Ranbir Kapoor’s recent release Animal is making headlines for many releases including the cast, performances, characters and the storyline. The film directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga explores the story of a toxic man who has a love hate relationship with his father. However, the film goes beyond it with its narration, subtext, cinematography and many have called out the makers for anti-muslim and Islamophobic remarks.
The film follows Ranbir Kapoor’s Vijay who does not agree with his father and when kicked out of the house only returns back after an assassination attempt is made on his father. The film’s villain turns out be Bobby Deol’s character Abrar who is shown as a savage that only wants to kill and build an empire. He is also shown taking his third wife while his other wives are still around and part of the ceremony.
It is during the wedding ceremony that Abrar gets the news of his brother’s death. To which he reacts by killing the man who delivered the message, and it is after holding a moment of silence for the death brother that Abrar heads to his wife and begins to have sex with her with a room full of people. As if that was not enough, it is revealed that Abrar’s grandfather moved to Istanbul changed his religion to Islam to marry more women and then he fell out of touch with his family.
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What set people off even more is the follow up characters. Abrar isn’t the only Muslim character in the film who turns out to have the same character traits. Towards the end of the film Abrar’s brother is also introduced. Played by Ranbir Kapoor, the character is referred to as literally, The Butcher known for his savagery and being able to kill anyone his brother commands.
The entire five-minute-long post credit scene continued to stereotype the characters. The Butcher kills of two people in his custody and proceeds to announce that he will marry his dead brother’s wife in order to take charge of the newborn children’s lives. He then proceeds to butcher the other man he had kidnapped.
Fans are not happy with the vilification of Islam and many have called out the filmmaker for promoting hate and stereotyping the character. One user wrote, “Animals movie is factually incorrect. It shows a muslim character with 2 wives, 8 children, while it could be 4 wives and many more children. Also it wrongly depicts condition for a Halala. It should be boycotted.”
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Meanwhile another added, “Why do they potray muslims bad in every bollywood movie? Telling this after watching animal.” One user called out the makers and hinted that they did it on purpose. The tweet read, “Animal is full of pro-Hindu and anti-Muslim, anti-Christian references. They knew what they were doing.”
The film literally uses, Bobby Deol’s character to justify all the stereotypes and bad things showed about the villain, his character, his religion and more. The makers could have used any other character to the villain with any other religion, there is no real reason for Abrar to be Muslim and to show him as a man with 3 wives and 8 children.
Cover artwork by Patrick Gawande/Mashable India
