I watched Mani Ratnam’s latest flick, Ravan yesterday night. Its just another normal Bollywood flick, except for the good music and cinematography. I had expected better from Mani Ratnam. But this post will not focus on Mani Ratnam or Ravan.
The focus is failure of Bollywood to create real villains till now. While there have been character’s who have mesmerized audiences with their performances in negative roles, Bollywood has failed to create a negative role whom all the people come out of the screening hating and those among them who like the dark arts appreciating a master of the art executing the Devil’s agenda. All of Bollywood’s negative roles invariably end up getting transformed, realizing their follies and begging for forgiveness or end up doing a good deed to undo all their hard work earlier in the day. Even when the epitome of villains in India, Gabbar aka Amjad Khan is doing all those things like cleaning up the Thakur family, he is given a motive of justifiable feelings of revenge against the police officer who puts him behind the bars. In this context, even in Ravan, Vira’s motive for revenge was shown to be vengenance for the atrocities committed against her sister or prior to that his people in general and in the ends he falls for the feminine charms and ends up getting himself killed. What in the Devil’s name was the need to issue a character certificate for Mahua?
To close it, there have been some movies with some real villains over the years in Bollywood also, but the real devilish twist is missing or is not so continuous. I will update the post later on with some negative performances that I liked in Bollywood as and when I remember them.
