Raman Raghav could have been a solid exploration of psychological intricacies but ends up being a shallow montage of clichés pepped up by pretentious classical beats and stylistic gimmicks of distortion sounds, fast cuts and post production gymnastics. Anurag Kashyap has of course managed to better his performance from the dreadful Bombay Velvet but he has nothing to show here except his pale copying of Tarantino type, chapter-ed narrative and school level Freudian psychology.
The story is "based" on the notorious 60s killer Raman Raghav as a modern day Ramannah gets inspired by his hero and starts killing people. The plot apparently revolves around him and his "nemesis" so to say, the cop Raghav, detailing their apparent contradictions but deeper identifications but here ends the movie for all narrative purposes. Cinema is still driven by plot development no matter how much avant garde novices claim the newness of absurd plots. And there is none of that elusive plot here. Vicky Kaushal, an actor with great potential is portrayed as the clichéd conflicted cop whose interaction with evil brings out the devil inside him. He is so full of pain and agony rescued by narcissistic self hate. Nawazuddin Siddiqui of course is the killer who kills for no understandable reason and by the end of the movie, you're still wondering why this serial killer really kills ? The plot was surely designed to show how the people on both sides of the law are not really so different but an immature script has let the film down. Serial killers are not mad, their motives are not absurd and their philosophies not as lame as the film shows. In the end, the killer is almost given his own podium to justify his killing through the purity of its absurd motives. Since he does not kill for money, or by hiding behind the garb of religion or any such material motive, he is the pure, he is the unblemished and he indeed is the lord of death. After seeing the film, it seems that had the makers lifted the story of the real Raman Raghav verbatim, that would have made for a better film. At least it would have had a coherent psychological framework. Here we see the now fashionable, "real world" obsession of independent film makers with slum neighborhoods, cheap laborers slaving away for foreign brands in Mumbai ghettos, African drug peddlers ignorant of English and how our cop is conversant with all the dirt of an urban cosmopolis. But as far as the psychology of the characters is concerned, something which a thriller should explore, there is such a lack of depth here that you feel cheated in the end as an audience.
I am sure intellectuals will come running with justifications about the plot, showcasing it as some complex mix of absurdity and dead-pan humour, an element which is destroying cinema. Borrowed from American art-house cinema, dead-pan is not a lived reality, it's an artificial form of extra smart directorial flourish which should be used sparingly. But Mr Kashyap seems to have overestimated it's narrative value. Its possible he uses it to cajole our brain-dead audiences who, deprived of such comic relief might just slip into a coma but it's a worthwhile question to ask if that coma is the inevitable outcome of anything he does these days. A film marketed like a thriller such as this one creates expectations of pure plot-driven narratives of tightly packed scenes with little space for nonsense but the outcome is a tightly packed collection of nonsense with little space for plot. There is no need to make your characters erupt into agonizing bursts of self-hate if you intend for the characters to do nothing about that realization of their weakness. Of course this is a question of how the director imagines his characters to be. But do we really want to make and see films where characters appear weak and impotent in changing themselves for the better and instead, in absurd ecstasy of Freudian "death-wishes", rush headlong into destruction ?
The story is "based" on the notorious 60s killer Raman Raghav as a modern day Ramannah gets inspired by his hero and starts killing people. The plot apparently revolves around him and his "nemesis" so to say, the cop Raghav, detailing their apparent contradictions but deeper identifications but here ends the movie for all narrative purposes. Cinema is still driven by plot development no matter how much avant garde novices claim the newness of absurd plots. And there is none of that elusive plot here. Vicky Kaushal, an actor with great potential is portrayed as the clichéd conflicted cop whose interaction with evil brings out the devil inside him. He is so full of pain and agony rescued by narcissistic self hate. Nawazuddin Siddiqui of course is the killer who kills for no understandable reason and by the end of the movie, you're still wondering why this serial killer really kills ? The plot was surely designed to show how the people on both sides of the law are not really so different but an immature script has let the film down. Serial killers are not mad, their motives are not absurd and their philosophies not as lame as the film shows. In the end, the killer is almost given his own podium to justify his killing through the purity of its absurd motives. Since he does not kill for money, or by hiding behind the garb of religion or any such material motive, he is the pure, he is the unblemished and he indeed is the lord of death. After seeing the film, it seems that had the makers lifted the story of the real Raman Raghav verbatim, that would have made for a better film. At least it would have had a coherent psychological framework. Here we see the now fashionable, "real world" obsession of independent film makers with slum neighborhoods, cheap laborers slaving away for foreign brands in Mumbai ghettos, African drug peddlers ignorant of English and how our cop is conversant with all the dirt of an urban cosmopolis. But as far as the psychology of the characters is concerned, something which a thriller should explore, there is such a lack of depth here that you feel cheated in the end as an audience.
I am sure intellectuals will come running with justifications about the plot, showcasing it as some complex mix of absurdity and dead-pan humour, an element which is destroying cinema. Borrowed from American art-house cinema, dead-pan is not a lived reality, it's an artificial form of extra smart directorial flourish which should be used sparingly. But Mr Kashyap seems to have overestimated it's narrative value. Its possible he uses it to cajole our brain-dead audiences who, deprived of such comic relief might just slip into a coma but it's a worthwhile question to ask if that coma is the inevitable outcome of anything he does these days. A film marketed like a thriller such as this one creates expectations of pure plot-driven narratives of tightly packed scenes with little space for nonsense but the outcome is a tightly packed collection of nonsense with little space for plot. There is no need to make your characters erupt into agonizing bursts of self-hate if you intend for the characters to do nothing about that realization of their weakness. Of course this is a question of how the director imagines his characters to be. But do we really want to make and see films where characters appear weak and impotent in changing themselves for the better and instead, in absurd ecstasy of Freudian "death-wishes", rush headlong into destruction ?