‘Ram Setu’ movie review: A bridge too far to cross for Akshay Kumar

The move of movies that voice the current political dispensation’s cultural manifesto has reached a quantity the place we are able to decide the cogent from the shrill and the forthright from the manipulative. On this distinct class of movies, the place you’ll be able to see Whatsapp messages and dinner desk discussions come alive-on display screen,  Ram Setu is a persuasive try and preserve afloat the contentious principle that the limestone shoals that join the Pamban and Munnar islands are a part of a man-made construction and never a piece of nature.

Drawing from the controversy across the Sethusamudram Undertaking and Pushkar Bhatnagar’s little-known 2003 ebook the place the author tried to this point the period of Lord Ram on the premise of planetary positions described in Valmiki’s Ramayan, the makers have tried to assemble a bridge between religion and science, between fable and oral historical past, and between faith and tradition. It’s a wobbly experience that ends with a potent lecture on preserving cultural satisfaction and alongside the best way, and provides a transparent image of the so-called majoritarian view on conserving the channels of religion, which might even sweep the judges off their toes and threaten to soften the construction of the structure.

The VFX seems to be faux, and the performances are nearly common, however the thought has sufficient heft to maintain the devotees . For others, there’s a clear message; those that don’t consider in Lord Ram, their faces should be blackened.

Ram Setu is directed by Abhishek Sharma, however the voice is of inventive producer and co-writer Chandra Prakash Dwivedi, one of many inventive forces who work within the realm of fiction to offer legitimacy to the realpolitik of the ruling social gathering and paint the earlier governments in darkish shades. In  Samrat Prithviraj, Dwivedi offered an epic poem, taught in Hindi literature lessons, as historical past. Right here once more, he positions a honored epic poem as a supply of historic proof to maintain the devoted invested and convert the fence-sitters, for Adam’s Bridge or Ram Setu is one spot that takes the story of Ram past the non secular semantics and geographical boundaries.

Set in 2007, the narrative follows the construction of  The Kashmir Information. If the Vivek Agnihotri movie portrayed the change of coronary heart of a younger, secular Kashmiri Pandit, Sharma depicts the makeover of a celebrated liberal archaeologist Aryan Kulsheshtra (Akshay Kumar).

Aryan is working along with his Pakistani and Afghan counterparts to save lots of the Buddhist heritage in Bamyan, earlier than he’s despatched by these in energy to Tamil Nadu to save lots of the pursuits of a delivery tycoon (Nassar) whose costly vessels couldn’t float within the shallow channel between Indian and Sri Lanka.

He needs a ‘beneficial’ report back to be positioned earlier than the Supreme Court docket, and in ‘atheist’ Aryan, he sees the appropriate candidate. However when Aryan and his workforce start to seek out traces of proof of Lord Ram, they change into a risk to his enterprise pursuits. In his seek for ‘arduous’ proof, Aryan crosses over to the Sri Lankan waters and finds AP (Satyadev Kancharana), a mysterious information who takes them to the spots talked about within the Ramayan.

Like The Kashmir Information,  Ram Setu sees liberal and secular values within the Hindu society as a form of rot that must be checked. The movie provides a way that should you maintain a contrarian view, get able to face the backlash. Aryan’s spouse (Nushratt Bharucha) is a historical past professor who advises her husband to take note of the  aastha (religion) of the bulk earlier than submitting the report. Their son, who’s proven to be finding out in ‘Lutyens’ College — a time period typically utilized by these near the federal government to focus on others who maintain a contrarian view — is focused for the views of his father.

In each movies, the writers learn the previous from a way of persecution complicated of the bulk, and inform us that we’re within the midst of a conflict of civilisations. So it paperwork the demolition of the Bamyan Buddha and Jaffna Public Library, however makes no point out of the erasure of the Babri Mosque. It factors out how the Metro route was shifted to save lots of the Qutb Minar, however makes no point out of the way it steered away from the enduring Hanuman statue in Karol Bagh. It talks of the environmental considerations across the Taj Mahal, however forgets to inform the viewers that one of many causes the Sethusamudram Undertaking didn’t get clearance was as a result of the apex court docket took notice of the considerations of environmentalists. There’s an environmentalist within the movie as nicely, however she, performed by Jacqueline Fernandez, stays an ornamental piece.

The makers wish to see the difficulty from the prism of religion, and as an alternative of negotiating the complicated layers of the previous,  Ram Setu seeks to leap to an imagined golden age, with out constructing a bridge. 

Ram Setu is at present working in theatres