Movie: Rang Rasiya’s timely delay with gratuitous sex

mangaloretoday.com/ India Today

Rang Rasiya is a biopic based on a novel of the infamous, avant-garde 19th century painter Raja Ravi Verma. Infamous because he was all too easy with his physical affection in a time of puritan values and scandalously (for the time) gave faces to the the Gods he painted. Avant-garde because he had the guts to invest every last penny into a printing press so that the common man could own a prized painting of the Gods with a face. The story begins with a court trial where the painter is being accused of hurting religious sentiment, promoting pornography in the name of art and corrupting society. An argument we are all too familiar with 150 years later, which is scary. As the trial progresses we dip in and out of Raja Ravi Verma’s life and his many loves starting in Kilimanoor in Kerala and spreading to Bombay and Baroda.

 

Most of us Indians are familiar with the paintings of Raja Ravi Verma, at least in the form of bright colourful calendar art. The film brings to us how colourful his life was. And the story of his life, with the central theme of an artist fighting for the freedom of his thought and creativity, is an easily relatable and timely one. In fact, the delay of 6 long years between completion and release has served the film well thematically. Of course, being a period film set at the turn of the last century, it remains visually and stylistically unaffected by the huge delay. Besides, Anil Mehta’s stunning cinematography, under director Ketan Mehta’s keen eye for detail, colour and design, is a treat. The climax can make any lover of freedom and art weep, the message is clear, strong, non preachy and sadly still so needed.

 

Randeep Hooda as Raja Ravi Verma is a great choice. He has a regal enough face (especially with that perfect nose), that can as easily look lecherous and manipulative. He particularly sparkles when he argues in court against the imprisonment of his thoughts and art and when he cruelly dismisses his muse’s claim to a life outside his imagination. Randeep is so comfortable embodying the legendary painter that you believe him and want to support his fight almost all the time, except when he ages dramatically and somehow no one else around him does. And when he looks as uncomfortable as the audience in those unnecessary love making scenes.

It’s these superfluous sex scenes and the appalling acting by the girls (except the delicate Feryna Wazheir playing Frenny) that just destroyed this otherwise interesting and smoothly told tale. By adding (because they really do seem lathered on top) these dispensable, obvious moments of lust, the film cheapens itself and stops feeling like an artistic A-grade take on the life of a world class artist that it should and could have been. Ketan could have chosen to depict desire, sex and the naked form more artistically, in keeping with the story he’s telling. There is one beautiful top angle shot where the camera zooms out as Randeep and Nandana lie naked, post coitally intertwined, covered in nothing but paint. This is the kind of subtle, poetic stuff I am talking about. This would have been suggestive enough without having to see the awkward build up and the cringey kissing that precedes this shot. Given all the hoo ha about the frontal nudity shot this film has been boasting, I expected better than the bizarrely shot nude breast that comes as such a shock that it might as well have been a rabbit out of a hat, it didn’t help that the painting in question doesn’t remotely match the image we see. I wouldn’t mention it if the filmmakers didn’t pan from one to the other more than a few times.

 

Ketan, I am glad you are out of your circumstantial hibernation because you still tell a story more beautifully than most, but, this is not one of your best. I give it 3 stars mainly for the message.