Movie Review Raavan 2010
Movie Review Raavan 2010
'Raavan' is a film so terrifically inept, on so many levels of direction, performance and intent, that it demands and receives its audience's full, stunned attention. 'Raavan' runs for more than two hours, and too much is corny, cramped, and vague. Mani Ratnam's epic retelling of an ancient tale is amalgamated and cut to create a stylised but characterless piece with some spectacular imagery. The film is too celebratory of Bollywood's good guy-versus-bad guy, buddy-buddy ethos to rise above the limitations of the genre, and too obsessed with its own seriousness to be a truly 'serious' film. In short, what should be a moving story with big stars and sweeping landscapes by one of the world's greatest directors is a huge let-down.
Mr Ratnam had the chance of a lifetime - to film one of the greatest Indian stories, and blew it by tinkering with it so much that not only is it no longer the story many of us know and love, it's also a version that can't even be considered on par. Mr Ratnam, who can make romantic poetry out of a battle among three men in the confines of a bridge, seems defeated, or at least defused, by this increase in scale. Raavan's shortcomings have less to do with Ratnam's orchestration of his ambitious tale and more to do with the Frankenstein hatchet job enacted against it. The characters Beera (Jr B), Ragini (Aishwarya) and Dev (Vikram) function less as flesh-and-blood figures than obtuse archetypes. The three look and act as if they know they belong in an epic. The compelling emotion that marks the best Mani Ratnam movies is AWOL. The pacing is choppy, with most of the human moments lopped off. Is Beera Munda really the good guy? Or should we cheer the rebellious opposition with the sunglasses? And what the heck is a Munda? Is he related to Bisra Munda? Does he suffer from vocal cord paralysis? Was he inspired by Mukesh Rishi in 'Gunda'?
To say that Abhishek Bachchan hams it up is a gross understatement - he seems right out of a Kanti Shah film, a tinier version of Lambu Aata to be precise. Cringe-worthy. When she's not falling for the umpteenth time on a tree branch, or dancing awkwardly for Vikram, Aishwarya Rai either whines and yelps in a migraine-inducing tone, or stares vacantly, arching her eyebrows curiously. Her character, an outrageous collection of Hindi film heroine cliches would make even Sneha Ullal and Meghna Kothari blush. Vikram more or less sleepwalks as he has little to do, the man is overshadowed by the likes of Ravi Kissen. If it weren't all frustrating enough already, Vikram and Aishwarya indulge in an unintentionally funny seduction number that makes the ghastly Vikram and Shriya song "Meow Meow" in 'Kanthaswamy' seem like a beautiful masque. Mr Ratnam probably expected that Beera's battle with his demons would drive the movie, but unfortunately his own hackneyed script constantly gets in the way.
'Raavan' should really have been a tech demo. Manikandan and Santosh Sivan's cinematography is eye popping, the art direction and set pieces will blow you away. The film is drenched in atmosphere - you can't watch a frame of it without feeling that it has been generations since Bollywood tackled anything on this scale. It all goes to a waste as Mr Ratnam superficially glosses over what should have been the most interesting parts of the story to get to trite drama and stylized violence. A character-driven story like this should probably have spent more time on the characters and less time on computer wizardry. To top it all there's the flamboyantly overdone final
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