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Aranya Movie Review: Rana Daggubati shines in this underdog story with routine elements
Aranya Movie Review: Rana Daggubati delivers a fine performance in a role that requires him to unleash his physicality.
Movie title: Aranya
Cast: Rana Daggubati, Vishnu Vishal and others
Director: Prabhu Solomon
Rating: 2.5/5
When the teaser of 'Aranya' came out last year, it was pretty much clear that Rana Daggubati's characterization would be the film's raison d'etre. Writer-director Prabhu Solomon weaves moments that deepen the character of a socially-eccentric adventurous man who has become one with the jungle he has been living in for decades. He is somewhat old and unkempt, and yet when he spots an animal, his whole being springs to life. Such a dashing darling of the forest is also impulsive and compulsively furious - a trait that makes him more cinematic and less slice-of-life. He is a non-conformist, but his fight is regular and bereft of highs.
In a forest near Vizag, a huge refinery is being built by a corporate house with the express blessings of Environment Minister Kanakamedala Raja Gopalam (Anant Mahadevan), who is the kind of developmentalist Maoists and green activists abhor. Elephants, which have been living in the area for generations, feel threatened. The company needs to build a long wall to prevent them and Aranya (Rana) from spoiling the party. Can Aranya race against time and prevent the refinery from coming up on a war footing?
As a man without resources and connections, Aranya is an underdog. At the same time, he is also larger-than-life, having acquired a cult status. He is looked upon as a hero by forest-dwellers, an element that is used unimaginatively in the most crucial scenes of the film.
Half of the film can be described in just one sentence: One set of people is busy questioning the heartless system, while the other set makes its villainy too obvious. The bad set of people are, in the climax, condensed into the character of an IAS officer who, for all practical purposes, is a helpless buffoon. The Environment Minister is a cardboard character straight out of the 1990s playbook of masala films. He makes it a point to mock the hero by calling him a wounded lion. Just to make sure that we understand that he is pitiless, he threatens a journalist at an event.
After it is done with evil politicians and evil bureaucrats, the film ritualistically introduces a cardboard cop (Ravi Kale, who tries to make his badness obvious by breaking into cynical singing at the drop of a hat).
Aranya's crusade is not the film's only concern. Vishnu Vishal plays a mahout who is floored by the beauty of an ultra-professional Maoist (Zoya Hussain), who for all we know doesn't care much for his existence. While this love story is underwhelming, the changing equations between him and his kumki are interesting. To the film's credit, the shifting equations between Aranya and his beloved elephants are well-narrated in the second half.
Rana delivers a fine performance in a role that requires him to unleash his physicality. He doesn't show excessive anxiety when important documents are snatched from him. It helps his character when the director lets the audience soak into the plight of the elephants through a careful choice of frames. The film should have avoided too many vague close-up shots of the elephants. The background score (by Shantanu Moitra and George Joseph) should have brought out the tension of the proceedings better.
After a point, the 'forest man of India' is reduced to someone who either seethes with rage or wails occasionally even as trigger-happy cops threaten to gobble up the forest. Aranya is seen shouting when he is not chasing. We know he is waging battles, but we never understand what he wants to do to win the war. And when it is time to wrap up the film, all it takes for him to enthuse the forest-dwelling constituency is to make some hyper-emotional expressions. If only it was enough to win a war...
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