More than the Hero

Raavan, a 2010 film by Mani Ratnam, questions the tenacity of the moral code and the politics of empathy

- Tanul Thakur

TOWARDS the end of Raavan (2010), Raagini's (Aishwarya Rai) husband, Dev (Vikram), accuses her of infidelity, ordering her to take a polygraph test.

"Beera told me that his hands may be dirty," he says, "but your wife isn't pure gold as well." She pulls the chain of the train and gets off. She meets her abductor, Beera (Abhishek Bachchan), and thunders, "What did you tell Dev?" Delirious with disbelief that Raagini has returned to meet him, he walks towards-and gawks at-her, as the scene cuts to a flashback.

Beera on a creaking bridge, holding Dev's hand. "I can kill you for your wife," he says, "and I can save you for her." He scowls: "Gold-your wife is gold. My hands are dirty, yes, but I've protected your gift with all my heart." At that moment, both Raagini-and the audience-realise that Dev, the cop, is cruel, while Beera, the criminal, is kind. This scene upends the whole film, making us ask: Who is the hero, who is the villain? Who deserves our empathy, who deserves our scorn? And if Raavan-like Beera, avenging his sister's death, is both virtuous and vicious, then what does that make him? An anti-hero. A character who, honouring his own moral codes, bends the rules, mocks the law, and gets what he wants-someone with the right ends but the wrong means.

(Unlike the hero, he's also funny, charming, and suave, questioning our own fealties to good and evil.) But such a figure wasn't organic to Indian cinema, for it's had a long history of venerating heroes-and stars. Just consider the country's first film, Raja Harishchandra (1913), modelled on a king so virtuous that he never lied. In the next two decades, dominated by mythologicals, heroes and villains inspired by gods and demons-had little moral ambiguities.