I saw Ravanan....finally....After all the initial media hype and the subsequent brickbats that the movie faced from the same media I was quite curious. For once the media weren't exhaggerating. In fact even while I was & still am a Mani Rathnam fan, I think the media were quite benevolent !
Mani Rathnam is no doubt a very talented director of our times who has given some great films over the years. But he should realise that the script is not one of the things. It is everything ! It was quite funny to hear the actors talk about his large canvas, extravagance, technical brilliance etc. Not many talked about the quality of the script. Or may be I missed. That is because there wasn't any ! The public generally view films as a medium to hear a story handled visually well. If there is no story - or nothing worth the money - any amount of "handling brilliantly" is just a gimmick. We hear comments about exotic locales, brilliant camera, a powerful star cast etc. All those are wasted if enough attention is not paid to the script.
In the name of being different, why portray Rama as a villain? While Ravanan grunts, laughs, stares, makes funny sounds and applies all kinds of things on his body, what does he do to add credibility to his character? We only hear from the villagers that he is great, he is talented, he does this, that etc. There was not a single scene to show his skills. The Ravanan from Ramayanan was known to be an excellent administrator, an artist, well versed in music, an ardent devotee of shiva and a character admired and respected by his subjects. What did this character in the movie do to win over his people? You can't just put in a group of tribal men around and just say they will give their lives for him. It was funny. If there were any parallels attempted, then the climax was a joke. Why send Ash back and that too alone to ask some questions? and Ravanan does n't even bother to suspect before wasting his time on some meaningless dialogues?
Coming to dialogues, what language was it? The tamil film industry seems obsessed with the Tirunelveli dialect. But no one has handled it as well as K Balachander. Why choose dialects which the majority may not follow? Just as a friend mentioned, why not just have some simple tamil spoken slowly so that people can understand? Would speaking fast in short phrases be reality? would like to know how many of us do that every day.
Finally the technicians and other members of the cast. Karthik as forest officer need not have jumped around to painfully portray the parallel between him and hanuman. Cameramen were great but it seems like they were all the time hunting for misty cliffs and beautiful waterfalls. We all know that A R Rahman is a brilliant musician. But he needs some serious apprenticeship under some of the former masters for background scores. It was irritating to hear western violins with a female voice shreaking when the scene was in a mountain in a tribal village ! He also needs to realise that when there is no dialogue some times it is just ok to just have the sounds carry the scene. You do not have to plug in some unnecessary sounds and strings.
Finally the director. I wonder where he was during the entire shoot. He is just not capable of taking such a movie. We hear media reports that this was his most difficult movie.....to make it this bad ?!! Multiple releases, big budget, mega stars, pre-release hype etc will get his money back....but we need our "Mouna Ragam Mani" back!
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