Super Star in & as LINGAA ♠Anushka ♠ARR ♠KS Ravikumar

[madhus369]

Another review from the net... this one from the US...

Lingaa - the hero with a familiar face




2014
directed by K. S. Ravikumar
stars Rajnikanth, Anushka, Sonakshi Sinha, Santhanam, Vijayakumar, Nizhagal Ravi, Jagapathi Babu, Brahmanandam


Mohan's Meter - * * * *







Leave it to Indian critics to focus on the superficial. The real fallacy in Lingaa , if you want to call it that, is not the poorly lip-synched heroines or the MGR-like over the top hero. It is in one scene - Rajnikanth's flashback character is reading a book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, on board a train, in 1939. The book was actually published in 1949.

But, it is clear this was done intentionally; because the book has a lot to do with the theme. The "Da Vinci Code", of this movie, if you will, can best be understood and stated by an American working class intellectual - who has read the above mentioned book more times than the rest of you have watched Gabbar Singh - than some Millennial who wrote a review for the Times of India using his smart phone.

Throughout history, says the book, storytelling has been a form of psychology, a means of connecting us with moral and ethical ideas far deeper and far more poignant to be stated in ordinary words. So whether it is the Ramayana or the Legend of Gilgamesh, The Gita or the Bible, one has to let the words sink in, wrestle with the paradoxes, ask the right questions and seek out a message.

The message of Lingaa is about the new India, an independent, modern India which should now rid itself of the very problems the British brought to it - the ridiculous obsession with caste, the learned helplessness, self-hatred for our culture and values, looking to the West as the great White Hope, and seeing ourselves as victims to fate. It is up to every individual to be accountable to this New India, if it is ever to blossom and flourish.

The hero, Lingeswaran, takes the audience through his own inner journey, a rediscovery of his family legacy and to the man he was named after, which brings him in touch with what he truly can be and the ideals which can take him there.

That in a nutshell is the hero's journey, a journey which, as the brilliant author Joseph Campbell says, is something available to anyone if they have the courage and the conviction to take it.

Lingaa is a return to the old Rajnikanth, the Rajnikanth of Muthu and Padayappa, an embodiment and icon of the Tamil male ideal, a man seeking to be good and stay good, even if it means staking everything for the people he is accountable to. He is without doubt a South Indian man, a Tamil. For it is in Tamil tradition we find the powerful but emotionally immature gods of the Vedas tempered to be embodiments of goodness, strength, and compassion. It is in their minds that these same gods become inspiration to living a good life, a life of service to higher ideals, rather than just wallowing in superstition and fatalism.

As a humanitarian, philosopher, devotee, and less than minor deity, Rajnikanth understands the story of the human condition better than any other actor, and lives it in his ideals on the screen. Those who criticize this movie for being a political move should know better; Rajnikanth has not and will not run for political office. He is an icon, and will remain one, even after he has long left our midst.

As Prof. Campbell points out, there is little doubt that the hero's journey is a male one. This is because women already have things figured out; they are too busy living life than to be weaving stories about themselves. Hence, as in all movies, Anushka and Sonakshi are consciously left remaining as little more than eye-candy. But, frankly, the latter is so stunning on the screen, she leaves something behind in her role, a stand by your man ideal not subjugated upon her, but consciously chosen by her.