Director: Mani Rathnam
Ramayan is a very bold story which along with many knots, put forth that both the good & bad when at fault pay for their sins: a knot worth to be inspired. When you are struck by an idea you start enjoying it in different ways, like how a guy who falls for a girl will go on creating and recreating the scene of submission. As these ideas continuously follow while the creator is envisaging, his analytical mind starts working on ways to connect these random hair rising moments. You know they excited you and you know now you have to connect those points to make it into a plausible screenplay. When you start writing you have all your notes ready and you work on ways to insert them; because these notes – hand outs are the very definition of each character and motive for each & every particular hair rising moment. But the mind has this treacherous power to be excited by the high moments alone that you will want to take great care in crafting them. When you are that creatively activated you will live for that moment alone and forget about the cues. Then when you realise that cues are missing you just go about including them in. Then you will remember you need character traits that you created to be portrayed too. On doing that you will feel you have said all you wanted to say and feel proud. But later on only will you realise that there needs to be a seamless follow of events; as events alone drives these characters to act the way the notes had instructed them to and events alone leads to those high moments through the path of the cues. At the end you will see that it has all been rushed up.
Raavan is the latest example for the aforementioned concept. The movie has the graph of the three characters correct; the sub plots and the incidents where they should react as the tide changes from familiarity to the unknown, perfect; the intricate details minutely sketched out for us to marvel. But why should they do it? Why should sub plots come because they are to be told? Why should the tribals list out qualities of Beera in bullet points like a power-point presentation? Why should there be so much importance to artistry at the sake of losing the purpose of the existence of the very same? Why should Sangeev be jumping trees just because he plays Hanuman? Why should the flow of events be controlled by the director rather than letting the events unfold at their own rate and speak out for them? We may never know why the storm alone was give center stage discarding the silence that should have come before it. And thus Beera, Raavan and Mani leaves us wondering like how Raagini looks baffled post the climatic battle. But if you are a person who care least about seamless flow and just want to witness great cinematography, background music and the unapologetic nonchalant character, Dev played with utmost dedication by the aging Vikram you will lap it up.
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