'Ram-Leela' - Bhansali's Genious Explodes On Screen

Film: "Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-leela", Cast: Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Supriya Pathak, Gulshan Devaiah and Richa Chadda; Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali; Rating: *****

Just when you think you have seen it all, there comes a film that reminds you of how far the cinematic medium has come...And how far it can go in the right hands. Let's face it - Bhansali is Bhansali. The visual imagery in all his earlier films - from "Khamoshi: The Musical" to "Guzaarish" is comparable with the best art from any field of aesthetics.

In terms of its free-flowing, unmeasured and operatic opulence, "Ram-leela" (with or without the censorial prefix), comes closest to the giddy high-pitched and yet miraculously controlled tempo and tenor of Bhansali's "Devdas". That too was a steeply sensuous cinematic adaptation from a literary source.

"Ram-leela" goes to William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and comes away with a marvel of a tale of love-at-first-sight. Bhansali tilts his hat to mythology, folkore and the culture of community clashes with a blend of spontaneity and brilliance.

What Bhansali does to Shakespeare's tumultuous saga of sudden love between scions of two warring families, is beyond the imagination of all other living filmmakers of this country.

The rigorous reworking of the Shakespearean classic required a certain sense of recklessness. Earlier this year, we saw some of the same creative recklessness in two other Bollywood adaptations of "Romeo and Juliet" - namely Aanand L. Rai's "Raanjhanaa" and Manish Tiwary's "Issaq".

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