I think all of us have a formative in our life. It doesn't necessarily have to be to a movie obviously, but mine is Sita. Sita from Ramayana. Sita ( or Janaki as we were told as kids) who was from our own country, from Janakpur, Nepal (or just Janakpur back in the days since Nepal was actually united from a dozen kingdoms in 1768). Let me retract actually, my formative anything is my grandma (and my grandma taught me about Sita. Actually my grandma taught me about almost everything I know).
My point being is that my grandma has been the most important person in my life and by extensions all the goddesses she taught me about. It is pretty obvious that my grandma is a Hindu woman but she is pretty unique in not her rejections of the male gods (and boy do we have many haha), but her focus on goddesses. I mean it is pretty common from a Hindu to choose a deity as their own but grandma chose the goddesses as her own. Blah blah why am I talking about my grandma? Because she is dying and I don't know how to come to terms with it . Just like I have never known how to come in terms with my atheism and how to reconcile with my culture (by which I am not saying all Nepalis are Hindu obviously) which creates itself completely around religion.
Like how for the longest time I could not understand that western feminism is not the only way around it, that I can reconcile my religion and my feminism as it maybe. Like Sita's life and my rejection of Ram I think is my pinpoint to feminism. So to have a movie that examined the other end of Ram we never talk about by a Hindu (I have many problems with Mani but for this movie I think he was okayish even though I would have liked it more had a woman directed it) was like my dream. Also, addendum to that was that it dealt with Raavan in a different light than one in Ramayana especially regionality which being a Nepali I can begin to understand. So, I do dislike it when nondesis look at the movie thinking they understand as much when it's clear that there are aspects that don't have the background to understand.
Also, the performances were really great and which is what I think set the movie apart from the Hindi counterpart because a lot of the regional identity got lost in the translation. But also, Abhishek just was not a strong enough actor to carry the Hindi movie on his own as Vikram did. Vikram did the role a lot of justice and Aishwarya as great in both I believe.
So yeah:
"Chand rekhaon mein, seemaon mein
Zindagi qaid hai Seeta ki tarah
Ram kab lauten ge maloom nahin
Kash Rawan hi koi aa jata
[Life is imprisoned like Sita
When will Ram return, it is not known
Wish at least some Ravan had returned]"
( Pray if you believe in God, your end is in my hands. It is written in stoneCollapse )