Cinemaah

Violence For The Sake Of It


A director with the cinematic skills of  Ram Gopal Varma ought to be able to reinvent himself, but all he does is reinvent the wheel.

After every string of failures he keeps going back to violent sagas of gangsters, but, while his first Shiva and successful Satya,  had a sense of control, social comment and artistic merit, his subsequent returns to gangland have been needlessly violent and meaningless.

Why, for instance, would a viewer outside of Andhra Pradesh be interested in the fictionalized story of gangster-turned-political leader Paritala Ravi?  Set in an Andhra town with a history of caste-based violence, the families of the high caste Reddys –with the cruel psychopath Bukka (Abhimanyu Singh) as the leader-- start a war with the lower caste faction, of which Pratap Ravi (Vivek Oberoi) becomes undisputed head, steering himself and his loyalists from being jungle outlaws to political strongmen. Traces of Godfather reappear.

The undoubtedly interesting journey of Pratap is narrated by Varma in unmitigated bursts of sadistic violence, accompanied by a deafening background score of Sanskrit chants.  The visuals almost devoid of colour, unsightly close-ups and an ever-swaying camera make this gruesome movie even more unpalatable.

So many of Varma’s recent films have had a quirky style— random action in the foreground, for instance, weird lighting and camera angles and a claustrophobic feel, as if he were willfully battling against the cinema of romance and  rainbow aesthetics. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to come up with an edifying retort for the kind of cinema is purports to despise.  It looks like he is challenging the audience to either reject his films or accept them on his unacceptable terms.

Varma casts unusual faces, but doesn’t seem to care much about how they act; so Vivek Oberoi fumbles through the transitions of his character, while Shatrughan Sinha returning after a long time, in the role of film star-politician (obviously based on N.T. Rama Rao) gives a remarkably astute performance.