A dark-psychological thriller, Raman Raghav 2.0 is a brilliant piece of cinema in Bollywood, written by Vasan Bala and Anurag Kashyap, and directed by Anurag Kashyap.
“Set in present day Mumbai the story follows the life of a serial killer Ramanna or Raman (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) who is inspired by an infamous serial killer from the 1960s, Raman Raghav. His strange obsession with Raghavan or Raghav (Vicky Kaushal), a young cop, who is a drug addict, keeps growing as he closely follows him without his knowledge and often creates situations where both of them come face to face.” – IMDbOpening of the Film is spell bound, marvellously composed and, intriguing. I think it was greatly influenced by David Fincher style of opening sequences. How the films starts can tell a lot about how film would be. It resembles Fight Club or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo type of start.
Kashyap truly understands the essence of storytelling. This film is like watching visual book, as sequences are in chapter form and every detailing of the environment can be felt. Normal Hindi film has 70 scenes but, Raman Raghav 2.0 has 220 scenes. And not to forget that this film has been made in an ultra tight budget of 3.5cr Rupees and shot only in 20 days. Yes, Kashyap took just 20 days to create brilliance. The technique of guerrilla filmmaking has been applied into this to shoot on real locations of Mumbai. Which is, I believe, a major reason how they must have cut down on budget. Cinematography and editing is brilliant.
Nawazuddin undoubtedly steals the show. With his wicked acting skills he ignites the screen. The Masaan boy, Vicky Kaushal, did every bit he could to match the level of his co-star, and gave a really promising performance.
Sobhita Dhulipala! ex-Miss India Earth, truly seductive and phenomenal actress has stepped into the film industry at last. Thank you Anurag Kashyap. Rare combination of beauty and skills, she is the actress that B’town lacked, needed & deserved. Calling her another Radhika Apte wouldn’t be wrong. After the Raman Raghav, Sobhita has hypnotised me, and put her magical mystical spell upon me. Bollywood now has another gem to preserve. She is wow. I *heart* her.
Anushchka Shawney definitely needs a mention for her little yet strong appearance in the film. This film ends on her. Amruta Subhash is remarkable as Nawaz’s tormented sister. Her appearance and role saved the film from being monotonous and helped creating Raman’s character more prominent.
The music or score is not according to the scenes or the incidents, but, according to whatever the hell is going on the minds of these two psychopaths. The music in here is a way of telling us how they are thinking and experiencing. This creates a conflict of thoughts inside your brain which leads to lack of emotional-know-how.
Let’s talk about violence. Yes, it is there, but most of the violence is off the screen. So yeah, no disgusting moments as such. Times of India stated, “..it glorifies the gore.” as Raman tried to justify his murders that killing for insanity is better than killing in the name of religion, cast, country etc. But then again if you try to view this movie with a high moral grounds and find meaning in the actions, you will fail to get to its core and will be unable to recognise what a brilliant artwork this is. To appreciate Raman Raghav 2.0 you will have to surrender to it. Moreover, he is a schizophrenic psychopathic maniac, no other reason best suits his purpose of killing.
The basic concept is, ‘heart wants what the heart wants, baby.’ As the film is psychopath centric, I failed to connect to it. I tried my every bit to understand Raman and Raghav but couldn’t which in turn caused turbulence in my thinking process. And the failure in my emotion system, deciding that what to feel for whom, made me numb, and I felt nothing. In a scene where Raman was beating up his sister and her child, even though my brain knows this is wrong and bad, I couldn’t decide what am I supposed to feel. Sad for her sister, or sit back and stay shocked at the incident, or laugh like Raman and feel amused? I failed to feel anything and that was kinda sad.
Sobhita is wow. I *heart* her.
Throughout the film, I didn’t know for whom I was rooting for, as both were equally disturbing. Only that Raman had his reasons. Still the justification didn’t quite appeal to me. It’s a movie with two antagonists.
By rating this film 3 (out of 5) and an extra 0.5 for raising up the bars of Bollywood by such a tremendous effort, I can say that this movie is not a child’s play and highly NOT recommended to the PRDP or SOTY fans.
Honestly, I still don’t know how and what to feel about the movie.
सप्रेम।
EXTRAS:
It was released on my Birthday. Yay.
Even the intern gets the mention in Kashyap’s films when credit rolls.
I totally loved the soundtracks Qatl-E-Aam and Behooda.
I found this deleted scene from the film on YouTube which SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE FILM! Vicky Kaushal at his best. Click here for the video and witness it yourself.
And, Sobhita is wow. I *heart* her.
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