#44. Raavan - Review

Raavan film posterI have a confession to make; I fell in love while I was in South Korea. Over my weeklong adventure I was introduced to countless new experiences. I tried foreign delicacies I couldn’t even pronounce. I imbibed in alcohol and tried to communicate with the locals. The women were beautiful and they were everywhere, constantly attracting my gaze wherever I went. But it wasn’t the food, or the wine, or even the women that stole my heart in South Korea.  It was Raavan. It was the beauty of Bollywood that tamed this beast!Beera Munda (Abhishek Bachchan) in Raavan

I never thought in a million years I would like a Bollywood film. From what I could tell, they all looked and sounded the same. Ridiculous plots drenched with melodrama and overacting, hidden behind interruptive dance numbers that I assumed only served as a distraction. The jump cuts, the hyperactive close-ups and pans, what else could I expect from Indian Cinema?

My expectations be damned! What I was given was two hours in a world I had never seen. Raavan is more fairytale than film, and I was enthralled from word go. The story is timeless, filled with princesses and genies, magic and whimsy. Accept instead of a prince we have a police officer, and instead of an evil reaver we are offered an uncharacteristically multifaceted villain. This “villain” is the enthralling Beera Munda (Abhishek Bachchan), a modern Indian Robin Hood who is capable of both dastardly deeds and sincere good. After a local police officer kills Munda’s sister, the bandit kidnaps the officer’s wife Ragini (Aishwarya Rai) and makes his escape in the jungle. Within the tangled vines of the lush jungle, a new love grows. Could the beautiful Ragini fall in love with her brute captor? Would Munda sacrifice his cause for an attempt at having a normal life?

Raavan was unlike anything I have ever experienced. There is something so pure in the way Mani Ratnam directed this film, and I really do believe it could have only come out of Bollywood. The complete lack of cynicism is refreshing, and although every stylistic choice in the film is ridiculous the movie never makes fun or laughs at its characters. The bright colors surrounding the actors worked in congress with their opulent smiles. Aishwarya Rai, who plays the distressed damsel in the film, may be the prettiest woman I have ever seen.

Raavan film Beera Munda (Abhishek Bachchan) and Ragini (Aishwarya Rai)I would be lying if I said I understood everything that was going on in Raavan. There definitely seems to be something lost in translation as far as metaphors and themes go, but it does not matter. I enjoyed this film and I cannot wait to experience more of what Indian cinema has to offer. The only film I have seen since is the Bollywood classic Deewar (1975) As in Raavan; Deewar pits two men against each other. The men are on opposite sides of the law, but both love the same woman and are willing to die for her. While Deewar deals with the love a son has for his mother, it never asks questions regarding the Oedipus complex that may for all I know be a major theme any many Indian films. Raavan on the other hand is more traditional with its plotting. Two men fall in love with one woman, which man will the woman choose? Its pure melodramatic ecstasy, and I for one couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen.

The hyperactive zooms and close-ups were there, but not nearly as distracting or campy as they were in Deewar. Raavan does also occasionally break into song and dance, a Bollywood tradition. I was nervous these musical interludes would only halt the pacing of the film, but to my surprise it seems they do also serve a purpose. Every time Beera or Ragini would erupt into song, it was right after a scene of extreme sexual tension. I think the Bollywood dance routines are in fact metaphors. They don’t just represent sex either, but any form of heightened emotion. In Deewar, younger brother Ravi Verma (Shashi Kapoor) is unconsciously thrust into song several times throughout the picture. Once when he is with his fiancé, rolling around together in the grass, there is a cut and all of a sudden both characters are skipping and singing along, as if it was normal. These whimsical recesses are as silly as they are entertaining. What should serve to only distract the audience and kill the pacing actually increases not only my enjoyment of the film, but my emotional connection with the characters.

Sadly, I am back in America now. I turn on the television every night, with my wife by my side and all I can do is sigh. I can flip through the channels for hours, and yet my Bollywood fetish cannot be fulfilled. I lay awake at night staring out my window and gaze upon the luminous moon and wonder, are Ragini and Beera Munda lying next to each other in some exotic Indian jungle, looking at the same moon? I tell myself they are, and I fall asleep.

#43. I Saw The Devil - Review

I Saw the Devil banner / poster

I Saw the Devil is Kim Jeewoon’s best attempt at emulating Park Chan-Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy and keeping up with South Korea’s tradition of making excellent revenge pictures. Regrettably Jeewoon misunderstood what made Oldboy so engaging, and instead of having equal parts style and substance, I Saw the Devil unfortunately deflates into an exercise of excessiveness. And yet, this oddly not by-the-numbers genre flick is a total blast, and director Jeewoon’s perhaps knows what his audience craves better than anyone else.

The film’s plot is regular revenge fair. After secret agent Dae-hoon’s (Byung-hun Lee) pregnant girlfriend is kidnapped and murdered by local sociopath Kyunk-Chui (Min-sik Choi), the grieving agent decides to take the law into his own hands. Using all of the knowledge and tools at his disposal, Dae-hoon manages to track Kyunk-Chui down and insert a tracking device inside his body. Having the murderer on a bloody leash, to what depths will Dae-hoon willingly sink in order to exact his revenge?

I Saw the Devil film

With such great set-up, I was disappointed to see the film devolve so quickly into normal torture-porn territory. It seems Jeewoon became more interested in how Dae-hoon would get his revenge then necessarily why. Apparently the film’s original cut was so brutally graphic it could not pass South Korean censors, and I can see why. Having watched an uncut version of the film, it is obvious the director took much joy in bringing such heinous barbarism to the screen. I have confessed to loving horror movies and films interested in a more violent side of human nature, and even I was often gleefully shocked at what I was watching. The majority of the film shows this cat and mouse game between Dae-hoon and Kyunk-Chui, where the agent finds the murderer, severely abuses him, then pays for the hospital bill so he can do it all over again.

The philosophical quandaries at the heart of this film do not seem to be of much importance to the filmmaker. The idea of a man turning into a monster in order to kill another is cliché, and honestly is presented with a take-it or leave-it fashion throughout the final moments of the film. Jeewoon may hope you find some deeper meaning in his film, but he was obviously more concerned with realism. For instance, when Dae-hoon slices Kyunk-Chui’s Achilles’ tendon it looks unbelievable real!

I Saw the Devil film

Unlike Takashi Kitano’s Outrage, which also screened at the Pusan International Film Festival, I Saw the Devil does not play like a creative satire or spoof of the genre. Instead, it feels like an amalgamation of scenes and plot points that have been seen in many of the Tartan Asian Extreme dvd releases of the last decade. Perhaps, when Kyunk-Chui attacks a helpless woman with a hammer the director was only presenting homage to the now classic film Oldboy (2003) (which also stars Min-sik Choi). The brutality is not without cause. Similarly violent films like The Isle (2000), Audition (1999), and the Three Extremes series (2004) were all filmed with extreme, disturbing cinema in mind. Thanks to distribution labels like the previously mentioned Tartan Films and the Weinstein Company owned Dragon Dynasty, western audiences now crave this exotic Asian brand of torture.

Thankfully I Saw the Devil met all of my expectations, at least visually. The film may leave something to be desired in regard to originality and character development, but that is not really why I watch these films. Chi-Yun Shin wrote in her article examining Tartan Films that the distributor has come to “rely on the western audiences’ perception of the East as weird and wonderful, sublime and grotesque” (2). This is true, but with films like I Saw the Devil and Outrage being made, it seems like the Asian directors that helped create the “extreme” genre are now sick of playing the fool. Once a provocateur with stylish films A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) and A Bittersweet Life (2005), Jeewoon’s latest offering provides copious amounts of “extreme” and “grotesque,” but not enough of the “weird” and “sublime” that evened out his earlier films.

Still, the heart wants what it wants, and I wanted a perverse Asian extreme film. Jeewoon serves up a brain-dead helping of torture porn, holding the sides of character development, creativity, and plot. I was left with a heaping mound of sadism and despair. Like any good American I gorged until I was full, but now I am wondering if that makes me a fool?