Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle Review: Andy Serkis calls forth a mesmerising, if muddled spectacle in service of Kipling’s original vision.
Netflix: Bagheera and Rohan Chand as “Mowgli” in the Netflix film “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle”
Forgive Mowgli for its late arrival. The debut (the actual one- in the pipeline before Breathe) of its star cum producer cum director Serkis existed, at least in hypotheticals, for as long as, and even before Jon Favreau’s live action adaption. And after (finally) bearing witness to it, no one can seriously accuse this version of copying the formula – or, more importantly, of cheap pandering to the Disney generation by simply slapping the original Walt-commandeered animation onto an updated palette, stripping the songs off and calling it ‘new’.
This darker, more philosophical rendering of the Jungle Book scuttles on its haunches somewhat back to the radical wilderness of Kipling’s novel. With hacked off Elephant tusks, mutilated tigers and a faint side-eye towards colonialism and imperialist brutality (that could do with more time and attention- if you’re going to go there you’re better off serving the whole hog, after all) a kids film this is not.
It is also not, as some might mistake it, simply edgy for edginess’s sake. The themes of Mowgli’s story has always bared tragedy. Orphaned by the violence of a community at war (Man’s village versus the Jungle predators) the Man-cub is made a refugee two times in his life: cast out by the two factions responsible for his loss before he takes a stand for his right to exist in both or either. This version doesn’t shy away from the circumstance. In the opening scenes, a blood-splattered baby is plucked from the dirt by a curious Bagheera (Christian Bale bringing Batman levels of deep and broody). Mowgli is raised among the wolves, growing into a dreamer and a peaceful kid who only wants to fit in, but is forced to fend for himself when his failure to keep up with the other cubs means he is tossed away to the hands of men. His weakness is excruciatingly apparent for the first time – his squatting gait coltish and silly compared to the sure-footed movement of the real wolves.
A lot of material we have come to expect, like sing-song and river-bobbing and monkey fights (The king of the swingers isn’t even around), is exchanged for a directionless haze of moments that include Mowgli tumbling through the undergrowth with the other runt of the pack and Mowgli trying to jump onto a branch and missing, again and again. All shot for shot stunning, this first half is admittedly baffling at times, but at least yanks us into the woozy feeling of Jungle fever that has fractured this boy’s childhood into one long fantasy. And it does have some semblance of suspense that builds towards a competitive race between the cubs that will make or break his inclusion if he comes last.
Mowgli does lose the loyalty of the Wolfpack and is sent off by Bagheera and even Baloo (Serkis, playing the big bear as a straight-man drill instructor instead of a goofy lyricist). When Man finds him, confused and alone, on their village border, he is even kept in a cage for a while.
Apart from the darkness, Serkis brings enough originality to the execution to warrant this film’s existence. He’s a very exciting director, visually orientated to a visceral degree. In a Terrence Malick approach, he doesn’t pin down scenes to a static shot and instead overwhelms the frame with more sensory information that it can possibly hold. The Jungle is realised like it never has been before: unsanitary, gorgeous, and unsettling. Creatures bristle a hair’s breadth before the lens, and the screen is crowded with creepers and plant-life that make it seem sweltering.
Mowgli himself, played with a feral, whispering-wounded quality by Rohan Chand (who is an entrancing and natural screen presence of star quality) is constantly ridden with soil, sweat, and blood so we can’t forget again that he is boy scrabbling around outside of his natural habitat. The whole thing is a sensory adventure, and everything, all that scratches and cuts, and bites, gets its own close-up.
The animals themselves are an effects triumph, every whisker palpable under scrutiny. They’re also a triumph of casting, with Cate Blanchett criminally under-present as a toe-curling serpentine Kaa and Benedict Cumberbatch bringing the rumble to the jungle with a curdling, phelmic quality to his usual baritone as the utterly insane villain Shere Khan – who hunts Mowgli throughout. Naomi Harris, Tom Hollander, Eddie Marsan, and Peter Mullan also do great work as the likes of Wolf pack parents and a jabbering hyena.
It’s enhanced by the fact that the actors committed to full Motion Capture. In the films one really amazing element, most of them are actually recognisable as individuals. Their features emerge beneath the furry machinations of the VFX team — a twitch, an eyebrow, a grin, a gaze — so human that it lets the anthropomorphic parts to new heights. This adds enormously to their presence more than the plain and disjointed voice-acting of past attempts.
It’s clear the particular expertise Serkis provided as a performance capture master didn’t just bring a uniquely rich flavour to the animal kingdom but lead the cast into a comfort zone where they could really go wild (Cumberbatch apparently got so into character that he bit Tom Hollander on the bum in the recording studio).
Of course, they could all do with more to do. It’s frustrating when the best visually manifested versions of Kipling’s characters have a lot of their arcs scrambled.
Some additions are genius. One bloodcurdling underwater scene when Khan stops to clean his bloody tongue on the surface of a pond where Mowgli has been swimming is flat out brilliant. And a clever parallel to Sheer Khan, a sociopathic hunter in the Man Village, explores the novels’ themes on man and beasts capacity for cruelty and kindness both. This is the nightmare element of Kipling’s classic done better than ever.
But its a shame, a lot of character development, beloved moments, and pacing seems to have been swallowed up by the energy otherwise put into tone and look.
It’s a good thing that we all know the story. Like the man-cub, we could have gotten easily lost.
While it fails to really tell much of a proper tale cohesively, it captures the physical experience of the original perhaps better than any other. That it was picked up on Netflix means it is happily worth the time it takes to sit and press play. But, rather than reliving a clear, easy play-by-play of the story, you could lose yourself in a visual feast that, like its hero, wanders along untethered to rules or logic.
It may not always hit the mark. but Mowgli’s visuals and production have been made so accessible it would be a waste not to revel in them. It’s lost some of the bare necessities of the musical, but will strike you as a braver, wiser stab in the dark towards fresh territory of a long-told story than Disney’s 2016 copy and paste.
Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle is released on Netflix on 7th December.
