Raavan is another movie from veteran Indian movie director Mani Ratnam. As the movie is the adaptation of Ramayana,(one of the greatest epic ever told) set up in the present world,I was pretty excited to watch this movie and had lots of expectations from this when i went to theater betting my 150 rupees on it(my whole week pocket money).As in original Ramayana there was a battle between good and evil.The good one was prince Ram(a epitome of complete virtuous,perfect man),his wife(a epitome of perfect,completely pure woman),his brother Laxman and Hanuman.The evil one was Raavan,a complete evil man,entirely opposite of Ram.Now,the events occurs in the epic are almost same in the movie too but as the movie is based on modern world,there is a difference in characterization so the consequences of the events occurs are also different.In the movie a naxalite bandit Beera(Raavan) who is also the lead character of the movie,kidnap Ragini(Sita) who is the wife of police officer Dev(Ram).Beera unlike Raavan is not completely evil(he is shown like Robin Hood). Kidnapping Ragini is not an act of lust and greed but but an act to avenge his sister's iniquitous death who was raped in police custody.He is wild,violent and ruthless to his enemies but he is not evil he also have a righteous side.Also,Dev unlike prince Ram is not righteous,he is evil and cruel and can outreach the limit of morals and ethics to rescue his wife.As the story moves Beera fall in love with Ragini and Ragini came to know good side of Beera and the dark side of her husband.Due to all this changes occurs,the outcome of the movie is completely different from the epic,but i admit it was brilliant.
The best thing of the movie is its cinematography which is done by the very talented Santosh Sivan,he is the best at his work and this movie is the most brilliant work from him so far.The exquisite beauty of Indian forests,waterfalls,rivers and the villages are captured beautifully. Raavan has the best cinematography any Indian movie ever had,almost parallel to international standards(like Last of the Mohicans) and it is the greatest achievement for this movie.The direction of Mani Ratnam is very good and there is no doubt,at present he is the best director of India.
Casting of the movie is grand and the performance from all the caste(except Abhishek) is splendid.The performance of Aishwarya Rai as Ragini is very powerful and colorful.In recent years,she establish herself as an actress of substance and maturity.Her transformation from a beauty queen to an talented actress is really worthy to be praise and admire.Once Roger Ebert said about her that she is not only first but also second most beautiful woman in the world,and I agree with him on this one.Now,she is the deadly combination of both beauty and talent.The other actors did their part very well.Vikram's acting as Dev was thrilling and chilling.Govinda and Ravi kishan both did well in small but important roles.The soundtrack of the movie is given by Oscar winner A.R Rehman and he did another outstanding job under his mentor Mani Ratnam.
Among the bad things,the most disappointing is the performance of Abhishek Bachchan as a lead role of Raavan.He did not perfectly fit in the role and did lots of mistakes like his accent of a rural man and his expressions all seemed so artificial and out of place.He is among the most over-rated actor of bollywood and he continuously fail to deliver performance.He certainly was not the right choice to did the role.Plot development is another thing that disappoint me,the movie before interval was so fast and the events occurred very quickly and just after interval they inserted the song( and all those dancing stuffs,which i hate so much)this all things left me untouched and unsatisfied.The problem was in the script, you cannot make only 135 hour long movie on a seven books long epic(Ramayana is the second largest epic after Mahabharata) and also add two dancing songs.I admit ending was very good and make a lot of sense but the disappointment was in how they reached to the ending.
I was delighted when i heard that Mani Ratnam was adapting Ramayana into the modern world.This is the first effort from bollywood to adapt such a great epic and only Mani Ratnam had the potential to do justification to such a great epic.But,i truly admit Mani Ratnam failed to deliver completely.Yes,the movie was entertaining and had every aspect that Indian audience expect from bollywood movie and there is no doubt in my mind that the movie will be a big commercial success.
The best thing of the movie is its cinematography which is done by the very talented Santosh Sivan,he is the best at his work and this movie is the most brilliant work from him so far.The exquisite beauty of Indian forests,waterfalls,rivers and the villages are captured beautifully. Raavan has the best cinematography any Indian movie ever had,almost parallel to international standards(like Last of the Mohicans) and it is the greatest achievement for this movie.The direction of Mani Ratnam is very good and there is no doubt,at present he is the best director of India.
Casting of the movie is grand and the performance from all the caste(except Abhishek) is splendid.The performance of Aishwarya Rai as Ragini is very powerful and colorful.In recent years,she establish herself as an actress of substance and maturity.Her transformation from a beauty queen to an talented actress is really worthy to be praise and admire.Once Roger Ebert said about her that she is not only first but also second most beautiful woman in the world,and I agree with him on this one.Now,she is the deadly combination of both beauty and talent.The other actors did their part very well.Vikram's acting as Dev was thrilling and chilling.Govinda and Ravi kishan both did well in small but important roles.The soundtrack of the movie is given by Oscar winner A.R Rehman and he did another outstanding job under his mentor Mani Ratnam.
Among the bad things,the most disappointing is the performance of Abhishek Bachchan as a lead role of Raavan.He did not perfectly fit in the role and did lots of mistakes like his accent of a rural man and his expressions all seemed so artificial and out of place.He is among the most over-rated actor of bollywood and he continuously fail to deliver performance.He certainly was not the right choice to did the role.Plot development is another thing that disappoint me,the movie before interval was so fast and the events occurred very quickly and just after interval they inserted the song( and all those dancing stuffs,which i hate so much)this all things left me untouched and unsatisfied.The problem was in the script, you cannot make only 135 hour long movie on a seven books long epic(Ramayana is the second largest epic after Mahabharata) and also add two dancing songs.I admit ending was very good and make a lot of sense but the disappointment was in how they reached to the ending.
I was delighted when i heard that Mani Ratnam was adapting Ramayana into the modern world.This is the first effort from bollywood to adapt such a great epic and only Mani Ratnam had the potential to do justification to such a great epic.But,i truly admit Mani Ratnam failed to deliver completely.Yes,the movie was entertaining and had every aspect that Indian audience expect from bollywood movie and there is no doubt in my mind that the movie will be a big commercial success.