Bhagavan Dasante Ramarajyam Review | A Satire With Great Relevance but No Sharpness

Bhagavan Dasante Ramarajyam, directed by Rasheed Parambil, is a political satire that wants to talk about the communal tension that has got developed in our country. While the narrative establishes the points on which it wishes to develop the plot, the development part isn’t strong. The final output thus lacks the political and satiric impact it aspired to have in the first place.

Bhagavan Dasan is the head of this Baale group named Udayam. After the previous leader got bedridden, the group was inactive. The movie Bhagavan Dasante Ramarajyam shows us the events around the local temple’s annual festival when Bhagavan Dasan decides to present his Ramarajyam Baale once again on stage with the help of like-minded people. The opposition he had to face and how it all goes is what we see in Bhagavan Dasante Ramarajyam.

The left versus right political satire angle is not presented in a very loud and evident way in this movie, similar to, say, Akhil Marar’s Oru Thathvika Avalokanam. There is an overall subtlety in the way each element is represented as an allegory of many of the political events that shaped up in the recent past with the rise of the right wing and also the woke sensibilities. But the writing of Febin Sidharth merges those thoughts neatly to never make it look like a blatant endorsement of a particular ideology. The issue with the movie is the lack of sharpness in how it presses on certain critical points.

When you look at the movie as this rooted story about political tension among the native people, there are many fun elements in how Rasheed Parambil has constructed the scenes. The humor in many sequences, especially the ones featuring Manikandan Pattambi, looks really good. But the graph of the drama on a scripting level is kind of vague. The interval block arrives out of nowhere, giving us less clarity on the conflict. And as the movie goes towards the happening of the Baale, the expected level of intrigue is not really there, and the metaphoric fight of ideologies that Bhagavan Dasan visualizes is not really attaining that desired political impact. The songs by Vishnu Sivasankar were really catchy.

As the title character, TG Ravi uses his veteran charm to be that leader figure with focus and composure. Even though the initial Kambi jokes felt unnecessary, Irshad felt like an apt choice for the role of Ravi. Manikandan Pattambi was easily my favorite among the actors as he effortlessly cracked the humor. Prasant Murali as the main antagonist, was memorable. Akshay Radhakrishnan doesn’t have much of a task ahead of him as the Raman of the Baale. In fact, Nandana Rajan had got a better character in terms of screen space and scope to perform. The chemistry of the duo was also good. Sreejith Ravi, Roshna Ann Roy, Niyas Backer, Vinod Thomas, etc., are the other prominent star cast members.

In totality, Bhagavan Dasante Ramarajyam is a film that needed a tidier and more focused screenplay to convey its politics. The creative decision to not make it a direct attack on the right-wing ideology somewhere dilutes the movie too much. Despite the humor and some dramatic elements keeping things alive for the movie, the oversimplified conclusion and the lack of a solid arc makes it a film that struggles to create any impact.