I saw the movie Raavan today a few hours ago. The cinematography is beautiful, vivid and awe-inspiring...the rain-drenched, lush and verdant locales...from forests of Karnataka, Kerala, MP...It is an unforgettable visual experience.
And then the story...inspired by the epic Ramayana, it has Abhishek, Aishwarya and Vikram in the lead...and a personal vendetta...a theme explored multiple times in Hindi cinema. What was totally absent - any chemistry between Aishwarya and Abhishek or Vikram. This can only be explained by the extremely limited acting skills of Aish..She is stagey at best. The sequence where she is teaching kids classical dance is a good demonstration of her work...articulated in a single word- affected (meaning here: speaking or behaving in an artificial way to make an impression).
Where every emotion, every expression seems like an effort...nothing is spontaneous.
And this is where the film falters...for I cannot imagine investing myself in any movie where there is so little chemistry between the actors...I simply stop caring.
To give you an example of a not-so-good movie where the actors are either so faultless or good in that particular case that I cared earnestly about the outcome.
Fanaa had 2 actors par excellance...yes, the movie was ridiculed for its plot amongst several other things...but they just nailed the chemistry...and that was enough. Other examples include Veer Zaara and even Ashoka.
Dil Se was another disappointment...I have a feeling Mani Rathnam might also be at fault...he has grand ideas I admire...but something vital is amiss...I think that the movie Raavanan (Tamil version) is better than this one...of course the lead heroine is still the same..so a major limitation because the movie revolves around her.
Vikram lent intensity to the movie...Abhishek was adequate. He has improved..though his character of Beera (an outlaw with a golden heart) was not edgy enough...It was a sanitized version of what he could have been... his character needed the guts of a Vishal Bhardwaj to develop.
Ultimately, the bottomline for me (both reflexively and after giving it some thought) was that it is a visually appealing movie that just fails to make a connection to the heart. The story had potential...it just gave precedence to style over substance. Of course, very few movies combine these two elements effectively and what is needed for that are masterful actors.
So, Raavan is like a picturesque landscape painting...a good idea at best.
COMMENTS from other blogs which I think were very insightful:
http://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/review-raavan/
From Rangan Baradwaj: As it turns out, this movie is more an excuse to allow the cinematographers to run riot. Ragini (Aishwarya), who’s been kidnapped by Beera (Abhishek) and who screams for help from the edge of a lake whose shore is littered with gleaming shards of black rock. Instead of responding to her distress, you’re wondering how a similar tile-design would look in your living room. It’s tempting to think what a better actress, one less prone to dainty posturing, might have accomplished with this character.
PS: I think I know what is missing in Rathnam's work...his movies are like prolonged music videos, which compromises the substance. In other words, Rathnam is no Vishal Bharadwaj...just a look at the latter's brilliant adaptation of Macbeth and Othello for Maqbool and Omkara is ample proof..I rest my case.
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