REVIEW: Raavan

EPIC DISAPPOINTMENT

Mani Ratnam seems to have made it a mission to visit every troubled spot in the country and around for his films—Kashmir, Assam, Mumbai, Sri Lanka and now the Naxal-infested territories of Central India with Raavan.

In his other films ‘terror’ films, he gave his stories some background and made some political comment, however garbled and naïve; but Raavan exists in a historical, geographical, political limbo. All Ratnam wants the audience to know is that this is the Ramayan in modern times, when Ram is not all good, Raavan is not all bad, and Sita doesn’t even count in this macho-vesus-macho gladiator ring, except being asked to take a polygraph test instead of an agnipariksha. 

What a rich vein of material was here for a thinking filmmaker, more so since Maoists are in the news. Besides the political aspect, to re-examine the attitude towards women in India today.

The tribal character played by Abhishek Bachchan is called Beera Munda, which indicates that he belongs to Central India. The area where he ‘rules’ as a militant Robin Hood is called Lal Maati, obviously shot in lush green and wet South India, with some bits taken to the dry and brown north. There is no background to Beera—why is he an outlaw, what he does, why the are cops hunting him, what is the caste/class equation in the region?

When his sister (Priyamani) is raped by cops in a police station, Beera kidnaps Ragini (Aishwarya), the dancer wife (and she dances even while cooking!) of the region’s Superintendent of Police, Dev Pratap (Vikram). Beera intends to kill her, but the unwashed outlaw falls for the fair princess instead, and that, as his aides say, is the end of him.

He drags Ragini through the muck of tribal villages, but it’s not as if she starts to understand how the poorest of the poor live and why there is strife between these men and the cops. She just glowers at Beera or shoots teary-eyed intense looks at the camera; and if she can’t see the poverty and starvation around, it’s because the inhabitants of the villages look hale and hearty and spend most of their time dancing in the rain!

Dev, his rapist deputy Hemant (Nikhil Dwivedi) and a swinging-through-trees, drunken forest guard Sanjeevani (Govinda) set out to rescue the wife and nab Beera. And the film drags on and on with all of them through the grim water-logged terrain. If there’s a departure from the Ramayan template, it’s that the big fire takes place not in this Lal Maati ‘Lanka,’ but in the police camp. Read into that what you will.

Ratnam, with his Santosh Sivan and Manikanandan- shot pretty frames (but too many people falling in slow-motion down the same cliff into the same waterfall!), is curiously indifferent to his characters – you feel no sympathy, no tension, no shock, no relief.

The better performances come from the supporting actors like Ravi Kissen, Govinda and Priyamani. Abhishek Bachchan, making faces and smearing gunk on his face, strikes no fear or awe; and Vikram manages to scowls consistently, and Aishwarya Rai looks ethereal even in awful costumes and untidy hair. More… much, much more was expected from this over-hyped film by one of Indian cinema’s contemporary auteurs. What was he thinking?

Comments

[Parul]

Hey Deepa
As usual u nailed it

[Deepa Gahlot]

Thanks Parul.. and welcome to FI