Raavan

Tribal demon can be godly in reality :

Film review

Aravinda Hettiarachchi

Indian Filmmaker Mani Rathnam’s Hindi and Tamil films Raavan (Hindi) and Ravana (Tamil) were released in Sri Lanka recently. Most of the Indian film lovers in our country anticipated that this film would have a similar story line as that of the epic Ramayanaya. Yet Raavan has features of modernity rather than a mere story blended with legend and mythology.

I see it as a tragic-fictional work of art focusing on two warriors belonging to different social classes, both fall in love with the same woman.

The film tries to prove to the heroine (as well as the audience) that a tribal demon can be godly in reality. At the same time an apparently civilized man (Dev) of godly attributes could be a demon in reality.

It is evident that the so-called civilized world dominates the scene until the truth is revealed. At the end of the film the tribal man who is governed by the rules of the nature seems to be good. The fall (or death) of Beera in reality is one extraordinary reason for his godly love. Yet, in another point of view, love has no reasons.

Although both Raavan and Avatar have different story lines, they carry out the same philosophical content. Thus, it is clear that the Indian popular cinema is directly or indirectly influenced by the Hollywood films.

Beera (Abhishek Bachchan) whom most of our film fans assumed is Ravana is the demon. However Mani Rathnam had not created this character totally within the environment of the forest. Earlier, Beera lived in one of the open rural villages of India. Yet an unfortunate incident is that his beautiful sister was molested (in her wedding day) by the police and committed suicide. This made him a half tribal leader with an erotic personality.

The story openss as Beera and his semi-tribal clan hide in the forest of north India due to their criminal activities against the police. Beera’s hunting skills and knowledge of the jungle won’t allow the Indian police to trace them easily.

The police are even scared of this dangerous outlaw. In the beginning of the film, Beera and his clan ruthlessly kill the policemen and loot their weaponry. Here the film director allows the spectator to believe that Beera is an arrogant killer.

Dev (Vikram), the legal husband of Ragini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), denotes a controversial meaning through his name. The heroine and the audience glimpse the ruthless side of Dev’s personality from episodes which take place within the storyline. This encourages the fans and the heroine to be more realistic about the story and search for the good side of Beera.

Dev tracks down Beera. The comic forest guard (Govinda) whom our fans interpreted as Huannuman, the monkey, helps Dev and his fellow policemen to capture Beera. The war between Beera and Dev ends with Ragini’s tears. Ragini cries for the reason that Beera is fallen shot dead down to the steep of the mountain with the unethical bullets of her husband Dev and his men. The scenes full of climbing rocky mountains or jumping off cliffs with wonderful stunt acts enthralls the fans. Yet these actions of cinematic technicalities go beyond the necessity of reproducing the particular film’s story. It reveals Rathnam’s desire to make a celebrating film with Euro-Us components of Hollywood.

On the other hand, this intention had also blurred the essence of the story to a certain extent. Yet his amazing talent in cinematography still reproduces emotions heartily and aesthetically on the screen. This holds the storyline unbroken until the last scene.

A film story, in most instances, loses its integrity due to the mistakes and over interpretations of the film script.

I suppose that Rathnam’s film script, to a certain extent, dragging its basic content into unnecessary fascinations. Compared with his masterpiece Nayagan, the film loses lot of nuances. Yet he has very keenly surfaced the basic contradictions in Ramayanaya through this saga. Also, Rathnam metaphorically lays a complicated sociological meaning underneath this storyline.

There we metaphorically find the Euro-centric post colonial civilization and its problem with the public in India through Dev’s character and the police. Controversially, within the same society, we see the Asian tribal residues in humanism through Beera’s character while the universal human love of a woman beyond ethnical faithfulness softly touches us through Ragini’s character.

Rathnam, with this massive production, is still maintaining his reputation as the founder of the middle path in Indian cinema between the serious and popular. Yet his contribution to a classical production is still lagging behind after Nayagan.

..................................

<< Artscope Main Page