Raavanan

Raavanan (2010)

ராவணன்

Ten Heads, Ten Minds, A Hundred Voices, One Man

After inspector Dev stirs the reign of Veeraiya, a tribal outlaw, the latter responds by kidnapping his wife, Ragini. While she tries to escape from him, Dev fights many resistances to find her.

Date of release
2010-06-18
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (50)
Runtime
2h 14m
Genres
Action, Adventure, Crime
Director
Mani Ratnam

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Ramayana
  • Filmed in: Ooty

Raavanan is a 2010 Indian Tamil-language action-adventure film written, co-produced, and directed by Mani Ratnam. The film stars Vikram, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Prithviraj in the lead roles along with a supporting cast led by Karthik, Prabhu and Priyamani. It marked Rai Bachchan's return to Tamil after a decade, since Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000). The film follows the crux of the epic Ramayana, with a ruthless cop named Dev Prakash Subramaniam, who is on a quest to find a tribal leader-turned naxalite named Veeraiya as he had kidnapped his wife Raagini and begins to develop emotions for Veeraiya after learning his purpose.

Production

During the making of his 2007 biopic Guru starring Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Mani Ratnam had finalised a script for his next directorial venture titled Lajjo. Based on a short story by Ismat Chughtai, it was a musical period film set in the desert and was to star Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor in the lead.

Following the critical and commercial success of Guru, Ratnam announced his next film in February 2008. A modern-day retelling of the mythological epic Ramayana, the film again features the real life couple in the lead. The film was initially planned to be made only in Hindi and the idea for the Tamil version came later.

While the plot is inspired by Ramayana, the story is narrated from Ravana's perspective making him the protagonist. The film is centered on the 'Ashokavanam' episode where Ravana kidnaps Sita and keeps her in Asokavanam. Later Rama ventures to save his wife and bring her back.

While Bachchan and Vikram were roped in for the contrasting leads in Hindi, Ratnam asked them to swap roles in Tamil. Though Bachchan agreed initially, he grew sceptical being unfamiliar with the language. Eventually Prithviraj was cast in his place. Rai plays the female lead in both versions of the film.

The cinematography was initially handled by V. Manikandan, but it was later taken over by Santosh Sivan, when the former left the project after multiple delays. The editing was done by Ratnam's regular, A. Sreekar Prasad, since Alaipayuthey. Rai's costumes were exclusively designed by fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee. Choreography was by Ganesh Acharya, Brinda, Shobana, and Astad Deboo.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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