Yes, Disney’s The Jungle Book was a different take. Yes, the movie was awesomeness redefined (even Po the Panda would agree). And yes, it was visceral enough to scare a sixty(ish)-year-old censor board head.
But it’s got nothing on Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, from more than a century ago.
Warner Brothers’ version of Kipling’s story titled Mowgli, directed by Andy Serkis (Gollum, in the LOTR) seems to come close to ‘them feels’ that the book is sure to give you!
What Mowgli Was Really Like...
Mowgli isn’t a cute human child in Kipling’s book. He skins Shere Khan in the end and does a victory dance. Shere Khan isn’t Mowgli’s nemesis. He’s just his first big kill.
Mowgli clearly understood true friendship, brotherhood, treachery, murder and the ‘ways of man’. He was wise beyond his years.
This is something that Andy Serkis’ version of the story touches on. In the trailer, Bagheera (Christian Bale) tells Mowgli how to win the trust of the humans, so he can escape. His character doesn’t really change. Whether in WBs upcoming version, or Disney’s, Bagheera remains the way Rudyard has written him.
What is sure to be a treat to watch, is the new Baloo (the bear), played by Andy Serkis himself.
Baloo, Bagheera and Kaa
Baloo doesn’t sing. Ever. Like Bagheera, he’s a hard taskmaster and one of Mowgli’s many teachers of jungle lore. There are parts of the story where Mowgli gets raps and paw-thumps from Bagheera and Baloo. Surprisingly, this is where you get to see the depth of these characters’ love for the man-cub.
And Kaaa! Scarlett Johansson’s huskiness and the CGI worth millions in Disney’s Jungle Book failed to communicate the sheer power of Kaa’s hypnosis over the creatures of the jungle, or his speed, or the strength in his coils.
He can move faster than Bagheera! (Kaa is a male python in the book). Andy Serkis, like Disney, went for a woman for the part – Cate Blanchett – and added a bit of soothsaying to her powers of hypnotism.
Songs, No Songs, Songs
In Disney’s version of The Jungle Book, the only two songs (of which one is sort of like a stand-up poem) feel quite odd, despite Bill Murray’s effortless charm.
But in the book, there are many songs. There’s the hunting song of the seeonee pack. There’s the song of the Bandar Log. There’s the night song of the jungle.
And then there’s Mowgli’s song, which he sings after skinning Shere Khan, while dancing on his hide.
Kipling’s verses make you yearn for the jungle. You will be homesick, ache for a place you have never been to. I believe some tropes can be pulled off with alacrity only in a book, and songs/poems are one of them. JRR Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of The Rings’ too had a number of songs and poems that drove the narrative. That Peter Jackson chose to do away with them in his movie adaptation was a wise choice indeed.
Andy Serkis, who starred under him for a decade as Gollum, and later worked as an associate director in the Hobbit series, has chosen to make a song-free version of Mowgli’s story. I’m sure the music will be rousing though.
Nitin Sawhney, who’s been roped in to compose music for Mowgli has over 50 films to his credit, including The Namesake and Midnight’s Children, both adaptations of novels by Mira Nair. This too is an off-beat choice, as with the other actors and crew in the movie.
Mowgli Isn’t the Central Character or the Only Story in the Book
The jungle, a forest, a village, a house with an overgrown garden, the beaches of Lukannon in an island of the Berring Sea and a military camp on the salty Rann. These are the settings upon which the stories in the book are woven. The characters are even more varied.
Rikki-tikki-tavi, the mongoose, protects his master by killing the largest King cobra you can imagine...and then hunting down his wife Nagini.
Toomai, of the elephants, is the only human to have seen the dance of the elephants.
Kotick the seal is barely a year old, yet knows the sea like the no one else. He escaped the men with clubs. He can speak with walruses. And he’s white!
The twin bulls, the donkey, the camel, the horse and the elephant. They are all war veterans in Her Majesty’s Service.
Both Disney’s version and Andy Serkis’ though, focus only on the man-cub, Mowgli. To make a Jungle Book movie that’s an anthology of stories would be pretty rad, and not a readily acceptable concept!
The Two Mowglis and a Hundred Tales
Rohan Chand, the cute and very annoying Chaitanya in Bad Words (2013) and now a sinewy Mowgli (2018), is about as cute as a Shaolin monk’s bamboo pole. This is in stark contrast to Neel Sethi, who plays Mowgli in Disney’s version, where the forest is almost always bright and sunny and full of soft soil to land on.
Idris Elba as Shere Khan in Disney’s version is a convincing man-eater, but he’s no match for the meanness of Benedict Cumberbatch’s version.
Thanks to Andy Serkis’ decades of knowledge of motion capture (a technology that he himself drove forward), the animals resemble the actors who voice them. The facial expressions, therefore, are uncannily real, and where necessary, sinister.
But what Andy Serkis is trying to do, is what Rudyard Kipling achieved almost a hundred years ago!
Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book is like the fountainhead that births a thousand streams and a hundred rivers, of which Disney’s Jungle Book is but a beautiful brook.
If Andy Serkis delivers on his promise of bringing the arc of Mowgli’s rise as a human-animal to life, this Warner Brothers version could be the closest anyone’s come to Kipling’s classic.
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