This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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We never come close to cracking the jungle creature Beera’s mind. Partly a Moist, partly an outcast and an outlaw and outwardly a Robin Hood(don’t miss images of rural kids frolicking with the Santa Claus of the jungles), Abhishek Bachchan plays the character with much relish trying to find a centre to a character the defies gravity. But the glint in the eye and that artless grin cannot be missed. They give the character away. You know this seemingly ruthless guy will fall so hard in love with his mesmerizing hostage that it will destroy him Yup, this Sita will be the death of Raavan. By the time the two develop a feral fatal attraction the narrative loses grip over the unlikely lovers. In the last half-hour Sita and Raavan are on their own. How you wish Mani would have given the narrative ample breathing space for the Abhishek-Aishwarya relationship to grow naturally in the stunning non-judgemental forests. Tragically the feelings that they share never quite jump out of the screen to cloak and choke us. Mani’s narrative style, a synthesis of smothered passions and half-finished emotions preclude any deeply thought-out plan for the modern-day Sita and Raavan. So what lies beyond the forbidden passion between Hindu mythology’s most enigmatic villain and most revered and pristine heroine? Parts of the narrative are uneven, not being able to create a coherent connection between the principal characters and the politics underlining the film’s flamboyant mythological underbelly. It’s a heady ambitious venture about characters trapped in situations from which they cannot escape. Mani Ratnam’s keeps the pace frantic and urgent. His actor have to create their own spaces in the tightly-packed drama of the doomed and the damned. The action and the drama are shot in an ensnaring rush of adrenaline. Abhishek and Vikram’s pre-climactic hand-to-hand combat on a wooden bridge is pure hand-to-mouth stuff, no two ways about it. The cinematography captures the rain-drenched characters and terrain in slippery splendour. Never have we seen the protagonists on screen rough it out so vigorously. Abhishek and Aishwarya play beautifully against one another. When at the end he tells her, "If I had died how would I have met you?" you know his eyes are telling the truth. Raavan is a film that constantly seeks out the dark recesses in its characters’ heart which are then manifested in a montage of beautifully designed images. The film does fall short in some of its emotional moments. But who said that a film about such fatally flawed people had to be picture-perfect both outside and from inside? The imperfections in the storytelling somehow add to the film’s vital primeval quality. The forest is shot with a devastating passion. It becomes a place where the human heart can race against convention without the clock ticking away accusingly. Aishwarya’s heart-stopping beauty reverberates across the natural sights and sounds in the jungles. Abhishek uses his voice, physicality eyes and smile to create a twisted troubled world of inescapable doom for his character.Govinda, Ravi Kissan and Nikhil Diwedi also put in credible performances that seem to grasp the workings of Mani Ratnam’s primeval world in all its uplifting glory. But Vikram as the modern-day Rama is a near-disaster. He is apparently a superstar in the South. And there he shall remain.
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