The verdict is out – Raavan could well be the proverbial bad egg in Mani Ratnam’s basket. Even if that line is the bad egg in my basket of prose, and doesn’t make any sense to you, you get my point.
And if you thought RGV’s Aag was his nadir, try this – Raavan is being referred to as Mani Ratnam’s Aag by RGV himself.
To make an unwatchable film is something. But to be compared to something that was such a colossal disaster at the box office (by RGV’s own admission, his Aag just was an itch he just had to scratch) is not something you, as a celebrated filmmaker, would be proud to have in your oeuvre, considering you started out making movies that appealed to the so-called intelligentsia and not ‘make a quick buck and play to the gallery’ ones like most of our dear filmmakers are wont to indulge in.
But before you take your anger out on me, here is what some bloggers who know their cinema have to say:
Jai Arjun (whose monograph on Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron I eagerly await) is not impressed by snarling Abhishek with oodles of black/brown/yellow goo on his face:
But come face to face with the person himself and this is what you get: Bachchan throwing his facial muscles out of gear by curling his lips and snarling as fiercely as he can (which is not very fiercely), or making grunting noises that suggest he has a truckload of phlegm stuck in his throat, or shaking his head wildly and mumbling “Chika Chika Chika” (yes, like in that song in Race) or “Bak Bak Bak” while the camera jump-cuts all over the place. This last gesture is presumably meant to convey Beera’s tortured state of mind, but in the scenes where he glares and babbles at the captive Ragini (Aishwarya Rai), the impression I got was of a 10-year-old boy trying really, really hard to be psychotic… while his slightly bored girlfriend watches from the sidelines, trying really, really hard to be impressed.
Baradwaj Rangan of Indian Express discusses the symbolic parallels between Ramayan and the movie’s script and arrives at this conclusion:
Raavan, too, has its share of parallels with its source material – an exile based on the number fourteen, the villain’s sister being hauled up by the nose, a bridge connecting protagonist and antagonist, the lovable sidekick-monkey (cheerfully played by Govinda, and named Sanjeevini Kumar) who even rattles off couplets styled like the Chaleesa. And once again, Ram (a scowling Vikram, who doubtless had more opportunity to flex his acting chops in the Tamil version, as Raavanan) casts unjustified and uncharitable doubt on Sita-Ragini’s chastity, when she’s attired in virgin-white, no less.
If there’s a movie that Mani Ratnam could have gone mumblecore with, it’s this one, a psychologically driven art film dressed up as glitzy, plot-motivated commercial cinema, with fussed-over Sabyasachi costumes on a heroine who’s never allowed to look anything less than breathtaking. Even her bruises are beautiful. It takes real effort to pull your eyes away from the sparkling surface and peer deep into the narrative, which reimagines the Ramayana in an intriguingly idiosyncratic fashion.
Ideasmithy is not very kind in her review of Raavanan, either. She says it was a dirty trick to lure the audience with the promise of retelling an old story from a much maligned villain’s point of view. She thinks it’s better to read an old edition of the Ramayan in Amar Chitra Katha format, instead.
And my favourite reviewer of all time, Sahil Rizwan, who is living, breathing proof that a picture is worth a thousand words, nails it with his stick figure review of ‘Raavan’ on The Vigil Idiot. Please read through to the very end – the last ‘Sholay Reunion’ panel is worth a thousand Picassos!
Do you think Raavan/Raavanan was the worst offering from Madras Talkies? Vote on the poll below:
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