REVIEW: Raavan (2)

LOST IN THE WOODS

Mani Ratnam has often been hailed as an auteur (mostly on the basis of his Tamil films, one suspects) who brought about a change in Indian cinema with his fascinating visual style. His oeuvre has been dominated by the theme of human relations blossoming in the shadow of  political strife. Certainly his three important films that have made it to the Hindi screen, Roja (1992) and Bombay (1994), (both made in Tamil and dubbed into Hindi), followed by Dil Se (1998) were a formidable trilogy despite their simplistic take on politics. Mostly because, apart from their stunning cinematography and A R Rahman's trailblazing musical scores, they had characters who displayed a delicacy and sensitivity that was rarely seen on the Hindi screen at that time and Ratnam had a way with creating mood and moments of understated passion. 

Raavan suggests that his preoccupation with the genre of love in the times of conflict has now turned into a formula. Only this time, there's not even a pretense of authenticity and the human drama too is entirely overpowered by technical finesse. The first half of the film is so beautifully shot (by Santosh Sivan and Manikandan) that it obfuscates whatever little narrative movement there is. Like Rajneeti, the story itself draws from a source that everyone in the audience would already be very familiar with. Beera/Raavan (Abhishek Bachchan) the bandit of Laal Maati kidnaps Ragini/Sita (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) the wife of the local Superintendent of Police, Dev/Ram (Vikram). Dev and his deputy Hemant/Laxman (Nikhil Dwivedi) chase Beera and his band all across the jungles with the help of a suspended forest official Sanjeevani/Hanuman (Govinda). 

From the start, Beera is enamoured by Ragini's beauty and bravado -- proved by her bizarre act of jumping off a cliff and falling over branches of trees and safely into the river (rather artistically, one might add). There's a clear sexual chemistry between the two characters and if only the director had focussed on that rather than the half-baked cops-and-robbers chase, it may still have worked to some extent. Funnily, Beera, who's a dreaded outlaw with a crude personality, a foul temper and a will to kill and plunder (we'll never find out why he's thus because the filmmaker doesn't care to establish such causal links) follows a peculiarly middle-class moral code and hence, doesn't touch the woman he so obviously craves. 

I think the director perhaps wanted to suggest that there's a little bit of Ram and Raavan in every man and Sita can no longer choose which one of them she likes better. It's a tantalising premise. Except, none of the characters is given the depth to explore this with any seriousness. The entire emotional import of the story is drowned in bad acting, visual pyrotechnics and a jarring background score. As for the politics, there really is none. It's a regular revenge drama with an exotic setting in central India (and uncannily topical in that!). The locations where the film is shot further expose the lack of clarity -- you have a distinctly South-Indian forest setting, followed by an episode that seems to have been filmed somewhere in central India, followed by mustard fields (i.e. North India) and finally the Western ghats! 

A R Rahman's score is so stale, you'd struggle to remember a single song. And the acting is truly uninspiring. That they're dealing with a wishy-washy narrative is already a handicap. But neither Abhishek Bachchan nor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan have the skill set to extract the inner worlds and complexities of the characters they play from the lacklustre script. Vikram has an impressive screen presence, but you can tell he's not comfortable with the Hindi language and again, he's left to negotiate a one-dimensional protagonist. Which means, the only actors who actually make an impression are Govinda (despite his negligible role) and Ravi Kissen, who plays Beera's side-kick with relish.

Once again, its time to remind filmmakers that while cinema is an audio-visual medium, the two vital elements key to any good film are a solid screenplay and nuanced characterisation. And no amount of style can neutralise their absence.