Mufasa The Lion King Hindi Movie Review: Casting Shah Rukh Khan as the voice of Barry Jenkins’ lead character Simba’s powerful father in the prequel to the 2019 blockbuster makes absolutely poetic sense. He not only lends a young Mufasa his distinctively thoughtful individual vulnerability, but also infuses the Disney story with deeply local and fiercely personal flavors. Mufasa’s origin story is that of Shah Rukh himself – a lost soul searching for his parents, whose destiny was to rule a kingdom far far away.
(Also read: Shahrukh Khan, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai dance to ‘Deewangi Deewangi’ at Abram, Aaradhya’s school function)
king of your jungle
In 1994’s iconic animated Lion King, the late James Earl Jones brought Mufasa unparalleled gravitas through his high-pitched, artificial voice. In fact, Mufasa: The Lion King pays homage to that man and that voice early on. Given the tone of the original story, if there was any Indian actor who could have easily slipped into the claws of the character, it is Shahrukh Khan. Like Mufasa, the actor also lost his parents at a very young age, and somewhere he is constantly searching for them.
In the process, he enters a kingdom a few days away from his own, where the lions reject him, but the dominant lioness and her cub, Raka, embrace him. She sees a prince in him, although Mufasa claims that unlike his new brother Taka, he is not afraid of principles and does not want to carry the burden of responsibility. Yet, as his journey progresses, Mufasa becomes exactly that – king of his dream kingdom, if not by choice, then by destiny. Shahrukh could be the Mumbai equivalent of Mufasa.
It also makes sense that Shah Rukh’s sons – Aryan Khan and Abram Khan – are also part of the voice cast. While Aryan’s Simba returns only for a cameo, Abram shines as the spirited cub version of Mufasa. The film also tells the story of four generations – from Mufasa’s parents to Simba’s daughter Kiara. It underlines that every generation feels lost, due to the fear of abandonment, but as Raka’s mother says, “To find your way home you must first get lost.” Shahrukh has often talked about how lost souls always have an edge over others. This resonance becomes all the more uncanny when at several points Mufasa reassures his loved ones by saying “I am not.”
ahead of shahrukh khan
But one cannot say that Shahrukh is the only saving grace of Mufasa: The Lion King. The film largely stands on its own. If Jon Favreau had the difficult task of embodying the 1994 animated classic in The Lion King (2019), Barry Jenkins has also done a fine job of giving Mufasa his own past, fears, journey, and value system. And unlike most Hindi dubbed versions of Hollywood films, the dialogues and even the songs are delivered quite seamlessly. Fortunately, Hindi for Gen-Z is not contemporary or weak. It flows seamlessly, yet also offers lines you’ll remember for a long time.
When Taka wants to go hunting like his mother and Mufasa, his father snaps and says, “Our kingdom is safe only by our dreams” (Our kingdom is safe only by our dreams), which is echoed by the lions. This shows the double standards of lionesses who only sleep and pose like the kings of the jungle, while it is the lionesses who actually do the work – hunting and raising the cubs. The father also says, “Treachery is the power of the king.” Or when Mufasa describes his dream land as “near the destination, beyond the line of sight”. These are dialogues that have not only been translated, but also prepared with great thought and skill.
The same is true of Mufasa’s connection with water. The rain separates him from his parents after the cub is swept away by a flood moments after his mother glorified the spring season for him as a child. He has had a lifelong fear of water – at one point, he is willing to fight lions twice his size because jumping into a river is the only other option. Mufasa admits that he is afraid of water also because he wants to stay away from his reflection – which reminds him of his troubled past. But when he falls in love, he is able to look into his lover’s eyes through a wall of ice, rather than have his vision obstructed by his own reflection. The subtle hints of growth in her arc make the film more layered than it appears to be.
Furthermore, at the center of Mufasa: The Lion King is an eternal question: who is the outsider? Mufasa is then considered one when he is thrown into another kingdom. Rafiki has also been removed from his tree because his philosophical ways are too advanced for his breed of monkeys. Anti-white lions are also labeled as hurt outsiders who seek retribution by claiming what is not theirs. And finally, Taka, who was born a prince, becomes an outsider because of his actions, not because of his blood. Mufasa shows that being a top hunter requires a mix of destiny and karma. Then who else than the King Khan of Bollywood will translate it?
