There's a particular kind of courage in making a film about a saint everyone already reveres, because the moment the miracles start, the audience starts asking the same uncomfortable question: is this cinema, or is this propaganda? Hanuman Ansh, Vishal Chaturvedi's devotional drama on the life of Neem Karoli Baba - the mystic known to his devotees as Maharaj-ji - spends its first half wrestling with that very tension, and it's a relief to report that by the interval, the film has largely won that argument with itself.
The story traces the early life of Laxman Narayan (played with quiet conviction by Shobhinaw Satyaa), a boy in pre-Independence India who loses his mother and is told she has "gone to God." What begins as a child's search for his mother turns into a lifelong pursuit of the divine, channelled through his devotion to Hanuman and the chanting of Ram's name. The film follows him through a brief, arranged domestic life, a period of wandering asceticism, and eventually into the figure history remembers as Neeb Karori Baba - a barefoot saint whose blessings are said to have touched everyone from village farmers to, decades later, Silicon Valley names like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, though the film wisely stays rooted in the earlier, lesser-known chapters of his journey rather than chasing that celebrity footnote.
Shot across Chitrakoot and Mumbai, and officially unveiled at Kainchi Dham - the Baba's own ashram - the film clearly wasn't made to compete at the box office. It arrived in theatres the same week as Spider-Man: Brand New Day, went in with barely any promotional push, and cast newcomers instead of stars. That's both its handicap and, oddly, its charm.
What works: Satyaa carries the film. He underplays a role that could easily have tipped into theatrical sainthood, giving Maharaj-ji a stillness and warmth that feels lived-in rather than performed - it's the kind of breakout turn that deserves to be noticed beyond the devotional-film circuit. The film also earns credit for restraint in its writing: rather than building each scene around a miracle, Chaturvedi frames the Baba's growing legend through small, human moments - a boy building a Hanuman idol out of mud and redirecting villagers' devotion away from himself and toward the deity, a saint who repeatedly insists that service to people is the truest form of worship. The soundtrack leans hard on Krishna Das's devotional chants, and it's a smart crutch; the bhajans do more emotional heavy lifting than the background score itself manages.
What doesn't: The seams of a limited budget show. Some of the period production design, meant to evoke a pre-Independence village, looks flat and stagey rather than lived-in. The first half drags in places, more interested in establishing devotional atmosphere than momentum, and testing the patience of anyone who isn't already invested in the subject. Beyond Satyaa, few of the supporting performances leave a mark, which is a problem for a film with an ensemble cast and ambitions of a two-part story.
Where Hanuman Ansh ultimately succeeds is in refusing to be a checklist of miracles. It could easily have leaned into spectacle - the parting of circumstances, the healing touch, the larger-than-life guru - and instead chooses to sit with a grieving boy's quiet, stubborn search for meaning. That choice won't make it a box-office juggernaut, and it won't convert sceptics. But for audiences who've heard the bhajans, read about Kainchi Dham, or simply want to understand how an ordinary man from a UP village became a figure of such enduring devotion, this film offers a sincere, unhurried answer.
Verdict: Flawed, low-budget, and unlikely to trouble the multiplex charts - but Hanuman Ansh is a rare devotional biopic that trusts its audience enough to underplay the miracles and let faith speak for itself. Worth a watch if the subject interests you at all; a Part 2 has reportedly already been planned.
