EPICFAIL
In his new film Raavan, Mani Ratnam tries to twist on its head the archetypes of yore. Here, the latter-day Raavan with a conscience (Beera, played by Abhishek Bachchan) is pitted opposite a so-called upright yet unscrupulous police officer, Dev (Vikram), whose wife Ragini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) he has kidnapped as revenge for the rape of his sister (a spirited Priyamani) by policemen after a raid at her wedding. There are literal elements taken from the Ramayana but these play out merely as plot contrivances that are not particularly inventive (a polygraph test is supposed to stand in for an agnipariksha). It is in a more moral realm that the retelling of the epic tries to break new ground and blur the lines between what is perceptively good or evil. However, the end-product is far from satisfying.
Mr Ratnam has, of late, specialized in a kind of cinema that is in equal measure compelling as it is flawed but here, his oeuvre touches a nadir of sorts. In this alarmingly pitched melodrama that is allowed to continue unabated through hell, fury, and eternal dread (at least for its audience), none of the central characters quite live up to their potential. For example, Dev is not a paragon for anything. He is a rather small-minded misogynist, and even if this interpretation of the epic has him pegged as a bad guy, his mustache furling and macho posturing is not accompanied by that sinister, disconcerting feeling that should really get under the skin of the cinema-goer.
Beera, on his part, has been fashioned as a Veerapan-like kingpin of the downtrodden, who holds dear principles of honor and fair play. However, the manner in which he is played reduces him to a caricature which would work just fine in a spoof like Pirates of the Carribean but here such a gimmicky performance is grating. Mr Bachchan, hoping to restore the quintessential villain Raavan with this new-age flesh-and-blood avatar, pitches in a turn stripped of any humanity. His over-stretched eyes evoke no dread, no defiance, no vulnerability, no pride.
Ms Rai Bachchan as Ragini finally finds herself in a film that doesn’t quite deserve her incandescence. After years of delivering on cinematic beauty rather than substance, here she gives us a raw, sensuous, feral performance. As she struggles with the terrain during her endless incarceration in the rain, she creates a lyrical metaphor for the film’s emotional core and only occasionally lapses into her usual screechiness. However, there is little to explain Ragini’s devotion to Dev, or even her change-of-heart towards Beera, with whom she shares little chemistry.
As in other recent films, here again, where there has been a promise of bolder, grander things, we are left with a downward spiral that culminates in a cringe-inducing climax. Picturesque cinematography aside, the film is an atmospheric failure, in that what could have been a well-paced thriller at least, is left devoid of suspense and a sense of foreboding and what could have been an astutely realized moral fable is left with characters that fall monumentally short of achieving archetypal proportions.
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