Quirky telling is the key

Raman Raghav 2.0 (Hindi)

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vicky Kaushal, Sobhita Dhulipala, Amruta Subhash

An opening rider in

Raman Raghav 2.0 establishes the film’s connect (as well as the disconnect) with the infamous serial killer of the 60s Mumbai: Raman Raghav, who had left a trail of 40-odd murders.

“This film is not about him,” the disclaimer states. Indeed, the film is about a contemporary copycat killer. But then it is not just about the new age Ramanna either.

Whodunnit? Whydunnit? Howdunnit? RR 2.0 is actually neither of the above. Yes, there are many murders that keep you riveted, but they are not an end in themselves.

They are more a contrivance, as is the cat and mouse game between the killer Ramanna (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and the cop Raghuvendra Singh Ubbi (Vicky Kaushal).

The slayings and slaughters are mere pit stops in the journey of these two characters and their unfolding relationship with each other. The killings (right from the one at the start till those in the end) are devices through which Anurag Kashyap explores the crime vs law binary.

He brings the two together, coalesces and fuses them. Is there much that separates the two?

Aren’t they reflections of each other? The film is a long chase in which each is actually running after his own shadow. It is as if Kashyap deliberately splits an immoral, unlawful mind into two and the film then becomes a voyage to a metaphoric completion.

The pivot of the film is the portrait of the serial killer. The creature of Mumbai mythology and folklore is brought alive with added shades of the dark and the menacing in this brand new avtaar.

Glowing cat eyes, a scar running down his forehead, at times wearing his own sister’s earrings, humming ‘aadmi musafir hai’ and moving around with an iron car-jack in hand, scouting furtively for victims, hiding in slush and rising up nonchalantly from it plastered with muck.

Nawaz is brilliantly frantic and frenzied as the cold hearted, demented, voyeuristic pervert.

More than the story itself, it is the quirky telling that is the key. Structured around eight chapters, vividly shot in the slums, pulsating with raucous music, Raman Raghav 2.0 is a taut thriller, full of energy and brimming with tension.

NAMRATA JOSHI