Raavanan!

The limitation of being a master craftsman in what one does, is that the person can not afford to be just ok or for that matter even good. He has to be more than good. That's the quagmire in which the master director Maniratnam finds himself in, with the release of his latest bilingual extravaganza "Raavan" in Hindi and "Raavanan" in tamil. Having clearly been stated that this movie is a contemporary take on the ancient epic Ramayana, it was supposed that it would portray the myriad shades of the wonderful character "Raavanan".

As per the epic Raavanan is a learned, able and strong king and a great devotee of lord Shiva. In fact, except for the misdeed of kidnapping Sita, I have never heard of him being notorious like some of the other characters like Kamsa, dushaasana etc. Rama-though the lord incarnate, is still a human being and is bound by the cycle of karma. As a result he undergoes all emotional turmoils like dilemmas, suffering and happiness and sorrow. Now the drama heats up! Raavan with such an exceptional track record meets with his downfall with one act of imprudence. Raam too, whom we eulogise, too commits a blunder of suspecting his wife's chastity and forcing her to take a idiotic fidelity test. Though the reason for this stupid action is mentioned in the epic, it's sheer stupidity nevertheless especially when looked at from today's perspective.

My expectation from Maniratnam was that he would build the plot upto a point where he will let the audience decide as to who was great:Raavanan or Rama. Raavanan though kidnaps Sita, an act which is immoral still makes us admire him with his decision to first win Sita's heart before having her. On the contrary though Raam is revered to be a perfect man, in my opinion no one else had inflicted so much pain to any woman as he had to Sita. Moreover what would be the thought process of Sita if she were a modern day woman? I guess she may even take Raavanan's side instead of jumping into fire just because her husband has asked her to jump! :-) This drama, crossfire of ideologies, social beliefs, characters is what I expected and I have to reluctantly admit that I was disappointed in the end. I had this expectation based on his previous movie Guru in which he weaved that magic.

But no one can complain about the performances and music. They are top class. Cinematography is truly amazing and there is no point in mentioning separatley this aspect in a Mani's film. Though the deliberate camera shakes to build the tension of a scene resembled Jason Bourne movies, in my opinion they weren't as effective as the later.

Back to square one, if this movie had been directed by any other director it would have been a great movie. Though the movie is good in many aspects, just because it was directed by avgreat director, Raavanan has out as a normal movie.