EXCLUSIVE: Saloni Batra comes in support of Animal after it faces criticism for promoting misogyny and patriarchy; says, “We can't be sitting and preaching”

While Animal is earning moolah at the box office, the film is also receiving quite a bit of backlash on social media with netizens criticizing the film for being misogynistic and the demeaning portrayal of women characters. Furthermore, Ranbir Kapoor is also facing some flak because of his character of ‘alpha male. Owing to the same, Saloni Batra, in conversation with Bollywood Hungama, explained her thoughts on this kind of negativity surrounding the film.

“As artists, we are here to entertain people. And we are rightly doing that as you can see. People are loving the film and are appreciating everything,” Saloni Batra told Bollywood Hungama. She continued, “Of course the characters are flawed but you make stories on flawed characters, these are inspirations and hence you put them on screen to show them to the audience to sit and enjoy in a theater. Sandeep Sir is so legendary with this craft, with this filmmaking, he knows how to reach the audience, what emotion I want to touch, what I want to say about this character. Obviously a character who's not gotten love from his father is going to be flawed. And when we write stories we always get inspired by real characters in life and kahin se hum usko cinema mein daalte hain music ke saath aur use thoda sa fictionalize karte hain, aisa nahi hai koi sachhi kahaani bata raha hain (we take these characters and put them in cinema, add some music and fictionalize it. It’s not a real story or anything like that). Now it's about also the audience to understand what is right and what is wrong. We can't be sitting and preaching.”

Referring to the scene where a young Ranbir takes a gun to college, Saloni Batra added, “That scene is for cinematic presence. No one has seen that or does something like that in real life. And you should see the audience’s reaction when that scene comes on screen, people have loved it, and how he's devised everything in that scene. It's for the film is for the purpose of that character. So, I don't think people should take back wrong things from it. When you also get out of the film, you are seeing this character is flawed, he's gone through so many things and at the end they are also showing that he has lost out on so many things. So one should also realize that if anyone is doing things like that character, they also have to deal with the same kind of repercussions. So it completely depends on how you perceive, if you are getting entertained. Everybody is loving the film and they have goosebumps while watching certain scenes. They're crying, they're laughing - And it's a full entertainment package. I mean, what more could you want from a film? If you want to learn things, you listen to podcasts, you listen, watch documentaries. But if you're going to get entertained, and kind of the kind of numbers we are getting, thankfully, because of Sandeep Sir and his vision about what he wants to show so much passion, so much clarity, I really respect that,” she concluded.

Animal, also starring Anil Kapoor, Rashmika Mandanna, and Bobby Deol, released on December 1 in five different languages.

Also Read: EXCLUSIVE: Saloni Batra shares her experience with Anil Kapoor in Animal; says, “He was like a buddy to all of us”