Review Ramayana: Part 1 Review — A Faithful, Breathtaking Spectacle That Misses the Music of Devotion

Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi, Yash, Ravi Dubey, Arun Govil, Lara Dutta, Shobana, Sheeba Chaddha, Rakul Preet Singh, Sunny Deol
Director: Nitesh Tiwari
Producer: Namit Malhotra (Prime Focus Studios, with Yash's Monster Mind Creations)
Music: A.R. Rahman, Hans Zimmer
Runtime: 3 hr 15 min
Telugu states distribution: Dil Raju's Sri Venkateswara Creations
Released: November 5, 2026 — Hindi, with Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and English versions
We watched: Telugu version, regular screen

Few events are as deeply woven into Indian life as the Ramayana. Telugu households know it from many sources: grandmothers' bedtime tellings, Harikatha performances at temple festivals, Sri Rama Navami celebrations at Bhadrachalam, and generations of cinema. That makes any new screen version a test of faith as much as of filmmaking. For Telugu audiences the bar has long been set by Lavakusa and Bapu's Sampoorna Ramayanam, films many of us first watched as children, sitting beside our parents and grandparents.

Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana: Part 1 arrives carrying the weight of that legacy, along with a production scale Indian cinema has never attempted. We watched it with family over the opening weekend, and we came out impressed. The film does many things right, and its shortcomings are worth discussing in detail.

The Film

Part 1 does not begin in Ayodhya. It starts much earlier, with the war between the Devas and the Asuras, and with Lanka under the rule of Kubera. From there it traces how Dashagriva, urged on by his mother Kaikesi to restore the fallen glory of the Asuras, undertakes years of severe penance. He wins a boon that makes him all but unconquerable, rises to become the lord of Lanka, and grows more arrogant until even the Devas are alarmed.

The film then moves to Ayodhya and the House of Raghu. It covers Rama's early years, the slaying of Tataka and Subahu, Sita's swayamvaram in Mithila, and the joy of an entire kingdom preparing for Rama's coronation. It then shows how that joy turns to grief overnight: Manthara's counsel, Kaikeyi's two boons, and Dasaratha bound by his own word. Rama, Sita and Lakshmana leave for the forest. Bharata follows them to plead for Rama's return. Life at Panchavati, Shurpanakha's arrival and Sita's abduction follow.

The film closes with Jatayu, the aged king of the vultures and an old friend of Dasaratha, giving everything he has to stop Ravana. Everything from Lanka onward, including Hanuman, the search for Sita and the war, is left for Part 2.

The first thing that struck us is how faithful the film is. Nitesh Tiwari and his team have stayed close to Valmiki Ramayanam and to the traditions Indian families grew up with. The sequence of events, the relationships, and the dharma each character upholds or abandons are all where they should be. There is no reinterpretation for its own sake, no attempt to make the events "edgy" for a modern audience, and no character reshaped to fit a fashionable argument. After years of retellings that took liberties with what millions hold sacred, that restraint deserves credit.

What Works

• Faithfulness to the source. Viewers who know every episode by heart, including the elders in the family who will notice any deviation, will find little to object to in how events unfold. The film treats the Ramayana as it should be treated: as events to be shown with reverence, not material to be rewritten. For a production aimed at audiences around the world, choosing fidelity over novelty is the film's most important decision, and its best one.
• Visuals that set a new benchmark. The visual effects are the finest Indian cinema has produced. Ayodhya feels like a living capital rather than a set. The forests of Dandakaranya feel vast and untamed. The Deva–Asura war has a scale that holds up against any international production. Rarely does anything feel like it was shot in front of a green screen. We watched on a regular screen and the effects were still stunning, which is why our one regret is not choosing IMAX. This film was clearly made for the largest screen available, and anyone who has the option should take it.
• A cast without a weak link. Every principal performance works.
  • Ranbir Kapoor (Sri Rama): Playing Rama is perhaps the hardest task in Indian cinema. The role needs calm without coldness, strength without aggression, and a dignity that never tips into stiffness. Ranbir plays Rama with quiet composure, and it suits the role.
  • Sai Pallavi (Sita): She brings warmth, tenderness and inner strength. Her eyes carry much of her performance, and her scenes with Rama have a gentle, unforced affection.
  • Yash (Ravana): He gives Ravana the stature the role needs. This is the Ravana of Valmiki Ramayanam: a great scholar, a fierce devotee of Lord Shiva, a mighty warrior, and a king whose power has made him blind to dharma. Yash commands every frame he appears in.
  • Arun Govil (Dasaratha): Arun Govil brings Dasaratha's grace, authority and finally his grief. For a generation that watched him as Sri Rama in the 1987 television Ramayanam, seeing him return to this world as Rama's father is a moving moment.
  • Shobana (Kaikesi): She gives Ravana's mother conviction and gravity. Her ambition for her son is the spark behind much of what follows.
  • Lara Dutta (Kaikeyi) and Sheeba Chaddha (Manthara): Both are well cast. Sheeba Chaddha's Manthara is convincing as the voice that slowly poisons a loving queen's heart.
• Ravi Dubey's Lakshmana. He is the film's quiet surprise. Lakshmana is a difficult character to get right. His devotion to his elder brother is total, his temper flares at any threat to Rama or Sita, and he gives up the comforts of a prince without a second thought. Ravi Dubey captures all of this with real energy and sincerity. His presence lifts every forest sequence, and he leaves you looking forward to his role in Part 2.
• The Ravana portions. Many viewers have said the Ravana episodes run too long. We disagree. These portions establish who Ravana is: his learning, his devotion, the power he won through penance, and the arrogance that grows with it. Without them, the conflict ahead would mean far less, and Ravana would be reduced to a villain who simply appears to cause trouble. They give the eventual clash its weight. We did not find a single scene in these portions that felt out of place.
• Ravana's ten heads as ten voices. This is the most inventive idea in the film, and our favourite piece of direction. Before Ravana goes to war with his brother-in-law Vidyutjihva, Shurpanakha's husband, he does not simply decide. He argues it out with himself, and the film shows his ten heads as ten distinct selves: his alter egos. One counsels pride, another caution, another rage, another duty to his kin, each pulling him in a different direction. The ten heads have usually been shown on screen as a fearsome image and nothing more. Here they become a window into Ravana's mind, showing a brilliant king at war with his own impulses and choosing, every time, the path his ego demands. Nitesh Tiwari's thinking in picturising this is remarkable. It gives a symbol everyone knows a meaning that stays with you long after the scene ends.
• Jatayu's last stand. The finale is the best sequence in the film. An aged king of the vultures, long past his prime, throws himself against the mightiest being in the three worlds to protect a daughter-in-law of his friend's house. It is thrilling as action and devastating as sacrifice. It is the right note on which to pause the journey: a reminder that dharma is defended not only by princes and gods but by every being willing to stand for it.

What Doesn't

• The Kaikeyi–Dasaratha confrontation lacks impact. This is the turning point of the entire Ramayana. In Valmiki Ramayanam, Kaikeyi retreats to the kopa gruham (chamber of anger) and Dasaratha comes to her full of love. He is then struck by her demands: Bharata's coronation and fourteen years of exile for Rama. What follows is one of the most harrowing passages in all of Indian literature. An emperor pleads, reasons, threatens and finally collapses at his queen's feet. He is torn between his word and his love for his son, and the grief of that night ultimately costs him his life. The scene needed that emotional turbulence. On screen it passes far too quickly and too quietly. Audiences should leave this scene shaken, and they don't.
• A thin Bala Kanda. The film spends generously on Lanka and Ravana's rise but gives Bala Kanda very little room. Two gaps stand out.
  • Why Rama is loved. The film tells us everyone in Ayodhya loves Rama but rarely shows why. Valmiki Ramayanam lays out his virtues at length: his compassion, his truthfulness, his care for every citizen, his humility despite his strength. Even Maricha, an enemy, calls him "Ramo vigrahavan dharmah" (dharma in human form). Without scenes that let us see these qualities, the kingdom's grief at his exile carries less weight than it should.
  • Sita's birth. Sita's birth is missing altogether. King Janaka found her in a furrow of the earth while ploughing the field for a yajna, a daughter of Bhudevi herself. It is one of the most cherished episodes for devotees, and it explains much about who Sita is. Her life in Mithila before the swayamvaram deserved its own space.
• Sita as a warrior. The makers have said they drew on the Adbhuta Ramayanam to show Sita as a mighty warrior. That text does have a basis: in it, Sita takes a fierce form and slays the thousand-headed Ravana. But this image sits uneasily with many viewers, particularly in South India. For Telugu audiences, Sita has been defined for generations by Anjali Devi in Lavakusa and Chandrakala in Bapu's Sampoorna Ramayanam. That Sita's strength lies in her patience, her steadfastness and her unshakeable dharma, not in battle. Bringing the Adbhuta Ramayanam's Sita into a film that otherwise follows the familiar tradition so closely creates a jarring contrast. Many in the audience will feel it.
• Sita's hairstyle. It may sound like a minor complaint, but it bothered us throughout. In a film so meticulous about its worlds, from palaces and weapons to forests and skies, Sita's look should have felt timeless and rooted in its era. Instead her hairstyle repeatedly drew attention to itself and pulled us out of the moment.
• A background score without bhakti. This is the film's biggest disappointment. The score is grand and orchestral, and it fills the screen with scale, but it rarely touches the heart. This is where the film missed its greatest opportunity. A.R. Rahman, of all composers, knows the South Indian tradition of Rama bhakti intimately. Thyagaraja poured his life into Rama in compositions like "Endaro Mahanubhavulu" and "Nagumomu". Bhadrachala Ramadasu's "Paluke Bangaramayena" and "Adigo Bhadradri" are still sung in Telugu homes. Arunachala Kavi's Rama Natakam keerthanas are Tamil Nadu's own offering, and there are many more poet-saints whose music has kept the Ramayana alive for centuries. Weaving even a few of those melodies into the background score would have been a profound tribute to the devotees who carried the Ramayana through the ages. It would also have given the film the devotional soul it sometimes lacks. It is hard to imagine a more fitting place for those melodies, and their absence is felt.

Bottom Line

Ramayana: Part 1 is a faithful, visually extraordinary telling of the Ramayana. It is carried by a uniformly strong cast, an outstanding Lakshmana, a commanding Ravana and a finale that stays with you. Its flaws are real and worth naming: the Kaikeyi–Dasaratha scene is underpowered, Bala Kanda is skimmed and leaves out Sita's birth, the warrior Sita will divide audiences, and the score passes over the very bhakti music that could have given the film its heart.

None of these take away from what the film achieves. Indian cinema can be proud of it, and families should watch it together, with children who are meeting the Ramayana on the big screen for the first time and with elders who have carried it all their lives. Our advice: if you can, watch it in IMAX. If you are comfortable with Hindi, the original version is worth choosing.

Part 2 has a lot to live up to. We are already waiting for it.

Andhravani Rating: 3.5/5