They laughed and cheered at the film’s high points and made cat-calls during sequences that dragged unnecessarily, but there was not a single “I’m a Hindu and I’m offended by Ramleela” walkout. to wipe out the increasing malice and violence after returning from his twelve year vanvaas to Ahmedabad), let me assure you that the audiences in the film were absolutely unbothered by the film’s title and its content. The term ‘Ram Leela’ is only used as an analogy for Ram’s purpose in the film i.e. American audiences are far more sporting in this matter, taking no objection to film titles such as ‘12 Years a Slave’ (slaves referring to African Americans) and ‘Nymphomaniac’ (which is defined as ‘excessive sexual desire in and behavior by a female).įor those narrow-minded philistines raising their eyebrows and accusing ‘Ramleela’ of misleading audiences into thinking that the film is about Lord Rama, when it includes (in their own words) ‘objectionable and insensitive’ content (which, by the way, has nothing to do with Lord Rama – notice that the lord’s name itself is differently spelt. In Sanjay Leela’s world, Romeo and Juliet are rechristened ‘Ram’ and ‘Leela’, which has led to perhaps the second most ridiculous petition against a film title the obvious choice for the worst is Billu Barber, which had to be renamed Billu after beauty parlor associations found the word ‘barber’ derogatory. They aren’t harmless puppies who speak nothing except proclamations of love and beauty in immaculate iambic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet no longer are the two naïve, guileless youngsters who discover ‘love’ when they eyes on each other for the first time.
The backdrop and locations get an upgradation, with introduction of sand mafia, seedy brothels, adult video shops and guns and ammunition stores. When Baz Lurmann roped in the chocolate boy Leonardo Di Caprio to play Romeo in the 1996 adaptation ‘Romeo + Juliet’, he retained the name ‘Verona’ albeit for a beach and included drugs and other dopey stuff.īollywood has already seen at least three films in the last two years which have taken inspiration from the tragedy of two star-crossed lovers: the Parineeti Chopra-Arjun Kapoor starrer ‘Ishqzaade’, the Prateik Babbar-Amyra Dastur turkey ‘Issaq’ and, of course, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest film ‘Ram-Leela’. When Italian director Franco Zeffirelli brought Romeo and Juliet to silver screen in the year 1968, he faithfully adhered to Shakespeare’s script and set his film in the medieval period of Verona. The increasingly violent adaptations of one of William Shakespeare’s most well-known plays Romeo and Juliet have progressed from swords and shields to handguns and rifles (and in case of Ram Leela, a deadly betel but cutter…).Įach retains the basic premise, but sets the tale in murkier locations. It may be a visual treat, but Ram-Leela no Romeo and Juliet.Ĭast: Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Supriya Pathak, Richa Chadda, Gulshan Devaiah, Abhimanu Singh Ravi Varman and production designer Wasiq Khan.Goliyon Ki RaasLeela Ram-Leela Review: The first hour of Ram Leela is absolutely high on spirit, verve, energy and sexual passion. You can’t miss the work of cinematographer S. You can’t miss the method to this madness. He has devised the architecture of the story with a capacious imagination, and despite the flourishes and the excess, he has managed to retain its emotional gut and truth. All this for a length of two and a half hours could have been an exhausting experience if not for Bhansali’s vision, which keeps the film spectacularly engaging until the end. The acting veers towards over-the-top, the humour is rowdy and the dialogues written to rhyme (eg., “You are lover, I am killer") sound ridiculous in parts. While the camera is brisk in scenes of conflict and violence, the scenes between the lovers are shot with elegant simplicity despite the over-populated frames. There is no attempt at cosmetizing love or violence, or pummelling emotions with visual gimmicks.
This film too is a frenetic, opulent hotchpotch, but for the first time perhaps, Bhansali delves into something primal, and he is acutely aware of the machinations of violence. When too much of consciously crafted visual beauty heightens an already melodramatic story, fiction turns phony. Bhansali’s cinema is grandiloquent, often with disastrous effects.
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