MOVIE REVIEW: RAMAN RAGHAV 2.0

Straight from Cannes Film Festival  2016 :- 

Raman Raghav 2.0 is a love story. Now, you might think, the guy is out of his mind because that is hardly a conclusion one would draw after the trailer and in-your-face-it's-terribly-violent-film promotions. But Anurag Kashyap isn't a man known for subtleties, so he made things obvious in the film title itself  'Raman Raghav', like you know, 'Romeo Juliet', only this is not your ideal daily dose of romance.


'This film is NOT about him', says the title card at the beginning of the film, after giving you a brief biography about the notorious serial killer from 60's Bombay, indicating the Auteur is here to have some fun. And immediately, 10 mins into the film you are right into the atypical world, intricately crafted by Kashyap's kitsch and the gritty premise of an electrifying, nerve-bending night-club sequence, where the predator(read one of our lovers) lures his prey(the newcomer Sobhita Dhulipala) into his vicious circle of nose-powder and viagra. Well, he is Vicky Kaushal, the cop aka Raghav, who you think is your Hero but he isn't.


He is pretty much the mirror image of the notorious mass murderer, Raman a.k.a Nawazuddin Siddiqui. With a footlong scar in his forehead and piercing sinister eyes he is 'God's own CCTV camera', or so he calls himself. From killing his own sister and wearing her earrings and then treating himself to a chicken dinner in the very apartment he murdered the whole family, to non-chalantly discussing his murdering prowess with random strangers from the street, Raman is absolutely menacing as the scarily delusional, yet enticing psychotic killer on the spree! But then, he is also a hopeless romantic and hence he wishes to pass on his philosophy of killing (just for the purity of it, without any cause-effect relation) to Raghav, who he sees as his fellow comrade or simply as the other side of the same coin. So, it is the journey of Raman making sense to Raghav's inner conscience and thus propelling Raghav to take it forward which looks like a great premise for a sequel.

And that is basically the plot or maybe the lack of it. In spite of being predictable, extremely genre-specific, and almost sans any detailing of female characters (no variations, often mistreated which again might be intentional going by his previous works), Raman Raghav works mainly because of Nawazuddin Siddiqui's unmatched performance that fetched him a standing ovation at Cannes and Anurag Kashyap's handling of the grotesque and the innate ambiguity of human characters. From Black Friday-esque chase sequences and uncannily funny interrogation scenes, to charred heroes, multi-location narrative, to bombastic use of music, Raman Raghav is Kashyap's familiar territory, a place he had made his own over the years. Though Vicky Kaushal looks alright for the confused lawman, he is the weak link when it comes to his turn of mirror-imaging of what Nawaz is doing at complete ease: The Gratuitous Violence.



So there might be two possible audience outcomes from the film. One, the maddening Kashyap fanatics who would absolutely thrive on it, (especially after Bombay Velvet) and the other kind, who'd feel this is a 'safe' Anurag Kashyap film where he hasn't done anything revolutionary or out of the ordinary. I am however, stuck somewhere in between.





About Abhiroop Basu  :-





Abhiroop Basu is a independent filmmaker, and a graduate from St.Xavier's college Kolkata. His film "Afternoon with Julia" had an official selection at the Cannes short film corner this year. Another film of his "The Day after Tomorrow" has won multiple awards throughout the country.