A true trav­eller never knows his des­ti­na­tion and a true cin­ema fan doesn’t return from the­atre with­out tick­ets. [ Pix­monk Phi­los­o­phy :) ]. I watched this movie on the first day !

If you can dif­fer­en­ti­ate between Aayi­rathil oru­van and Mag­a­d­heera, Pic­tures of C.Kondaiah Raju [ Cal­en­dar artist ! ] and MFHus­sain, that’s the key. A cre­ator looses and lim­its him­self  when he enters into write about spritu­al­ity, epics etc., [ ex : Ezuthu chiththar ! ]. Thus the cre­ator is restrict­ing his bound­aries when he writes about aru­padai veedu or about Kumaraku­rubarar. Even with Sujatha, I liked the pref­ace in his Thirukkural book rather than his expla­na­tions — short or big it is what it is.

I still like few scenes and con­cepts in Tha­l­a­bathi [ the fine love between Rajini & Shobana, இது சூர்யா ஸார்.. ஒர்ஸாதீங்க‌ ]. To an extent the sym­bols he has taken from Mahab­haratha was styl­ishly taken and it lacked the pack­age. Time changed and Mani has entered into mul­ti­ple traps like pro­duc­ing his own movies [ not this one ! ], mak­ing in mul­ti­lin­gual, inter­na­tional mar­ket, iconic ARRah­man, Bachchan cou­ple. I never men­tioned any­thing about GURU [ Video wiki of Dhirub­hai ! ] in my blogs, which dis­ap­pointed me a big time.

One of my sim­ple expec­tion in a movie is the movie should have a story and shouldn’t trig­ger any ques­tion from the audi­ence, at least while watch­ing. Why ? Who ? How ? — Raa­vanan has so many such ques­tions. Why Ramayanam ?

Story

Veera kid­naps Ragini, wife of Dev, a hon­est police offi­cer. Dev goes in search of her and Veera. Why Veera kid­naps Ragini ? Because it’s the way Ramayan was writ­ten :)
 

View

The movie has a tone — Grey, which expresses nei­ther Ram or Raa­van is com­pletlely black nor white. Their char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion is in the mid­dle — Grey. The com­po­nents of the movie are wind, fire and of course water in var­i­ous forms [ rain / mist / dew / river/ water­falls ]. That’s the high level fac­tors of the movie.

The inter­est­ing aspect of any story is it’s sus­pense — open ended or close ended. Sus­pense or unknown flow makes the story inter­est­ing — for ex we never knew what hap­pens next in a sim­ple story like “The white bal­loon”. But it slips when you see Kan­dan Karunai, Kar­nan, Gandhi — as the flow of the story or his­tory is known [ excep­tional is Inglo­ri­ous Bas­terds ]. There’s a seri­ous con­cern about the efforts which may eas­ily be superceded by the epic, which we already have in mind. 

I like the mar­ket­ing tech­niques of Mani­rat­nam. As an athe­ist, he never per­forms film pooja, no stills/promotions/news until the release and finally his work speak vol­umes rather than his inter­views. I always get sur­prise in any of his movies with some new char­ac­ter  com­ing out — who never came in posters, pro­mo­tions or songs [ Uma­p­a­thy in Agni Natchathi­ram, Kush­boo in Alai­payuthe, Kapoor in Roja, SPB in Thiruda Thiruda ]. All of his major positve mar­ket­ing aspects are miss­ing in Raavanan.

The grip is entirely miss­ing in the story with log­i­cal ques­tions except in few scenes. Yes ! Some of the scenes have come out bril­liantly with stun­ning visu­als, ideas [ bro­ken Idol ] and music but the entire pack­age disappoints.

The impres­sive per­for­mance of Vikram [ though repeat­ing ], looks n per­for­mances of Aish and Prithvi­raj, extra­or­di­nary loca­tions, visuals, splendid score, bril­liant pro­duc­tion design, action sequences [ and low cut cos­tumes ;) ] are the pos­i­tive things in the movie. The flaws are from the script, dia­logues [ MR misses Sujatha ], char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion [ Priya Mani, Karthik ! ] and the detached/unappealing songs. The out­come is that the movie fails to impress on a whole but I was left with few scenes. Effort­ful art direc­tion, scene which Aish prays the bro­ken idol, the con­fronta­tions of Vikram / Aish, a sur­prise fight, mist cov­ered loca­tions — the list con­tin­ues but with­out the meaning.

I am suprised to see the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Karthik and his intor­duc­tion to explain who he is [ Thank God he didn’t have a tail !]. The direc­tor  impressed in one scene which he tried to depict the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Indra­jith though he is under­stood as Vibee­shanan [ Sakkarai ]. The last few scenes are effec­tively han­dled and the ques­tions that any com­mon man has about the good­ness within Raa­vanan and bad in Ram were also han­dled. The direc­tor thus tried out com­bin­ing cos­mic energy [ Ramayanam ] cou­pled with atomic energy [ Rashomon — it influ­enced a lot ] in the evo­lu­tion of mankind, pro­grammed by Java :) .

He bet­ter don’t reread Aesob fables, Pacha thandira kathai­gal, Vikra­mad­hithan sto­ries, Silap­padikaram, Kun­dalakesi. That’ll save the inno­cent Tamil cin­ema fol­low­ers. When he [ or Shankar or Raaj Kamal] pro­duces movie, it’ll be sleek in con­tent / bud­get and defin­tely not when they exper­i­ment in other’s money.

A true cin­ema fan never gives up and inno­cently waits for the next prod­uct. I remem­ber com­ing out frus­trated after return­ing from a night show [Ji — Ajith ] and some fans con­soled them­selves that the next movie Var­alaaru will com­pen­sate everything. [ அடுத்த‌ ப‌ட‌த்துல‌ அவ‌ர் பின்னிடுவாரு.. என்ன‌ ஒண்ணு.. இதுல‌ ந‌ம்ம‌ள‌ பின்னிட்டாரு :) ]

I still expect some­thing good in Raa­van — the Hindi ver­sion [ though it’s like ver­i­fy­ing the xerox copy :) ].That’s the min­i­mum expec­ta­tion of any true cin­ema fan. I hope that the cre­ator cor­rects him­self in the next movie.  I’ll watch it one more time. Good or bad..  movie watch­ing is always an inter­est­ing task, espe­cially in theatres.

Kamal was proudly men­tion­ing that he found a flaw in ‘A Wednes­day’ that Shah uses a table [ where does it come from ?! ] in the ter­race but he used a slab on 2 drums, it seems.  Adadada.. He remade a bomb blast movie which is not rel­e­vant to TN at all and con­cen­trat­ing on minute details like this.  Mak­ing make sense only when the con­tent is good.

இந்த‌ப் ப‌ட‌மும் க‌ட‌ந்து போகும் !

–Toto.

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1. Dheera Mag­a­d­heera