In Kipling’s stories,the superiority of man is stated with a harshness that will startle those whose only image of Mowgli comes courtesy of DisneyDisney and the director Jon Favreau acquire done a spectacular job of realising their new version of The Jungle Book using the sort of sophisticated digital effects familiar from Life of Pi. The only human visible on screen in Favreau’s movie is the man-cub Mowgli, played by the 10-year-obsolete newcomer Neel Sethi. He fraternises convincingly with computer-generated animals including Bagheera the Panther (Ben Kingsley) and the fearsome tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba). What no one involved in the project seems to acquire noticed is the irony of putting all this expensive, and cutting-edge technology in the service of a fable which sentimentalises the primitivism lurking within civilisation. It’s rather like cooking an enormous fry-up to effect the start of Healthy Eating Week,or throwing a decadent bash to promote austerity.
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Source: theguardian.com