Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle REVIEW
This film was surprisingly good and definitely worth the expenditure to make I think. It is not simply a different version of the exact same story told in previous versions. One misses listening to the bear Baghira singing “Bare Necessities” and King Louis riffing “I Wanna Be Like You” but the benefits of the retelling are worth it.
Mowgli, like Tarzan, is left behind by deceased parents and is raised in the wild. In Mowgli’s case, he is raised by wolves rather than gorillas, but the outcome is the same for both. As tarzan and Mowgli make their way into adulthood and try to find their place within their respective communities, they are “handicapped” by their advantages and disadvantages relative to their peers. They are not, as it were, bred for the environments they have been placed in. In Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle Mowgli the pre-teen desperately wants to be one of the wolf “brothers” and a contributor to his pack but he aspires to be a wolf in vain. He is, as his name indicates, a “man-cub” – a hyphenated member of an unhyphenated community. He neither belongs to the pack nor the village and feels himself unable to successfully assimilate into either.
If you are a person that belongs neither to the family, faith, or fortune that you were born into on the one hand or the folks, fireside, or fellowship you aspire to on the other, you will appreciate this movie and the suffering that poor Mowgli endures throughout. In the end, it will be important that he has connections to both worlds. Those competing influences split him apart but fashion within him the tools he needs in the end. I am reminded of Robert Frost’s experience of being a poet working a chicken farm in New Hampshire and wondering if he could ever be either a good poet or a good chicken farmer while trying to be both and then eventually finding that the two “selves” could be assimilated into a life beneficial to both. (Poetry could pay for his farms. Farmers could supply the material for his poems).
Rudyard Kipling was born in India (no doubt not unlike Mowgli was basically “born” in the jungle). His mother, they say was a fascinating woman and “dullness and Mrs Kipling could not exist in the same room.” His parents referred to themselves as “Anglo-Indians” just as Mowgli is referred to a “man-cub.” Having had several cousins born in Africa, I can somewhat understand the sentiment. As someone raised in a strong “Brethren” denominational tradition who went off to study and work in more liberal universities, even more so. Kipling was sent home to England at the age of five to be “socialized” and returned to India at the age of 16 to be re-socialized again. It is no wonder that he creates a character in The Jungle Book who is so identity confused.
I will just say that the film and the actor who plays Mowgli capture the pain of the “bi-belonging” person to a tee. I think I just invented that word.
Question for Comment: Have you ever found yourself caught between two communities who both believed you were better off in the other?
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