Why Folktales Should Fuel more Stories

It’s so rare that a story, in of itself, is enticing enough, convincing enough, entrancing enough, to exceed all other failures of a film. It’s difficult to write a story- I can tell you from experience. It’s so difficult to write a moral conundrum, a dilemma that leaves the viewer with their head scratching, a question with no true answer. The surprising film Vikram Vedha, an Indian film, presented me with such a tale.

Read more: Why Folktales Should Fuel more Stories

An Atypical Film

Typically, I talk about a movie’s soundtrack, its cinematography, its purpose. In this case, the story itself trumps all else. The reason I believe this to be the case falls back on cultural folklore, in the form of the Indian tale of Vikram Betal. Though first things first, I will admit, this 2022 mainline Bollywood film was based on a 2017 Tamil-language version. The soundtrack, and its most enticing track, stem from this film.

There’s nuances here that American audiences won’t understand. The first is that the story is based on an Indian myth, and the other is based in the Indian cultural and political understanding of the concept of an encounter. An encounter, as I know it, is a law enforcement right to execute criminals during a law enforcement operation, with the protection of the law, given certain restrictions.

The first element that will likely escape typical American audiences is the Indian story of a righteous king being charged with freeing a local town of its ghoul. The ghoul, in the body of a corpse, challenges the king: listen to my stories without a word, or his task would fail. The twist is that when the ghoul asks the king a question, he must answer, or the ghoul will kill him. As a generosity, the ghoul only asks a question in the form of a moral riddle at the end of his tale. The complete story, told by Wikipedia, is slightly different from the story my mother told me, but the core remains.

The film Vikram Vedha draws from this folklore to tell a modern tale of cop and robber, of the deliverer of justice, and the receiver of it. The cop, purveyor of encounters, is challenged by a criminal to face his idea of justice and fairness by recounting various tales of the criminal’s past.

The criminal is played by our favorite Indian nepo baby, Hrithik Roshan, who I dug into during my self-indulgent review of War. The quote-unquote protagonist, played by fellow nepo baby, Saif Ali Khan, plays the role of the cop. While the film toys with the idea of Indian police being morally corrupt, the protagonist remains the only honest cop- except… he’s not really. 

Questions to by Answered

The opening of the film relays Khan’s pivotal encounter, where he frames the victims for having started the gunfight. He wipes prints, places a gun in the hand of a victim, and shoots a fellow cop, with consent, to sell the story that the first shots were not fired by the police. It struck me as… aptly put… icky.

This emotion was played by the film against the audience’s perceptions. If someone thought that, “yeah, fuck criminals, shoot them!” was correct, then, well, the film proves you wrong. Through the film, the victims are proven to be innocent. If you thought, “hey, cops should not kill people”, then, hey the film proved you right!

The movie Vikram Vedha is told through four stories, the final of which culminates in the overarching tale’s moral dilemma. I thoroughly enjoyed that the film asked these questions, and pitted Indian police as a potential antagonist, especially in 2022 India’s ultra-nationalist political landscape. In fact, the overarching story is left unresolved, and the film ends without telling us the resolution of this tale, in turn leaving us with deciding or predicting its ending.

As far as Indian movies go, Vikram Vedha was exemplary. The soundtrack, or at least some of its tracks, are entering my OST playlist. The cinematography, at least in some scenes, was goosebump-inducing. The acting by Roshan was irritatingly good. The action was meh. But the story, and especially in a cultural context, was ridiculously well-thought out.

I thoroughly enjoyed Vikram Vedha, but I understand that for ultra-nationalists, it may raise questions, and for non-Indians, the subtext may be lost on them (despite the animated prologue). That said, given its ‘bang-bang’, ‘guns are cool’ shrinkwrap for mass-audience appeal, I rate this film

GOOD

I watched Vikram Vedha on Tubi, of all platforms, and I don’t regret it.

Wondering how my rating system works? Let me explain!