Striking images, shades of gray in ‘Raavan’ - Movie Review
June 19, 2010
Starring Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Vikram, Govinda
In every Bollywood film, there’s a kernel of the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic about Lord Rama and his wife Sita, who was kidnapped by Raavan, a 10-headed demon king. It’s a sacred text and also a great story—a sprawling, action-packed tale of good and evil, love and hate, triumph and suffering. The influence of this foundational narrative on Indian cinema cannot be underestimated. Director Mani Ratnam’s latest, Raavan, is a full-blown adaptation of the Ramayana. The story has been modernized—including different names for the characters—and stripped down to its skeleton with powerful effect.
The art direction and cinematography are visually stunning, and the music, by A.R. Rahman (the Oscar-winning composer for Slumdog Millionaire), is spectacular. And who better to put at the center of this feast for the senses than actress Aishwarya Rai? Even muddy and bloody, she is breathtaking. As the film’s antagonist puts it, gold tested in fire glows brighter.
Those tests reveal the actress and her character to be more than a pretty face, though—giving depth and dimension to the archetypal figure of the good wife Sita.
Rai plays Ragini, a dance teacher married to a policeman, Dev (played by Vikram, a star in India’s Tamil-language film industry). They move to a small town in northern India controlled by a criminal tribal leader, Beera (played by Rai’s real-life husband Abhishek Bachchan), and Dev is charged with taking Beera down. Beera kidnaps Ragini and holds her prisoner in a cold forest—mythic in atmosphere—full of mountains, mist, and waterfalls. Dev doggedly tries to rescue her, while she relentlessly fights back and tries to escape. During her captivity, she and Beera become furiously intimate—although not physically. (In one key, sexually-charged scene, Beera explicitly refrains from touching her.)
Beera and Dev are not the black-and-white characters of the Ramayana. Bachchan gives an over-the-top performance befitting the crazed Beera, who can’t bring himself to kill Ragini—although he doesn’t hesitate to kill anyone else—and it’s not because of her beauty or her fiery inner strength. It’s because the same pain that makes him a demon also makes him human. Vikram’s Dev is strong and righteous—as a god should be—but he dispenses justice without compassion and at the expense of others. Neither man changes much during the course of the story; it’s our perception of them that does.
Among the supporting actors, Govinda stands out as a forest guard who helps Dev find Ragini. His is a Puck-like character and a stand-in for Rama’s monkey sidekick, Hanuman.
Like the Ramayana, Raavan is no fairy tale, and both the epic and the adaptation are in parts challenging and surprising.
Raavan is rated Must See.
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