Aparna’s Blog

I liked Raavanan. Found it much better than Raavan. The first half too somehow seemed to move faster than Raavan. Was it because of the actors, or because I have already watched Raavan or because of the language? Am not sure about that. The climax - not the fight on the bridge, but the scene where Ragini gets back to Veeraiyya - was much better in Tamil than in Hindi. Prithviraj was too good in the role of Dev. Got mesmerized by the visuals, the lighting and the colours of the forest once again. Relished the awesome background score and songs of Rahman once again. I am happy that I watched both Raavan and Raavanan at Sathyam cinemas.

I don’t have a clear answer either for the ‘How was Raavan?’ question or for ‘Did you like Raavan?’ Of course, the answer for the second question is definitely not a ‘No’. But it isn’t a whole-hearted ‘Yes’ either. And that’s why I didn’t even attempt to write on the movie all this while.

Spoiler Alert (But I guess this won’t matter since most of you might have watched the movie by now.)
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While the wait for watching ‘Raavan’ is just 2 hours for me, for my sister, it is going to be two long weeks! With all her thoughts only on ‘Raavan’, here is how she thinks Raavan would be:
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In the show ‘Mani Matters’ on CNN-IBN, talking about Alaipayuthey, this is what Mani Ratnam said,

“To me, that’s where a love story starts. After hard facts of life of having to get up every morning, not just when you are trying to impress somebody, where you can be on your best behaviour, when you can charming, when you can be intelligent.

The relationship grows when it is faced with reality, when it is started…the milkman coming in, I mean, that’s where the real relationship starts.”

Hearing these lines, I started thinking about how not just in Alaipayuthey, but also in many of his movies, Mani Ratnam has portrayed the ups and downs in the relationship between a husband and a wife. His lead pair, in most of the films, has always been a married couple and not just lovers. His lead pair gets married in the course of the movie and he has always shown an equal share of romance as well as the complexities involved in the relationship.
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Watch it here now: http://movies.ndtv.com/NDTV-Show-Special.aspx?ID=543 !!

Newspapers, magazines, websites, Abhishek Bachchan’s tweets, mail forwards, posters on newspapers and on the walls, trailers on all the Hindi and Tamil channels! After more than a couple of years of rumours initially about Mani Ratnam’s next film Lajjo that were doing the rounds in all the newspapers and websites and then the endless news about what next Mani Ratnam’s movie was all about, the initial names for the Hindi and Tamil versions – Raavan and Ashokavanam, the cast & crew, the problem with forest officials, rumours about the climax, etc., etc., interviews with the cast & crew & the director himself and not to mention all those non-informative news items which seemed to have been published just for filling up the space, the day of the release of the movie is just a couple of days away!

Having watched the last two movies of Mani Ratnam on the day of the release itself, I hope that I get to watch this too on the first day. Can’t wait to see Mani Ratnam delve deep into the numerous minds of Beera! My plan, as of now, is to watch Raavan first and then Raavanan. What about you?

Did you watch the programme ‘Mani Matters’ on CNN-IBN this weekend? Watching not just what was a quick recap of almost all the movies of Mani Ratnam till date, with the actors and other crew members talking about their experience of working with Mani Ratnam, but hearing the man himself speak about most of his movies has only doubled up my excitement and made the wait for the release of Raavan seem even longer! The show itself was a very good one, besides it isn’t often that you get to watch Mani Ratnam speak about his movies. Seeing clippings from so many movies of his at a stretch made me wish I could watch it all once again. In case you haven’t watched the show yet, do watch it here. Also, do check out another very good interview with Mani Ratnam here.