second review of ravan

I saw ravan yesterday, and i read some of the reviews in the internet, most of the reviews are negative, of course every movie has its own pitfalls, that don’t make you stop watching movie, i sincerely say that ravan or villan has its own excellence except some loop holes in the story. of course it is not able to sustain the interest of the audience in some of the sequences, but we can really excuse them, as the movie is highly cinematic, electrifying and dynamic in many ways, especially editing is one such department which is really cutting edge… ruthlessly cut to sustain the interest. I feel this narrative structure is born to convince ragini by veera that her husband is not as good as she thinks… mostly veera’s point of view is emphasized and his reasons are well established… dev’s point of view is weakened and he is not able to convince the audience that veera is an outlaw or a bad man..
Though the narrative structure is creative and innovative.. it not only confuses the audience , but also made difficult to follow or understand the story…
I feel if he tells the story with straight narration…he could have been more successful in convincing the audience…
as far as the narrative structure of the story is concerned, the story is told with a blend of
Director’s point of view
Dev’s narration of flashback
Veera’s point of view… by giving reasons to ragini why he had to abduct her….
ragini is the only character who doesn’t have her own will and falls in dilemma what is right or wrong… she plays the role of a victim in the film…
please don’t compare it to Ramayana and judge it… just think from the point of view veera or beera who has developed a special liking for ragini, because of her fearlessness, good attitude…veera as a ordinary human being, as an opposite sex, tries to win her like every male who tries to boast in front of women to win them.. Irrespective of the relationship, especially in terms of opposite sex.. and the next is ragini, whose conflict falls between as a devoted wife of dev and as a human being.
the moral conflict heightens when she prays and requests in front of god to give moral strength to her. since ragini is a good human being, she gradually recognizes the goodness in veera too,
here we could see the psychological aspect between ragini and veera… their emotions and behaviours keep changing everytime because of their moral conflict inside them.
as many people criticised maniratnam, just think about mani sir, who has been trying to bridge the gap between art and commercial aspect of cinema, who has an such an inner urge to tell the story creatively and innovatively..Ravan is an experimental one… Mani sir tried to put both veera and ragini in such a situation or plot that they cannot resolve their conflict. such is the condition of human beings sometimes… i feel if mani sir tries to put the psychological aspect sincerely without bothering about the commercial audience, he would have been successful, (as he did in iddaru)…
i hope you have been observing manisir’s films for a long time… he has such a special knack of dramatizing deeper truths of life and present them for commercial audience, for instance “geetanjali”..
in the case of ravan, he tried hard to dramatize the moral conflict between ragini and veera, with their mannerisms, especially beera’s utterances, gestures and behavior.. to entertain the commercial audience… if he had portrayed the moral conflict realistically, it would have been a great work of art… i think mani sir failed only in trying to commercialize the concept and hope of winning the commercial audience…
here i am reminded of jean luc Goddard’s quote.. “the filmmaker grows in mind and spirit with his every film, but the audiences are left behind, there comes gap, which cannot be filled. Neither audience could rise to the maturity of the director nor the filmmaker could come down to explain the creative urge to the audience.” i feel this is where the fault is…. i understand that the audience goes to theatre solely for entertainment. But sometimes the audience are placed in an embarrassing situation that they cannot accept the change suddenly…
whatever it may be… i feel that mani sir should grow out of success and failure by making more realistic films like satyajit ray, such films will be recognized where they should be recognized..