Ram Gopal Varma on people calling 'Animal' misogynistic and violent - "I find it funny..."

As we predicted, Animal has turned out to become not only one of the most polarising films of 2023 but one of the most controversial and talked-about movies of all time, While the numbers are doing the talking inspite of a general media uproar, more and more people have come forward to either entirely diss the film or come in support of it.

Celebrated director Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) is the latest one to join the wagon of the latter. The man has been consistently praising the Ranbir Kapoor-led film and he recently shared his review on X (formerly Twitter) as well. This obviously led to yet another conversation and people began to mark him and remind him as well about how the film has glorified toxic masculinity.

Recently, in an interview with Connect FM Canada, RGV said, That’s the nature of a violent film and the director has been saying that from the beginning. ‘You will see what violence is,’ he had said. So you are pre-warned even in trailer and interviews. And then to call it violent, I find it funny. See the whole point of a film is to startle you and to provoke an emotion. Shock is one of the emotions. Many times I was surprised in the film, but it can be an unpleasant surprise to some people and when sudden shock comes, it disorients them.”

As one would know, that Ranbir Kapoor has a nude scene in the film as well, albeit blurred and mostly left to imagination. RGV marked that as a 'rare achievement' as he said, “An actor’s biggest worry is that he won’t be able to see himself in a scene and his biggest fear is how it will come across to the audience. What if the audience don’t like it and laugh at it? The kind of challenges Sandeep threw at Ranbir including the naked scene when he walks in front of his family and staff. The conviction with which Ranbir did that scene, he absolutely believed in the character. When he is in the frame, it looks like he is living the character. That’s a very rare achievement.”

RGV did mention that the only scene where he felt the disconnect was when Kapoor's character asks Tripti Dimri's character to lick his feet.

Animal continues to evoke a huge debate amongst so many people but it is also true that it is breaking records at the box office and is on the march to cross 300 crores at the Hindi domestic box office as yesterday's numbers come in.