OK, so I went to see Mani Sir's latest flick Ravan not heeding to repeated warnings from critics and friends and wife - I loved it.
Of late, there has been a dearth of movies that have a credible and good storyline. So I have been able to train myself to look at the presentation and technique. You anyways know the climax of the wafer thin plot. Recently I went to see Vedam, another telugu movie, and in the first half an hour found myself drawing parallels to flicks like Crash, Love Actually and others that deal in parallel interconnecting story lines. By interval I could predict the climax.
I remember seeing Dalapathi - my first Mani Sir movie. It was a fantastic movie and a take on Mahabharata. There were so many characters and so many twists in the tale. Each and every scene was full of emotion. The scene where Shobhana realizes that Rajnikant has married another lady, I think Bhanupriya - its a small scene where all the emotions experienced by Shobhana are portrayed in such a short scene.
Raavan - Abhishek and Aishwarya develop feelings for each others in a set of elaborate long scenes. The scene where he could have touched her, but holds his hands just inches away from her and slowly moves away - in the past this could have been handled in less than half that time. I remember quite a few movies where the hero would suddenly take back his hands in a jerk realizing where they were heading, the heroine would grab something to cover herself, a moment of awkwardness and that's it. Here its a choreographed sequence, well shot by Santosh Sivan.
So, why I liked this movie is because of the way it was presented. Simple story, you know what will happen, but each character is well cast, simple lines, no jingoism or over the top shouting. And the frames are brilliant. I remember a shot where a dragonfly was shown in full brilliant colours and a macro close up shot, there were water droplets and mist clearly seen as the hero enters the hut where Aishwarya was ties up, the sun around Aishwarya's face in the Behne De song.
Plus there are are many moments where you can see the action on the screen and feel the emotions going in the characters head - not a one shot awkward moment scene where you get the gist of the feel.
Like some review pointed out, its for the folks who appreciate presentation. Its more in line with international flicks like Offside by Jafar Panahi where the core is pretty simple, its just how it is presented. If you like that kind of cinema then Ravan is for you - otherwise - stay away.