‘Raavan’ (Hindi) Movie Review

After all the hype, when you go with the expectation that Maniratnam is going to view ‘Ramayan’ from a totally fresh perspective , what you get is, non- stop downpour throughout the film which is irritating beyond a point. Aishwarya Roy gets kidnapped in the beginning. From then on till interval, there’s not a single inch of progress in the story. In fact, from kidnapping to interval, there is an assortment of disjointed scenes making us wonder if the editor went for a power nap! Even if the director shuffles all these scenes at random, it won’t make any difference! In the jungle, Aishwarya is sometimes tied down with a rope while on many other occasions, she is totally free! Every now and then Aishwarya and Abhishek Bachchan exchange fiery challenges. We can’t make out why Aishwarya, supposed to be a courageous lady, jumps off the cliff once. (It is another matter that she escapes death a la ‘Punnagai Mannan’ (Yesteryear Tamil superhit of K. Balachander with Kamal and Revathy)) ‘How can I shoot a woman who stands in front of me absolutely not scared of death when I point a gun at her?!’ is the logic given by Abhishek for not killing her for 14 days. No big deal! He applies on his face sometimes kajal, sometimes charcoal and sometimes pure mud and does some facial gimmicks like as ‘bak bak’. In the end when Aishwarya repeats the same ‘bak bak’ it’s a big slice of comedy! Kya zaroorat hai Mani Sir?!

Abhishek is a reasonably peace- loving common man in the flashback. What made him such a pucca jungle citizen (!) is not shown convincingly. He comes out as a forest man from Congo or something! You can infer that they have tried to portray Ram in an oblique villainous shade {Ram (Vikram in Hindi) kills by deceit Vibheeshan who volunteers for a peace talk. In the end also, the grey shade of Ram is clearly visible}. Other than this, what the director is trying to say about Sita and Raavan characters is simply not clear. He hasn’t bothered to explain it to the average viewer either. Govinda does some banana peel comedy in the name of Hanuman. They say Hanuman is supposed to be extremely intelligent. Here, they haven’t troubled Govinda with any such thing!

Not a single song is in the right slot (other than Shoorpanaka Priya Mani’s engagement song). Why a ‘Dasavataharam’ style half broken Ranganatha statue comes on screen suddenly is not known!

Locales are excellent, Camera is brilliant and they have stunned you technologically. It is a pity that there is nothing in the movie other than these. If you ask me whether I liked anything at all in a film of such epic proportions, I’ll only say I liked the name given to Sita by Manitatnam very much…. ‘Raagini’

Cinema Virumbi