Rakshas movie: Review, Cast and Director

Film: Rakshas

Cast: Sharad Kelkar, Sai Tamhankar, Vijay Mourya, Umesh Jagtap, Rutuja Deshpande, Yaqub Sayed

Director: Dnyanesh Zoting

Rating: * * *

 

The world was a magical place in days of yore and the human imagination saw a spirit world everywhere in nature.Storytellers wove myths. Prophets spoke in parables. Film-maker Dnyanesh Zoting features one such fable in a story set in rural Maharashtra, in the heart of dense forests coveted by corporates.

Subtitled in English, ‘Rakshas’ opens with footage of exquisite forests and verdant lands threatened by rampant tree-felling (MTDC is thanked in the end credits) It is to this sylvan setting that a young documentary film-maker Avinash (Shard Kelkar) goes, accompanied at times by his cute daughter Aranya (Rutujha Deshpande).

Comes the day, when he doesn’t return and wife (Sai Tamhankar,earnest) sets out in search of the missing spouse. The news channels run stories of tribal/police encounters.Zoting ( who has written the story/screenplay and edited the film) drops hints early on that all is not well in the dense forests. Now, we see conflicts between tribals,police and mysterious groups who have an agenda of their own. The rural populace is, for the most part, brusque.

Aranya (or Aru as she is better known) who is generally left to her devices by the distraught mother, finds an old story book about a princess who rescues her father from the ‘raakshas’ (demon) in the jungle. Aru finds the forest enchanting in more ways than one: in an old cave,she meets a wizened old man (ex DD man Yaqub Sayed)who tells her she must solve three riddles to locate her father and free him from the clutches of the demon.

Reality merges with fantasy, as little Aru solves the riddles in the folkloric tale a bit too easily while her mother is abducted by the same Naxals that had whisked away Avinash. Intriguingly, she never questions her daughter’s frequent “sleepwalking”, an exasperating flaw in character development even as we applaud her courage.

Sharad Kelkar, former gym instructor and model, is competent in the role of Avinash. Andrew Mackay’s music score has folksy and classical interludes. Mayur Hardas’s camerawork is impressive especially in its capture of the rustic,rural setting. Zoting’s film unmasks corruption and greed and who the titular “rakshas” really is, but ends, alas, on an underwhelming note.