Movie Review - Pyscho Raman (Raman Raghvan 2.0)

Pyscho Raman (Raman Raghvan 2.0)

*************** Spoilers Ahead ***********************************************

We recently watched Anurag Kashyap’s dark noir style movie based on the 1969 serial killer Raman Raghvan, on Amazon Prime, and the haunting scenes from the movie stayed with me for a while (did I mention it was dark).

This 2016 movie is the directors take on mental health issues, clinical as well as circumstantial and societal and though the narrator is gruesome and quite morbid, what stands out is the performance of the two central characters in the movie Ramanna (Nawaz Siddiqui), a schizophrenic bottom feeder who believes that God is instructing him to decree who lives and who dies and Raghvan (Vicky Kaushal), the cop, who is trying to apprehend this copycat killer, who has been terrorizing the slums in Mumbai by bludgeon the slum dwellers in their sleep. The cop played brilliantly by Vicky Kaushal, is a coke head, who straddles the murky world between black and white and will go to any lengths to nab his psycho serial killer. He’s has a live-in girlfriend, who he treats like a doormat and abuses her when he’s high on cocaine and when’s he’s suffering from coke infused insomnia. Nawaz, as usual, is brilliant and rises above the script playing the deranged Ramanna. In every frame where he’s present, he’s wound up like a feral cat, and you cannot quite predict what he could do next. Nawaz struts around the slums with his iron rod, which he uses to pulverize his victims, that he chooses without any remorse. The best scenes are when he’s stalking them and watches them as if he’s viewing them thru the lens of the binoculars, observing their every move, the voices in his head telling him who lives and who dies.

Ramanna surrenders to the police quite early in his killing spree, but they do not take his claims seriously and he ultimately escapes, only to kill again with impunity. He imposes himself on his sister and her family, who clearly wants no part of him in their lives and terrorizes them before finally killing the entire family with his rod. The police get a wind of this and chase him in the slums, but he browbeats them to escape and carry on with the voices in his head. Nawaz is not an imposing actor, but the way he struts about, his mannerism, make him larger than life, almost giving him a diabolical satanic presence. Raghvan, the cop, has enormous baggage of his own, which he’s carried since his childhood and it spills into the way he leads his life. Nawaz’s portrayal of a psycho serial killer is the best that I’ve watched, sans some towering performances by Norman Bates, Hannibal Lecter, and the ilk.

Watch this gruesome tale of the deranged. And the depraved if you are into the dark kinda movies. Else there’s always the ‘Sound of Music’ or ‘The Kind and I’.

IMDB Link

In deference to the Bappa

 Ganesh Chaturthi festival is chaotic, loud, and a drag for 10 long days. At least the public functions are. It’s not one of my favorite festivals since the public spectacle has now crossed most limits of social acceptance and has turned into a nuisance factor for the citizens. Lokmanya Tilak had the right idea pre-independence of holding a public display of Ganesh idols, but these days it’s become more of a showpiece for unemployed Shiv Sainik hooligans to flex their muscles and scare the minorities. Growing up, I have bad memories of these Sainiks extolling money from all of our society members in our neighborhood. And it was not any voluntary donation that was permissible, but any amount that they demanded as per their whims. When the amount they demanded was one-fourth of my father’s monthly salary, the burden became a tad heavy to bear, leading to many confrontations between my father and these sainiks. Not happy discussions !!!

 

Nevertheless, let me focus on the good here. Ganesha was the resident deity in our house and while there were ten thousand other godly pictures, or so it seemed, the Ganesh picture was the largest and was placed in the prime central position amongst all the other gods. On Ganesh Chaturthi day my father would clean out the pooja area, the Ganesh picture would be adorned with a flower mala and modak, incense sticks would be lit, fruits and flowers would be placed as offerings. We didn’t chant hymns or sing any bhajans, just stand in front of the picture with our hands folded for the required obligatory minutes before leaving to devour the kadubus that mother had cooked specially for Ganesh hubba. Kadubus are rice dumplings filled with coconut and jaggery and steamed either in banana leaves or some other fragrant plant leaf, the name of which eludes me now. Lunch would be a simple affair comprising of dal/sambhar, pulao/rice, papadums, and some vegetable. In the evening we’d go visit a few neighbors who had instituted small idols in their house and the public pandals around the neighborhood.

 

Ganesh Chaturthi was to the Maharashtrians what Navratri was for the Gujarathis. Ten days of merriment, partying, dancing, late-night public movie screenings, orchestra, singing, and generally a celebration of life. It was also a nuisance for the early risers, who had to head out early to work for a living. My father could be heard complaining in the mornings about the late-night revelry of the Ganpati celebrations from the areas nearby, where the loudspeakers would blare music late into the nights. The pandals that set up public Ganesh idols would try and outdo each other in terms of the themes, décor, and style of the idols that they would ensconce that year. We were not brave enough to venture to Lalbagh or other central areas where the biggest, most ostentatious, and needless to say most crowded of Ganesh festivals were being celebrated. The lines supposedly to pay obeisance to the deity would supposedly take upwards of an hour.

 

When our kids were studying in a Catholic prep school, they celebrated something called international day, where they learned about cultures, food, festivals, and customs in countries around the world. One of the years I had to present Festivals on India to the kids from the elementary section. What I thought would be an enticing story to the 8 years old’s about how Lord Shiva severed his sons head, when the son refused him entry into the house and then supplanted it with an elephant head, drew gasps of shock from the parents standing at the back of the room. The principal came running soon after to the class and asked me to tone down the macabre elements of the narrative and present the sanitized version. But I think it’s still a cool story, where little Ganesha doesn’t recognize his father and refuses him entry into the house.

 

And then it was time for Ganesha to go. After 10 days comes the Ganesh Visarjan or the immersion and that causes all kinds of nightmares in itself. Entire Bombay comes to a standstill since all roads lead to the sea to immerse the Ganesh idols for all shapes, sizes, hues into the Arabian Ocean. This is usually accomplished by hordes of devotees singing, chanting, dancing around the idol, as they lead the merry procession to the beach. All of Bombay comes to a standstill on visarjan day. Though we lived quite close to the beach my parents had the good sense to never let us go to the beach on the day of the immersion, since the crowds were immense. However one year there was a family friend who offered to take me to the beach on the day of the immersion and my father relented. I must have been around 14-15 and I have never seen more people congregated in that narrow strip of sand at any time in my life. I clung on to that man for fear of being dragged off by the mob towards the beach. It was like the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, just with ten times more people. It's really a sight to behold if you can perch yourself in some tall building close to the beach.

 

After he is finally gone, sanity returns, and a for few days we miss the presence of the rotund, benevolent elephant man-child god every place you turn. Ganesh Chaturthi is a time for families, immediate and extended to come together and celebrate the god of beginnings, the patron of intellectuals, bankers, authors, and everyone else in between. It’s a prep for the largest festival that’s around the corner Diwali. It’s a time for food, joy, laughter, and hoping for new starts in life.

 

May the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi be the beginnings of new tidings for you and your loved ones in what’s turned out to be a forgettable year thus far. Happy Ganesh Chaturthi to all.