Raavanan

Cast: Vikram, Aishwarya Rai, Prithvi Raj, Prabhu, Karthik, Music: AR Rahman Direction: Mani Ratnam

The first thing that came to my mind when the credits rolled was ‘Why Ramayana?’ I mean why. Why take a beaten and bruised mythology for adaptation when you don’t have a great inspiration? This confirms the often held belief that our filmmakers don’t have stories at stock. We have great novels in India which could have been adapted to powerful effect. Our filmmakers are either reluctant or too proud to go after such a route. Mani Ratnam had never taken the novel adaptation route but had a very useful ally in the form of Sujatha. The novelist, script-writer’s absence is felt quite acutely in Raavanan.

Mani Ratnam loses the opportunities to use his imagination to present the mythology differently. Although his love of foliage is quite clearly visible in the frames, they remain just that: lovely foliage. He even appeared to have squandered the chance to utilise one of the best actors in India. Make no mistake, I’m referring to Vikram. Every time Vikram comes on frame, the screen judders, shakes, frame cut in between long-shot and mid-frame as a result frustrating you instead of entertaining. Making shot-lengths into miniscule blips, blurring images and then refocusing them and juddering the frames, all of these to create an appearance of ‘racy presentation’ is the latest disease plaguing the Tamil film industry. It’s saddening to know that Mani Ratnam is the latest victim to this epidemic. He of course achieves the effect of ‘racy presentation’. The film races in breakneck speed in the first half, only without any aim. The aims and goals are made clearer only in the second half with the help of a clichéd flashback approach that smacks of Shankar.

When the flashback ends, everything becomes clearer about the story but you’re still a bit disappointed by it. After all, it’s a personal revenge drama and what you had imagined or rather portrayed by the director about Veera falls flat. The outlaw is a people’s man who struggles against police atrocities seems only a facade; in a way he is a sort of maoist leader with the backing of the rural/tribal community. He has virtually created a village inside the forest with women and children living with him. Even eunuchs are included for good measure. Their war against the police reminds you of naxalism and though their cause is not clearly visible, you believe something will emerge later on.

Nothing happens. And you have only yourself to blame: Mani Ratnam never intended to do anything more than Ramayana for Dummies so if you’ve expected something more, well, it is your expectation and is not his problem.

Unfortunately even the Dummies version pans out incohesively. Here, acutely feeling the absence of his scriptwriting companion Sujatha, Mani Ratnam makes elementary mistakes in the script which i. confuses you about the plot and ii. fails to engage. To cite a couple of examples: when the police officer Hemant is abducted by Veera’s men they set out to tonsure his head. Then, quite excitedly, they drag Veera’s younger brother and begin to shave his head too, with him being the willing participant. You don’t know why. Then Veera explains to Ragini that his brother had challenged them about going to the police camp and returning successfully. This incident could have come prior to them setting out to the camp thereby making it clearer to the audience about what was going on. Actually it might have even made Veera’s adventures to the camp suspenseful.

Another is when Veera’s brother-in-law is brought to him. Veera casually enquires about his sister, accuses him and then in a dramatic action, custs his brother-in-law’s arm. There was never any mention of his sister prior to this and you wonder what’s all this fuss about. You get the answer much later in the film in the form of a flashback, by the time you're long past caring.

Correcting all of the above would not have made Raavanan look like a typical Mani Ratnam film. But at least they would have made it look engaging. Sujatha would have ironed out these bumps to make it into a clean ride. He would perhaps even made the dialogues more effective, which are penned by Suhasini are nothing more than explanatory notes blurted out uninspiringly by the characters. Strangely even Mani Ratnam's typical one-liner humour is missing. Even his most serious films had those moments that shocked you and made you chuckle. Out of his comfort level milieu, absence of the able script-writer and concerned perhaps about the effectiveness of his own techniques in the contemporary audience Mani Ratnam delivers the most clichéd, least humouruos, most confusing and above all the noisiest film of his career.