The King of Bollywood lending his voice to the cub who would be Lion King has undeniably special resonance. It lifts the Hindi dub of Mufasa: The Lion King, the Disney film playing nationwide also in the original English, Telugu and Tamil, to a level that would have been way beyond the power of any other actor.
No matter how deep your scepticism is as you get into the theatre to watch the lions and other animals speak and sing in Hindi, it melts away once Shah Rukh Khan’s voice takes effect and grows on you as the adventures of an orphan lion cub dismissed as a ghuspethiya (infiltrator) unfold in a stunningly realised animated musical.
Even as a lion, SRK’s romantic aura shines through as much in the dramatic moments in the film as in the lines of dialogues that he spouts. You can almost imagine the star exuding his trademark charisma as he makes his way through the euphoria and pitfalls of love in a story that much more than just that.
Mufasa: The Lion King, written by Jeff Nathanson and directed by Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Speak), soars on the back of a sturdy tale of family and friendship, bonding and betrayal, and humour and heft pieced together meticulously and delivered with sustained sinewy skill.
Mufasa: The Lion King, is a prequel to 2009’s The Lion King, which in term was a technologically updated remake of the 1994 traditionally animated Disney version. Its tone and texture are marked by eye-popping veracity of muscle movements and expressions. The film, as a result, bristles with immersive and kinetic energy.
One may quibble that everything that we see on the screen is too airbrushed and neat to fully evoke the chaotic vibrations of a forest where animals, many of them dangerous predators, roam free. But the technical perfection of the background visuals and the mind-boggling dynamism of the magnificently precise animation are eventually what makes Mufasa: The Lion King the memorable experience that it is.
One can hear and feel the animals breathe, snarl and grunt, and with Shah Rukh Khan leading the pack with a voice dripping wisdom and wistfulness, Mufasa: The Lion King acquires the dramatic volume and range that can fill out the depth and breadth opened up by the emotions and banter in a tale of a lost orphan cub discovering, if only reluctantly, his destiny, home, kingdom and a newly-created perch from where he is destined to roar and rule.
Early in the film, after he has been separated from his parents, a young and clueless Mufasa (in AbRam Khan’s voice), in all his wide-eyed innocence, asks: Ghar ka raasta pata hai aapko (Do you know the way back home)? Queen Eshe, the mother figure who stands in for the missing biological one, replies: Ghar ka raasta kho kar hi milta hai (To find the way back, you’ve got to get lost).
The rites-of-passage origin story of Mufasa is narrated by his wise old shaman-friend Rafiki (Makarand Deshpande) to his granddaughter Kiara, who has been left by her parents, Simba (Aryan Khan) and Nala (Neha Gargava), in the care of the voluble Pumbaa (Sanjay Mishra) and wise-cracking Timon (Shreyas Talpade). The couple has relocated in preparation for the arrival of an addition to the family.
Rafiki’s significance in the Mufasa plot is immense. He has been disowned by his own because he is different from the rest. So, when Mufasa addresses the animals when they are under imminent threat from a common enemy, he exhorts them to do what comes naturally to him – sink their differences and make common cause against advancing danger.
The tale is squarely about being hurled by fate miles away from home and then looking for a dreamland – it is called Milele, meaning forever or eternal – that is awash with the hope of harmony and everlasting peace. The search rests on Mufasa’s bonding with Taka, the son of the current King. Taka, happy to live life on his own terms, has little interest in inheriting the reins of power from his father.
It isn’t, therefore, a tussle for the throne of the Pride Lands (translated in Hindi as Gaurav Bhoomi, which obviously lacks the pun inherent in English) that threatens to drive a wedge between Mufasa and Taka, who treats the former as the brother that he always wanted, but a triangular love story that develops between the two lions and Sarabi (Mamta Gurnani), who, too, is looking for her way back home.
Jealousy and treachery rear their head and Kiros, the evil King of a pride of white lions, takes advantage of the fissure between Taka and Mufasa to eliminate the threat that Mufasa poses to his hegemony over the animal world.
As is the case with almost every Hindi version of a Hollywood flick of this nature, the dialogue is steeped in the standardised tapori street jargon that is favoured by Bollywood. It is all for a lark but much of it feels completely out of place in the setting in which The Lion King plays out. Be that as it may, it serves its purpose: it lends the film a desi quality that is bound to go down well with audiences weaned on the verbal idioms of Hindi popular cinema.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, will pull Indians to the multiplexes more than the Hindi-speaking Mufasa riffs on SRK’s screen persona. We do not see the star on screen and only hear his voice, but it is pure magic when Mufasa intones “Main Hoon Na” to the lioness he has fallen in love with. The film yanks itself away from its Hollywood moorings and embraces with its arms spread wide a la SRK the world that the star and his fans inhabit.
The Hindi dub of Mufasa: The Lion King, at first flush, represents an improbable marriage. But it is one that is made in heaven.
