He's not a tame lion.

 

 

 Mahavatar Narsimha (2024) is an animated Hindu devotional movie.  As usual with devotional movies, I am not qualified to judge the theology, so I will be looking at the movie as a story rather than as an expression of religious faith.

 

The movie establishes almost immediately that despite the animation it is not primarily aimed as kids, as the lovely Diti (Vasundhra Bose) interrupts the meditations of her husband, the sage Kashyapa (Dinesh Varma) to ask him to give her a son right now.  Kashyapa explains that it is an inauspicious time and any child conceived might turn out to be a demon who will threaten the entire universe, but Diti is really insistent, so he goes along with it.  And the next morning he angrily announces that Diti has conceived demonic twins who will threaten the entire universe.  When the twins are born they are taken away to be taught by the sage Shukra (Also Dinesh Varma), the guru of the asuras.

 Hiranyaksha (Sanchit Wartok) and Hiranyakashipu (Aditya Raj Sharma) grow up to be powerful leaders, spreading terror across the land. Hiranyaksha decides to provoke Lord Vishnu (Uplaksh Kochhar) by kidnapping the Earth goddess Bhumi (Nehal Pandey.)  Vishnu incarnates as the great boar Varaha, who rescues Bhumi form the bottom of the ocean and defeats Hiranyaksha in a great duel across the earth, sea, and space.  

 

Hiranyakashipu is furious, but Shukra tells him that he's no match for Vishnu, and advises him to perform penance in order to gain enough merit to gain a boon from Brahma (Abhishek Sharma).  Hiranyakashipu takes his advice, and spends years performing a penance that is so powerful that it threatens the world, so Brahma appears to grant the boon.  Hiranyakashipu has his carefully considered wording ready, asking for great spiritual and temporal power, and that he could not be killed by any of Brahma's creations, whether god mortal or beast, by any weapon or by hand, indoors or outside, during the day or the night, on Earth or in the heavens.  The overly specific boon is granted, and Hiranyakashipu goes on to conquer the world and the heavens, capturing the gods and proclaiming himself ruler of the universe.

However, during the penance, Lord Indra (Dixoan Shah) was worried about potential heirs to the throne of the Asuras, and kidnapped Hiranyakashipu's pregnant wife Kayadhu (Priyanka Bhandari), placing her in the custody of Sage Narad (Harish Moily), who teaches her to pray to Vishnu.  

Years later Hiranyakashipu has recovered his family and now rules the universe, devoting himself to punishing Vishnu's worshipers in his free time, but his five year old son Prahlad (Haripriya Matta) is gentle, saintly, and absolutely devoted to Vishnu, despite his father's best efforts.  Prahlad absolutely will not renounce his devotion, leading to an ever escalating feud between father and son.  Finally a frustrated Hiranyakashipu orders his son's execution, but the boy is protected by the power of Vishnu, and as the attempted executions become more and more elaborate, it becomes clear that Vishnu will have to incarnate once again, this time as the lion-man Narsimha (Harjeet Walia) for a final battle between good and evil.

 One advantage of using animation to make this sort of movie is scale; the action can be as big as the original stories demand.  the action here is huge; in an early battle Hiranyaksha personally destroys a fleet of flying battleships and it's a footnote, something he does on the way to the main event.  The final battle between Narashimha and Hiranyakashipu is epic, and surprisingly gory.  The movie absolutely delivers in terms of spectacle.

However, while the violence is spectacular, it isn't the main focus.  This is a story about faith, but it's also a story about resistance, and the real battle is the battle of wills between father and son.  And of course the outcome is never in question - Hiranyakashipu is a fine mustache twirling villain, but Prahlad is almost terrifying in his simple devotion and his determination to persist even when the entire world is apparently against him.  It's as much a character piece as it is an epic.