Raakshasa Kaavyam: When the devil quotes scriptures…

Socio-mythological films are a delicate, tightrope walk for its creators. While the mythology allows the director enough creative licence, the social dimension to the narrative poses a great challenge. The balance needs to be fine between fantasy and fact, with all things coalescing into an effective entertainer at the end. This is the endeavour of ‘Raakshasa Kaavyam’, released on this Friday all over.

Director Sriman Keerthi begins his film with a take-off invoking a popular tale from Hindu mythology concerning Lord Vishnu and his gatekeepers- Jaya and Vijaya - at Vaikuntha. He transposes it into Planet Earth allowing his imagination to take the shape of an infotainer.

At one level, it is the story of two brothers, one (Abhai Naveen) wanting to break free from the dungeon of despair into which his alcoholic, wastrel of a father (Dayanand Reddy, in an excellent performance) has pushed him into. The second sibling (Anvesh Michael), firmly on the side of his parent, whose wishes he panders to, is a cinema freak who laments that villains are treated badly in our kind of cinema, with heroes getting everything.

Building the first part of the story with a well-set flashback, shot very naturally with the right kind of light and shade, the director, moves into the post-interval phase, where the brothers are at loggerheads because of their value systems. Packing in a student (Pawon Ramesh) who has an exam to write but is compelled to celebrate his birthday the night before, the screenplay interlocks the unfortunate fellow into the murky lives of the violent hero and ends with him shocked with what all has happened on his special day. Ramesh plays the frustrated youngster very well, trying to escape the ‘affectionate’ clutches of the bad guy, to no end. Marked by solid, realistic portrayals and a slick editing (Venkat Kalyan) to keep the running time engaging, the film has enough for the millennials to look back at their growing-up years.

The story may not be refreshingly new, the intermeshing of social messages definitely is. Keeping the female portions minimal, in line with the overtly masculine proceedings, ‘Raakshasa Kaavyam’ is true to its name: Demonic in its demeanour but an attempt to be poetic too, at the end, with its gentle messaging.