An epic lost in Ravan’s shadow

Movie Review

Nitish Tiwari makes his epic appearance on the big screen with the much awaited Ramayanam. The length and the content of the film is expectedly of epic proportions. With the noise at the box office it is almost certain that there is a Dhurandar waiting to happen. Empirically Ramayanam suffers a paradigm shift along prologue and a continuous revisits to Dashanand and his re naming as Raavan is more reminiscent of an ancient version of Mani Ratnamas “Raavan” than an epic in craze if the virtues of Lord Rama. It is often believed in the lore of the land that it is a soft poignancy in the Ramayanam in contradistinction to the chaotic visceral violence of Mahabharata that makes the former a lore to adapt and the later an epic to follow. Therefore it becomes a semantic challenge if equilibrium when the 195 min film is often focused on Ravan and the story of Ram is a plain linear narration. 

The crowds at the theater auger well for the film maker while the reverse may not be true. There is no doubt that the VFX and the computer graphics have come a long way. However the action (Guy Norris) and the production design team (Ravi Bansal at all) do not even reach the levels of two south Indian grandeur films ‘Bahubali and Poniyan selvan” Not withstanding the disclaimer of the film maker seeing Lara Dutta (Kaikeyi) in chiffon’s is attired jarring it almost looks that the filmmaker forgot to invest on an authentic costume designer for the film. 

The music score by AR Rehman and Hans Zimmer is far from top grade. The least the duo could have done is heard Shankar Rao Vyas - 43 edition and 56 edition or at least Vasant Desai in the 67 edition. In fact you miss music directors like Shankar Jaikishan and particularly Naushad (Mughal e Azam) in letting lyrics tell a story by itself.

Perhaps even Illaya Raja would have done a greater job throwing in rustic soul filled melodies. The long prologue to the film deals with the growth and growth of Ravana and how he replaces Kubera to become the emperor of Lanka. The impact that his mother Kaikesi (Shobna) makes on his life gets an abundant, if disproportionate footage. Cut to Ayodhya the film maker is in a hurry and makes an artistic choice of not having to deal with any of the nuances of the “Balakanda” and apart from one moment of Kaikeyi (Lara Dutta) showing affection for Ram there is nothing much according to that the film makers warrants mention in the Balakanda except the lack lustre arrival of Vishwa Mithra requiring Rama to travel to destroy the demons.

The Shiva Dhanush Svayamwara is also hurried and abrupt. The film makers choose to tell us a little more about Surpanaka than Janani and how Sita (Sai Pallavi) acquires the name Janani neither is the parental relationship of Rama with Dashratha (Ranbir and Arun) nor the relationship between Sita and Janaka Maharaja(Sai Pallavi and Rajiv Kumar) mentioned in any detail.

Even as you have a birds eye view of Rama in the forest, his meeting Bharata (Addinath Kothare) and sage Gautama the narrative is constantly interrupted by happenings in Lanka including the killing of Vidyutijva (Vivek Oberioi) spouse of Surpanaka (Rakul Preet Singh). In the midst of all this one outstanding performance in that of Mantra played by Shiva Chadda. Kumbakarna (Faizal Malik) seems to be build on the lines of Godzilla. Mandodari (Kajal Agarwal) fleets in and out of the film with not even the status of a glorified extra. Ravi Dubey as Lakshmana adds pep to the proceedings.

The lead behind of the movie are a distinct visible dichotomy between amazing VFX and some abysmally poor once ‘a Ravan Centric Ramyanam’ a failure to deal with important elements of Vaalmikis Ramayan like the Kaikeyi relationship with Rama, the Ahilya episode, the poor show of the Parshurama and Rama conflict and even the deep rooted relationship between Lakshmana with Rama and Sita. The takeaways, an extremly well structured performance from Ranbir Kapoor as Rama and as Parshurama! An interesting performance from Lara Dutta, praiseworthy performance from Ravi Dubey. The over arching performance from Yash not only keeps the film going but keeps the KGF star as even more important than the epic and there lies the sting. 

-L Ravichander