Sandeep Reddy Vanga is touted as one of the most controversial filmmakers in Bollywood. His latest film Animal may be raking in the moolah at the box office, but it has been severely criticised by a sizeable portion of the audience for its perceived misogyny and portrayal of toxic masculinity. Amid the success of the film, Sandeep Reddy Vanga answered a lot of questions regarding Animal in an interview. One of the questions that was posed at the director was about the religion of the antagonist essayed by Bobby Deol.
For the unaware, Bobby played a Muslim character named Abrar, even though he came from a family of Sikhs. Explaining the reason behind the same, Sandeep Reddy Vanga told Galatta Plus,
“I’ve seen people when they enter a zone of zero confidence, people will come and say to them, ‘Go to a church, or go to a baba, he’ll give some taweez (pendant), change your name…’ I’ve seen people changing their religion because so much has happened to them. At a low point, they feel like it’s a new birth, it’s a change of identity completely… We see a lot of people converting to Islam and Christianity; we never see anybody converting to Hinduism.”
He further stated, “So, I thought I’ll use this, because you can get multiple wives in Islam. I can have multiple cousins with different faces; the drama will be bigger. That’s the only reason. There was no intention to show a Muslim in a bad light.”
Sandeep Reddy Vanga also opened up on critics that affected his films. He said, reviews by a handful of critics, didn’t affect Kabir Singh’s opening. “You’re making money, fame, name, everything by criticising my film, then go ahead. That’s what happened with most of the critics during Kabir Singh. Their shot to fame was criticising ‘Kabir Singh’…Nobody speaks about the craft, the editing, sound design, because they are literally illiterate, uneducated when it comes to films. They have no sense of how to criticise the film or review the film (sic).”
Released on December 1, Animal revolves around a man and his toxic relationship with his father. The film shows Vijay (played by Ranbir) as an anti-hero who would go to any lengths to protect his father, including gunning down 200 people with a machine gun.
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