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!