Bhooty Call, Part Three

I’ve learned a few things about Indian culture in recent years. I know what it means when you touch someone’s feet. I know the difference between the various terms for “uncle”. And I can discuss Ram and Sita for a good ten minutes before I start to sound like a complete ignoramus. But you could fill a book with the things I don’t know about India, and many people have. Big books, too, the kind of book you could use to subdue an out-of-control librarian with if you really had to.

For instance, before watching Vikram Betal (2005), I had never heard of, well, Vikram and Betal. Which is, I gather, rather like not knowing about Little Red Riding Hood. Or perhaps not knowing about Sheherazade, since Vikram and Betal appear in the framing story to a larger collection of tales - I gather the usual number is twenty five, but in the animated film, we have three.

The framing story goes something like this. Vikram is a fantastically wise and good king. So fantastically wise and good, in fact, that his wisdom and goodness attract the attention of a sage, who shows up at court every day to present Vikram with an apple. Every day, Vikram takes the apple, and has it locked up in the royal treasury (which is not what one normally does with apples, but Vikram is wise enough to know that these apples must have some sort of sagely mojo.) Eventually, his curiosity gets the better of them, and he asks the sage, who shows him that the apple is in fact full of precious gems. All the apples are. The sage then offers to give Vikram even more wealth if he’ll just perform a small service, and Vikram agrees. For the good of the kingdom, of course, since Vikram really is painfully virtuous.

So Vikram meets the sage late at night, in the creepy cemetery out of town, right next to the big stone head with all the sharp pointy teeth. The sage’s request is a simple one. He asks Vikram to go into the jungle and retrieve a corpse which is hanging from the branch of a tamarind tree. However, the sage warns that many have died trying to complete this mission. Clearly, there is a catch.

Vikram fights his way through the jungle and reaches the corpse, which turns out to be possessed by a ghost named Betal. Betal is a chatty sort, and cheerfully explains just what the catch is: Vikram must complete the journey in absolute silence. If he speaks, Betal will instantly fly back to the tree. The problem is, to pass the time during the journey, Betal tells stories. And at the end of each story, Betal will ask a moral question; if Vikram knows the answer and refuses to give it, his head will break into a thousand pieces, but if he does give the answer, Betal flies away. And since Vikram is such a wise king, he always knows the answer . . .

The animation style used in Vikram Betal is unsophisticated. It’s a lot like an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon, with stiff movements, characters who only move their mouths when talking, and some footage is recycled throughout. (Hope you like that shot of Vikram trekking through the jungle, because you’ll be seeing it again.)

On the other hand, the character designs are simple but effective, with a slightly different style used in each story. (Though Vikram has tiny, tiny feet.) The voice acting is mostly well done; Betal’s whiny, screeching voice gets a bit grating, but that’s probably deliberate. The stories themselves are entertaining; my favorite is practically a mini-snake movie in its own right. And I learned something new. All in all, eighty three minutes well spent.