill Murray and Ben Kingsley who breathe life into those characters. Or perhaps it is the mad rush of nostalgia that director Jon Favreau serves so well in his film that retains the spirit of both Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 book as well as the 1967 animated version.
Using CGI and motion-capture technology, Favreau, creates an immersive experience that is both realistic and fantastical. To see the jungle come alive in the first 20 minutes of the film is the most sensuous experience I’ve had in the movies of late.
Favreau’s film broadly follows the graph of the original stories – deviating slightly. We are thrown into the middle of the action – literally – as we see Mowgli, with his mop of thick, black hair and a loincloth, gliding from tree to tree. Brought up in a pack of wolves since he was an infant, the man-cub has grown into a boy who has got a hang of the jungle. And even the jungle has its rules. When all the species come together at the river during the dry summer to drink water, no one preys on the other. Not even Shere Khan, the most feared beast in the forest and the main antagonist . But unlike others, the Royal Bengal Tiger doesn’t see Mowgli as one of them. He wants to kill him. The rest of the story is how Mowgli survives the wrath of Khan and manages to stay in the forest with the help of friends such as Bagheera (Kingsley), the Black Panther, Baloo (Murray), the bear, Raksha (Nyongo), the mother wolf and Akela (Esposito), leader of the pack. The technical marvel aside, it’s these characters that are the soul of the film.
Johansson in a brief role makes for a hypnotic, mythical Kaa. Nyongo brings warmth and fierceness of a surrogate mother protecting her cub. Elba breathes fire as Khan, who is blinded, literally in one eye, by his hatred for human beings. He may be the evil force in the film, but he lends a certain dignity to it. Just like Khan’s being blind in one eye, The Jungle Book makes another alteration in the form of King Louis.
An orangutan in the original, here he is a Gigantopithecus, a giant ape three times larger, that lives in the dark chambers of an abandoned temple. A smooth-talking manipulator who offers Mowgli protection from Khan in exchange for the ‘Red Flower’, Walken is perfect. The bright-eyed debutant Neel Sethi, with his mix of innocence and vulnerability, feels just right as the boy who has made the jungle his home. But it’s Murray and Kingsley who steal the show. Murray brings a cheery humour to the laidback, easy-going Baloo. Kingsley is just fantastic. A fatherly figure to Mowgli, his concerns for his safety reflects the cynicism of a war veteran.
Favreau brings a certain believability in this live action rendering of the story. The characters are not ‘Disney cute’ and their interactions are based on the universal theme of survival.
The film is not without its flaws. The reimagining is only visually; perhaps we can look forward to the Jungle Book: Origins that comes out next year for that. Thematically, it doesn’t give it a new direction. What makes The Jungle Book enduring in our collective consciousness is that it is an outlet to our eternal fantasy to live in the wild. The film, painted in mystical shades, succeeds in invoking this deep, primal core in all of us.
SANKHAYAN GHOSH
