There is ambition written all over Raavan and at most times it succeeds.īut it all happens at such speed that it takes a while to absorb the pace of Raavan. That is a lot of ambition for a soft-spoken 54-year-old man, who first attended business school before becoming a filmmaker. He also has a third version - Villain dubbed in Telugu. Vikram plays Dev in Raavan and then Veeraiya (Beera) in Raavanan, while Ash appears as Ragini in both films. This time he shot Raavan in Hindi and Raavanan in Tamil - shooting each scene back-to-back, with at least one actor interchanging roles. Ratnam is one of the most remarkable filmmakers in India, 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.įrom the days when he used to shoot his films in one language ( Roja, Bombay and Dil Se) and then dub them for other markets, he has now moved to working simultaneously on two parallel productions. 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 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), kidnapped by a Veerappan-like outlaw, Beera (Abhishek Bachchan). 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. Mani Ratnam's Raavan is an overwhelming film.