Raavan – A visual feast but where’s the meat?

Mani Ratnam, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Vikram, Santosh Sivan =Raavan

Do Big Names Add Up to a Big Movie?

It’s been chosen as a critic’s pick by The New York Times, and has received pretty glowing reviews in the west.  Technically, I would agree, it’s a marvel but it didn’t get my heart – and with a film by Mani Ratnam, you expect things to happen to your heart.

The much anticipated ‘Raavan’ starring Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Vikram, the superstar from the south, and directed by the great director Mani Ratnam, who is idolized by the film industry as ‘Mani Sir’, should have been a terrific movie.  Should have. Could have. But in the end, wasn’t.

There are interesting allusions to ‘Ramayana’ – this telling could well have been  ‘Ravanyana’.  Abhishek plays Beera Munda, a lawless tribal and Vikram is Dev Pratap Sharma, a righteous police officer. The battle of good and evil, between Ram and Ravana, goes up a notch when Beera abducts Ragini, the beautiful spirited wife of Dev, played by Aishwarya Rai.  There is no stark black and white, and both Ram and Ravana take on gray tones.

Govinda as the forest guard is a take on Hanuman, and even the ‘trial by fire’ that Ram subjects Sita to is repeated here as a lie-detector test that Dev insists that Ragini take after having lived in the jungles for 14 days with the lawless Beera. But these remain passing allusions, and could have really been explored to make for a more compelling storyline.

Abhishek as Beera is believable but the character just isn’t intricate enough – evil should have many colors, many dimensions. Beera grunts and grimaces and hardly utters a few sentences at a time. You know nothing of his inner conflicts. Why did he choose to go off the righteous path, why did killing and violence become so routine? Evil can be fascinating – but here that opportunity for his character to be fleshed out is lost.

A flashback about the injustices done to his sister adds some layering to the film and more scenes about his past would have made him a more emphatic character, rather than those endless chase scenes.

Aishwarya, besides looking gorgeous, makes a spirited Ragini/Sita and Vikram plays Dev Pratap Sharma, the police officer, with an intense focus on winning the game – no matter what the cost. The psychological what-ifs could have been intriguing but in the end ‘Raavan’ turns into an action film and the emotional conflicts do not engage one fully.

The real star of the film is the breath-taking locales – the mountains, endless water and the lush, overgrown jungles – stunningly shot by Santosh Sivan and V. Manikandan. The cinematography embraces the stars and the scenery – and visually it’s all a pleasure to watch – especially the battle between good and evil on the collapsing suspension bridge. The evocative lyrics by Gulzar set to the music of AR Rahman also propel the story forward. Certain scenes show the powerful Mani Ratnam touch – but the parts do not add up to a satisfying whole.  I could not help remembering the magnetic quality of ‘Guru’ where you could hardly move your eyes from the screen.

I think ‘Raavan’ was so hyped, and expectations are just much higher from a Mani Ratnam movie than from other Bollywood fare.  Perhaps the Tamil and Telegu versions of  ‘Raavan’ may be the ones with the Ratnam magic but I haven’t seen them yet.

As a diehard Bollywood fan, I go in each time with an open heart, sitting right in the ‘char anna’ class, hoping for the magic of cinema to unfold and carry me away. As the lights go down and the larger-than-life stars come alive on the big screen, sometimes this happens – and sometimes it doesn’t.

With one head or ten, ‘Raavan’ didn’t quite do it for me.