Hello,
I want to know if Raavan or Raavanan is out in theatre in Paris (France), if it
is so can you please tell me which theatre?
Thank you,
Serge BELIER
> To: [email protected]
> From: [email protected]
> Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:49:54 +0000
> Subject: [arr] Rediff reviews Raavan
>
> Raavan is Mani, Abhi, Ash's best work
>
> Tags : Raavan , Mani Ratnam , Ragini , Beera , Vikram
>
> June 18, 2010
>
> Mani Ratnam's Raavan is an overwhelming film. At times a tad bit
> overproduced, the film is an onslaught of brilliant use of technology on the
> viewer's senses -- stunning cinematography, the fluidity of the camera, quick
> edits, loud soaring music, with the actors thrown into wild nature.
>
> Ratnam working with his regular cinematographer Santosh Sivan and also V
> Manikandan, and editor A Sreekar Prasad, gives us a hellish vision -- an
> innocent woman Ragini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan [ Images ]), kidnapped by a
> Veerappan-like outlaw, Beera (Abhishek Bachchan [ Images ]).
>
> Much of the film is the cat and mouse game -- Beera and his gang, in harmony
> with the forests, rain, rivers, cliffs, mountains and a lot of mud, always a
> few steps ahead of the police force led by an officer Dev Sharma (Vikram),
> who also happens to be Ragini's husband.
>
> Ratnam is one of the most remarkable filmmakers in India [ Images ], taking
> unique story ideas -- although some with muddled political messages, working
> within the framework of popular cinema, and yet creating memorable films in
> Tamil, Hindi and other languages.
>
> From the days when he used to shoot his films in one language (Roja [ Images
> ], Bombay and Dil Se) and then dub them for other markets, he has now moved
> to working simultaneously on two parallel productions.
>
> This time he shot Raavan in Hindi and Raavanan in Tamil -- shooting each
> scene back-to-back, with at least one actor interchanging roles. Vikram plays
> Dev in Raavan and then Veeraiya (Beera) in Raavanan, while Ash appears as
> Ragini in both films. He also has a third version -- Villain dubbed in Telugu.
>
> That is a lot of ambition for a soft-spoken 54-year-old man, who first
> attended business school before becoming a filmmaker. There is ambition
> written all over Raavan and at most times it succeeds.
>
> But it all happens at such speed that it takes a while to absorb the pace of
> Raavan. The film needs to be digested, absorbed and mulled over. The visual
> images are often so powerful and strong, each shot packed with so much
> activity -- rain, mud, trees, cliffs, and, of course, the actors, that many
> filmgoers will miss out on all that they see on the screen.
>
> I tried to get ahead of Ratnam and started counting the number of edit cuts
> during the grand dance performance to the song Thok di Killi, but soon I felt
> I was on a roller coaster ride, and had to stop to breathe.
>
> Raavan is Ratnam's interpretation of the Ramayana [ Images ] (yes, the
> rumours and speculations are true), with Bachchan, Ash and Vikram playing the
> roles of Ravana, Sita and Rama, respectively. And in one of the most
> brilliant strokes of casting, a delightful Govinda [ Images ] plays
> Sanjeevani -- a modern day Hanuman [ Images ], playfully hopping from one
> spot to another as he joins Dev's mission to search for his wife.
>
> The film is replete with references to the Ramayana -- from the 14 days it
> takes Dev to rescue his wife, to a disturbing take on the Soorpanaka story,
> which becomes the justification to the kidnapping of Ragini.
>
> But Ratnam takes Raavan beyond the Ramayana. I am not giving away the
> ending, but I wonder what the purists and Hindu fundamentalists will think
> about the departures of the film from the religious text.
>
> Ratnam gives us all shades of the three main characters. Beera is not always
> as evil as Ravana is often portrayed; Ragini's Sita has a strong inner core,
> and while she starts with hating Beera, she is sometimes in awe of his sudden
> spouts of gentleness; and Dev turns out to be the not so perfect Rama.
>
> I wish the script and the film in general, had not spent so much time in its
> technological grandeur, because the real crucial conversation around the
> Ramayana starts to happen near the end of the film. By this time Beera,
> Ragini and Dev have stopped being the traditional Ravana, Sita and Rama.
>
> That transition makes Raavan a significant milestone for modern India to move
> beyond the Ramayana as just a religious text. And so Raavan is perhaps
> Ratnam's most definite political film.
>
> Bachchan's best work to date has been with Ratnam in Yuva [ Images ] and
> Guru. But here the actor goes beyond anything he could have imagined he was
> capable of doing. Through the film he stands tall, observing his landscape,
> his face twitching with myriads of thoughts and his menacing smile unnerving
> all those who come in contact with him. Bachchan has never worked this hard
> in a film and it shows in his performance.
>
> Like him, his wife Ash also gives one of the strongest performances of her
> career. Few directors have succeeded in making us look beyond her beauty and
> see the actor in her. Rituparno Ghosh worked wonders with her in the
> under-appreciated Raincoat and Ratnam did that in Guru and now here in Raavan.
>
> Vikram, a star in Tamil films, is a real find for the Bollywood industry.
>
> The fate of Raavan and its Tamil and Telugu versions will be judged in the
> next few days by audiences across India and abroad. But this much is clear --
> Ratnam, the quiet master, is in top form here. It will be a challenge for him
> to outdo himself
>
> 4/5
> Sent via BlackBerry
>
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