I’m honestly baffled. I can’t understand the largely negative critical and commercial reactions to Raavan. I saw the movie a few days ago, and thought it was absolutely brilliant. To be doubly sure, I saw it again 2 days later, and I still thought it was brilliant. Hence my decision to post this review, in the hope to balance out the stream-of-criticism pouring out against this film.
I won’t dwell on the story, for it is well known, but I will say this one thing: Mani Ratnam’s interpretation, though a contemporary one, is true to the gist of the original epic. In fact, in more ways than people seem to realize, and as I myself learnt later after reading up a lot more after watching this film, but that’s a much more detailed and separate discussion. For the purposes of this review, let’s just say that the storyline is robust, the plot sharp and well-defined, and the dialogue well-written.
The cinematography, is simply breath-taking. This, might be the only part of my review which everybody seems to agree on – that Santosh Sivan has done another superlative job of managing the camera. But this time he’s done more than normal: he’s almost given the film an Ang Lee / Zhang Yimou sort of quality, introducing some amount of magic realism into the film through his lens. An example of this is the absolutely gorgeous sequence of shots in which Aishwarya falls from the tree into the river – Those few seconds alone were worth the price of the ticket. And while we’re on the camera, the editing is quite nifty too, supporting the director’s and the cinematographer’s visions very well.
Acting: outside of Aishwarya, the acting is top-notch. But that doesn’t ever surprise me in a Mani Ratnam film, for he’s probably the only contemporary Indian director who can elevate actors well beyond their natural potential(Yuva was a great example on this!) Abhishek delivers the role of his acting career, creating a somewhat new, and a very memorable villain. Govinda is surprisingly good, and at an average, the rest of the cast does a fairly decent job too.
Music: Rahman is superlative, as always. And the music blends in effortlessly, and beautifully, into the film. The one exception would be “thok de killi”, which seemed like a force-fit, and was among the few low points in the film. On an aside, the film has more songs than have been released on the CD, and if anybody can tell me why, or where I could find the missing music, I’d appreciate it very much.
All of the above is good, but here’s why this film is probably Mani Ratnam’s best, and a truly great film: it makes you think long after the film is over. The film forced me to go back to Indian mythology and sacred texts and review my perspective on this whole sequence of events. It made me question, and it made discuss, and it made me learn. It made me listen to the music again, and it made me watch the film again. And what could be a greater achievement for the film than to do all of this?
I’d strongly recommend watching this film, if possible the only show left in NCR, else on DVD. It’s spectacular.