Is there a Raavan, inside.....

Thus did Mani Ratnam sign off on the audio booklet. Ten heads, he said. A hundred voices. Is there a Ram inside Raavan. Is there a Raavan, inside every one of us.

He wasn't fooling me. With that excitement that only a Mani Ratnam movie or an A.R.R album can inspire, I ran around telling everyone, what he really wanted to say was closer to,

Is there a Raavan inside Ram?

Mani Ratnam's Raavanan/Raavan has been in the news for a while now. With D-Day finally here, I waited for an agonizing day, catching the morning show on Day 2. En Route to my seat, I probably heard the most Tamil since coming to Gurgaon, and it was a pity I was too nervous to appreciate it. So we move, to the movie... Raavanan...

The title track, Veera, kicked things off. That track has perhaps the best start of the album, and what a way to use it! Vikram's face in various contortions and guises lit up the screen. Then confirmation... Mani Ratnam/Madras Talkies/Raavanan.

The first thing that strikes you about the movie is the visuals. Somehow, the same screen that showed a movie no less technically brilliant that Ridley Scotts' "Robin Hood" last week, seems to have transformed into some sort of super-HD screen. Water sprays, sunlight seeps through, blinds and lights in equal measure. Every frame is a masterpiece, drawing from the one before and setting up the one after. Santosh Sivan has easily produced the best looking movie I have seen, barring Avatar, The Lord of the Rings and a few fantasy movies that slip my mind. Green never looked greener, nor did water ever make you thirstier, nor did the inner Raavanan ever wake up as swiftly as today, when the clear blue eyes of Aishwarya Rai Bachan lit up with surprise.

The story has several, several subtle shades in it. For starters, this is not the Raamayana. Like Abhishek Bachan very eloquently put it in a recent interview, this is more the Raavayan. By changing perspective, by looking at this war from the point of view of Raavan, Mani Ratnam has indeed done what only one person before him has - Kamban, who wrote the Kamba Ramayanam proclaiming Raavan as king, god and what not. For the pious who are protective of their faith, this movie is not for you. Ram here is quick to anger, he is ruthlessly efficient, and he is by no means out to live the perfect life. This is war, and his concept of right seems more Krishna than Rama. The gut-wrenching interrogation of Veera's B-I-L, the heartless betrayal of the Parley code wrt Veera's brother, and later, the ultimate deception. Prithviraj is adequate, yet in the face of all-round outstanding acting, comes off as the weak link.

Sita is ravishing, sinfully so. Like mentioned, her costumes inadvertently torn, her exertions to escape, and her cat-in-a-box attitude, with her soft vulnerability, her fears and her beauty - Mani Ratnam, Santosh Sivan and Aishwarya Rai conspire to tempt you into believing that there is a modicum of reason to the madness that grips Veera. Ash comes out with her best performance that I care to recollect - I was a staunch critic of her plastic faces and irritating dialogue delivery, but today I eat my words whole. Her pleas, "Show me the villains as villains, is that so difficult for a God to do! Give me the strength to hate them... Do not let them love me." and "Dev! It is an act. I act brave, and violent and strong... Inside I live with the fear that you may not come" are truly touching. That we can feel for Ash as we would for one such as Sita (you get the comparison) says volumes.

Dialogues by Suhasini (?) are apt. Maybe a touch too many overt references to the epic, but overall they serve their cause. The dialogues for Karthik (and their subsequent delivery by the veteran) are a pleasant reminder that comedy can exist purely thro' words, not necessarily actions. An inspired dialogue this - "I could kill you for your Sita... But it is for her that I save you."

Vikram, Veera, is outstanding. Despite the mildly irritating "Bam bam dum dum" and the 'Aalavandhan' inspired head twitches, he delivers what his director has asked of him – make this monstrous, uncultured demon a likeable and upright, although violent, outlaw. The movie does not depend on any one actor, true, yet the tension and the pace is persistent because of Veera's emotion, bubbling near the surface, unpredictable and even blasphemous. Consciously, the 'Curse' on Raavan to not touch any woman against her will here is more of a choice – such details contribute in making Veera much less of a villain, and more of a hero stuck on the wrong side. Indeed, you might be tempted to wonder, “Hang on, this is what happened in the story, yet there we always thought Raavanan was the evil guy... this guy seems all right!”

The music of the film is an enigma. With not much insight into the world of Rahman that so many next to me have explored in depth, I will not venture but to suggest that the music is a bit underrated. Suddenly, a tune jumps out of you and sticks. Also, the rot about ARR being unable to score BGM's is baseless. I used Kanathil Muthamittal as a case study before, Raavan too is a case in point.

Something I CAN comment on, at least amongst my peers, is the lyrics by Vairamuthu. The man is a god of imagery, and nobody I have heard has ever courted Nature's beauty as elegantly. That said, “Kodu Pota”, “Keda Kiri” are timepass. “Kaatu Siriki” which has come under fire purely because of its extraordinary rendering as “Ranjha Ranjha” in Hindi, actually hits home with the lyrics, though a few more listens are requied to isolate the lines that do. “Veera” is written by the director himself (again, a sly move to get his point across without interfering with the storyline). “Kalvare” is a happy wive's day-dream. “Usure Pogudhey” has 5 geniuses working in Tandem, and deserves a post by itself.

To sum up, Raavanan is a great watch. It may not be, at first glance, a movie that may require Mani Ratnam's treatment. Yet there are shades, subtle shades yet like in any enduring epic, shades that (I bet) will reveal themselves as time progresses. On the face of it, it is just a glorified hostage tale, with bells and whistles – yet beneath that, it is the tale of the ego of a man, the fears of a wife and the desire of a villain. It is also the attempt by a director to explore his own (probably not-so-concrete) beliefs in a man we are brought up to know as the embodiment of evil. Yes, the movie has issues with pace, and sometimes the reactions could have been underplayed (considering that Mani R is the god of the understatement) yet I feel to pick on these and pan the movie as stilted or uninspiring is an attempt to show you are 'above the hype and the names involved'. This movie is open enough to be interpreted in a million ways, and only those who want to will look at the glossy, 'faulty' outer covering.

Signing off with a dialogue that I believe is meant to be important, but did not fully understand...this is one movie the DVD is a must buy...

“A husband like a God, a wife who is from the heavens, and me, a demon who can only envy. Yet in my envy I shall rise, and I shall outshine you all!”

Strange. DVD, quick please!

Have I told you about...

The flow of the world dictates that the ill-mannered will reign and the soft-spoken shall perish. Kali is upon us, the tut-tutting elders pronounce gravely, and look at us young 'uns with face arranged as much a condescending smirk as their hearts will allow. That explains it all, gives method to the madness that has enveloped us - Kat rides sympathy waves in low-waist khadi sarees that make an oomphatic statement, India beats Zimbabwe in a cricket match, and more TV footage was devoted to the lineaments of a yesteryear legend than the feet of a prodigy. Ah, yes... bring out those doomsday prophecies, for if this isn't the part when God steps in and cleans everything up with a flourish, then he needs a new scriptwriter.

Yet in dark times springs hope eternal (and equally eternally is it stamped out or told off with severity) and such was the setting of the scene that follows. Imagine a share-auto filled with 16 people. None of them, mind you, have heard of any of the following three words - Diet, Deodorant and Digestion. Now imagine one less person (probably a prude, silly him). Ah yes. Provide some poetic license for the author, and assume (a tricky affair, but humor me) that he does, indeed, have a grasp of those 3D objects we encountered earlier. Perfect.

The auto is stationary. The driver believes that a full auto is a beautiful auto, and anything less is an abomination, not to mention financially and environment-wise unsound. An old woman walks towards this lorry dressed up deviously as a cute little automobile (the lorry, not the lady), and looks. 15 pair of eyes look back. She pouts, ever so slightly, and her lip quivers. 14 pair of eyes hold firm. One particular pair, whose owner just happens to be the first guy to enter and all that unimportant stuff, gets up for the old lady who hurries in without a word, and goes to the back seat to travel adventurously (the owner of the dropped pair, not the lady), with feet hanging tantalizingly unguarded for violent highway drivers.

If Bertram Wooster had met the Ostrich Sheik from Prince of Persia, he could have asked, "Have I told you about the Code of the Krishanamurthies?"

Legend has it that however lame the reason, however rude, abnoxious and belligerent the receiver and however unfavourable the resulting circumstance might be, a follower of the Code would put a Woman's comfort or need above his own. Modern day followers speak of something called Chivalry, yet this is but a timid term. The Code is stringent, absolute. It is complete, and it does not back down in the face of empowered females. In fact, the Code would probably force the chap to gaze into the aforementioned face and compliment the wearer on the choice of lipstick, mascara or earring.

So laddie, have I told you about the Code of the Krishanamurthies?

Of parting and honesty

A bit late in catching it, but I caught "P.S - I love you" yesterday. The movie was good, yes, with some endearingly romantic renditions by Gerald Butler, and a believably down-to-earth Hilary Swank. A touch too slow to begin with, yet the pace picks up later, and an amazing way of finishing it all off so elegantly. But if you detected doubt in my tone, indifference maybe, and a desire to get due credit and all that done with, brushed away - you are absolutely spot on.

Through the movie, I kept thinking about two other movies - also about love and parting - "A Walk to Remember" and "If Only". The first is an absolute mind-blower. You just can't slot it under feel-good cinema, or drama, or romance, nothing! The second, a very good movie in it's own right, is faster, more dramatic, yet doesn't have the elegance of the first.

The common theme, in all three, was love, parting and death. Specifically, what would you do for the person you love. Do you hold tighter, or do you let go? Remarkably, "If-Only" held tighter, "A Walk...." reconciled with the inevitable and "P.S" taught you how to let go. However, that wasn't what I got from them all. What I saw, under the hood, was an innate fear of all of us, about waking up one day and finding that something or someone you love is not longer there. That feeling, in all these movies, drives incomparable acts of compassion, selfless things that are so touching that, despite the odds being in such situations 1 to a million, you wonder if that was you, would you be as perfect as that.

Personally, I think a lot of things that we have today are taken for granted. Particularly people. We assume that the same faces we fight with, or scream or rant or hammer down today, will be there tomorrow for round two. We believe that the people we have had forever, will continue to be there forever after. We honestly, honestly believe that people we've met, and have grown to love, will stand around forever, and hey, you managed without them once right? What's the big deal?

Unfortunately, life doesn't flow backward. There could be a host of reasons for it, but people don't stay around forever. Imagine any person you care about, imagine them just gone, tomorrow. Without knowing how much you loved them, enjoyed their company, cared for them - imagine having to deal with all that. I guess what I'm getting at is, sometimes we keep from saying the 'silly sentimental things' - there's a moment where you almost, almost bare your heart, but a voice in your head - that complacent, lazy, smug devil reminds you of how stupid you may look, and that things are fine now anyway. Whenever you have one of those, just imagine, if today was the last time you'd speak to that person. Give yourself that little push, and let the special people know really how special they are.

Worst case, they might dismiss you as a sentimental sop. Usually accompanied by a sudden change in topic, or an 'Enough already! :)'. But the same people will watch those movies with a pack of tissues and cry their tear-ducts dry. To them I say - Life doesn't have grandiose moments of epiphany - you make your own, small, memorable moments. Why wait for dramatic events, when the people, your feelings, and you are here already?

P.S - I love y'all!