Satya 2: Time to pack up Ramu?

Satya2

Starring: Puneet Singh Ratn, Anaika Soti, Aradhna Gupta

Rated: 4/10

Ram Gopal Varma weaved some stunning magic with Satya, setting quite a high standard for the bhai log movies on which many others tried to shape their ventures. Satya was an iconic film, almost perfect, comprehensive, edgy, emotional, stunning, violent and slick all at one go. It established Ram Gopal Varma’s name in the industry in such concrete terms that all his misadventures in the following decades still did not diminish his fame with this genre.

He consolidated his magic with Company which was another gem from the Varma closet, for some even better than Satya. For me though, all the song and dance and simple relationships that he clothed in Satya were the most memorable and Varma’s best ever.

By dishing out Satya2, Varma has done best what he has been doing ever since Satya and Company. He has worked hard at undoing any support he may still have had left among his audience not just as a director but all the love for his kind of cinema.

He has erred with impunity and established one worrying fact — he is no longer interested in what he is creating and his style and chutzpah have all gone for a six. Satya2 is flat, rippleless and ridiculous, especially if you compare it with the original. The vacant eyes of its main protagonist reflect the emptiness of the story and the script.

Puneet Singh Ratn as Satya erroneously does what you would call inverted hamming, stressing on every single word that comes out of his mouth — much like a delayed live telecast. Other than speaking in jerks, he also looks small and unhappening for a role of such mammoth proportions. Ramu has laid so much stress on this boy that every other character in the film is a mere sideshow. With such enormous footage and camera concentration all the flaws in Ratn’s histrionics come out larger than life.

The music is forgettable as it was unforgettable in Satya. The wide-eyes and pouting lips of its two-bit, regressive heroine tell you how deliberately artificial the entire act is and misplaced the thread of her relationship with Satya is.

Satya had Bhikhu Mahtre in Manoj Bajpai. Here you can’t take any names or even draw a remote parallel. All characters are floating around in Varma’s flawed make-believe world where the nothingness of the film hit you much like the bullets which pierce the souls of his actors in the film. Much without a reason, if one can point out.

Thanks to the ultimate magic that Satya wove all those years ago, it will fortunately remain unblemished despite such a non-happening, errant and deadpan progeny which had absolutely no moments to count on. Ramu this is not done, not with Satya at least! 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, November 10, 2013