Raavan

In a religious country like India, where people have ended up fighting over Rama and Allah, it needs some courage to take up one of the two greatest epics written and show our worshipped Lord Rama having a grey side to him. It takes even more courage to start telling the story from the villain Raavan’s point of view and justify his actions. Mani Ratnam is his latest film does exactly that when he gives the mythological story a realistic setting in today’s world and twists the story a bit to make people sympathize for the villain of the epic.

Abhishek Bachchan plays an outlaw called Beera(Raavan) in the film. Though he goes against the law, the villagers believe in him, his actions, and his ideology which makes him a character like Don Vito Corleone or the Sarkar. The only difference is he is wilder than those. The wildness, ofcourse is to draw parallelism to Raavan’s character in Ramayana. He kidnaps Raagini(Sita) played by Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to kill her for reasons told later in the film. But instead of killing her, he starts falling for her beauty, her bravery. This is where we see the film getting similar to RGV’s Jungle where the lead bandit started falling for Urmilla Matondkar and starts taking wrong decisions.

Mani Ratnam goes back to what he is most known for and does the best, depicting violence and terrorism on screen. Though Raavan isn’t exactly a film about terrorism, its style is very similar to those. He might not have come back to his real best, but it seems like he is on his right way now after Guru where I thought he completely lost his way and like other directors got pulled and attracted by commercial brand of cinema. With Raavan, he seems to be coming back to his own.

The most pleasing thing in this film is the visuals, the cinematography. Santosh Sivan is really a master of camerawork. He has never disappointed me with his camera work. While Terrorist is his best piece of work for me, Raavan isn’t very far behind. Though shooting infront of the waterfalls, and naturally beautiful scenes makes it easier for him to make the picture look beautiful, he is equally good in indoor scenes and close-up shots. He and Manikandan make the film a visual treat and worth watching just for the visuals alone.

The acting is the most disappointing thing in the film. Both our leads look like they didn’t go into the skin of the character. While Aishwarya was busy screeching, Abhishek was overacting in most of the part. He was supposed to go over-the-top but he ended up overacting in most of the scenes.  It was really tough to play that monster-ous character which Abhishek Bachchan was portraying and only two people come in my mind who could have done justice to that role – Toshiro Mifune – he would have made the perfect Raavan IMO and the other is Min-sik Choi (after seeing his performance in Oldboy). Vikram played his role very well but his role was simpler than the other two. Govinda was miscast in this film. He was doing comedy in this film, jumping like a monkey form one tree to another (OFC, as a reference to the character of Hanuman in Ramayana) but it did not suit the film at all. I would have preferred a more serious character. Ratnam for once looked like he was compromising with the film just to give some comic relief to an otherwise dark thriller kind of a film. Even Ravi Kissen was there to provide some comic relief in the film. Priyamani was impressive in a very short but yet very important role.

A.R. Rahman gives a very different, aggressive and dark, wild music to this film. It suited the film’s atmosphere very well. Beera obviously was a bit like the title track of Omkara. Thok De Killi was wild. The soft songs, Behne De and Khlli Re, too were good. But I liked Ranjha Ranjha the most.

I think people won’t be able to accept this film for it challenges their religious beliefs and seeing Rama having a grey shade while justifying Raavan’s action will be hard to get the nod of general public of India. Ratnam indeed took a big challenge with this film. But I for one enjoyed watching the film and I bow to Ratnam for taking up the challenege and giving the story his own interpretation.

7/10

Raajneeti – Disappointing

One of the most awaited films this year, due mostly to the director and the stellar star cast, Raajneeti carried a lot of expectations on its shoulders.  But here we are let down first and foremost by the director himself.  Prakash Jha deals with too many characters in this film and in the end it turned out to be a disadvantage for him and the film. I felt a few characters should have been developed more. Ranbir Kapoor’s and Manoj Bajpai’s character were among the very well written ones. Ajay Devgn’s character too had “dome” motive in the start, but in the second half even his actions were not well justified. Katrina Kaif was hardly even there in the first half.

The major problem of Raajneeti is the scripting; Jha gave more preference to how to bring in Mahabharata in the film than to concentrating on the current politics, which should have been the main plot. The elements and characters of Mahabharata should have been add-ons. He was concentrating more on the character of Dhrithrashtra who was a less important character in Mahabharata, at least if we are only using elements of Mahabharata in a different story to tell. And Raajneeti wasn’t staying so true to Mahabharata that it should have characters like Dhrithrashtra when there are only 2 Pandavas and Dhrithrashtra has only one son.

The film turns into an unintentional comedy because of all these extra doses of Mahabharata going on and a few more scenes of poor writing. Katrina Kaif saying “I love you” to Arjun Rampal and when Ranbir/Arjun’s mother tries to tell Ajay Devgn that she is his real mother are laughable moments. And in a film which is supposed to connect with the youth, who uses words like ‘jaisth’ (meaning eldest) in the dialogs –  “Tum mere jaisth putra ho.”

It also turns illogical sometimes, when you see a mother going to meet someone when she has just lost her son and hasn’t even performed the antim sanskar. The film really misses the word EMOTION. Everyone here including brother, sister, mother, father was more interested in politics than their personal relationship. It is true in politics, people are more concerned about winning and losing, but even a mother? I can’t take that. Katrina Kaif was married to Arjun Rampal because he was standing up for the post of chief minister. I don’t see why a father of a girl will sell her daughter to a person and give over 50 crores rupees as dowry; especially when her daughter is Katrina Kaif. And Katrina Kaif did not turn the match down, which again was unjustified. The script really needed more effort and even though the duration of the film was around 170 mins, it still was incomplete. Although after seeing how the things going in the film and emotional moments turning into hilarious scenes, I was happy it was left incomplete. It would haven difficult to take more.

The high points in the film were the characters who were all shown with some negativity except for the ladies in the film. Why such partiality Mr. Jha? But whether it was a Pandava or a Kaurava, they all had some negativity in them and were using wrong means to win the election. The highlight of these characters was the character of ‘Krishna’ (played by Nana Patekar). It was good to see Jha taking up the risk and showing the negative side of Krishna too.

The casting too deserves special points, though not the acting. The casting deserves special points as the actors were chosen in such a way that they can easily be related to real politicians. But though some non-actors did try their best to act, they still did not come up with convincing performances. Ranbir Kapoor and Nana Patekar played their parts very well. Manoj Bajpai was good too, but after seeing him perform in Shool and Satya, it must not have been difficult for him. For most part of the film, he was only shouting. Ajay Devgn wasn’t making much of an effort in his acting in this film. The character suited him and he could have played it even while sleeping.

Though we see a good amount of effort been put up in this film, the film still demanded a lot more. It looked like Prakash Jha got strained and gave up after sometime and completed it just for the sake of the efforts he put into it. The film could have been much better, but sadly it disappoints.