Big B blames ‘Raavan’ editing for son’s failure

While the Tamil version of Mani Ratnam’s Raavan continues to do well at the boxoffice, a mini-Mahabharat is brewing over the Hindi version. Amitabh Bachchan, irked by the poor response to the film, on Sunday blamed its bad editing for spoiling his son Abhishek Bachchan’s role.Although the veteran actor later did a turnaround and tweeted “Mani Ratnam is one of the finest directors, and we should respect this vision’’, the director is said to be upset about this mudslinging on a public platform.

On Sunday Amitabh Bachchan tweeted, “Lot of merited film edited out, causing inconsistent performance and narrative. Abhishek’s erratic behaviour was due to symbolic 10 heads visually appearing and each giving him different attitudes to adopt for a situation, he would then finally shake them off and decide... It’s sad, in the edit you only see the aftereffect of that thinking process, hence inconsistent. In the edit, all the visual heads got cut and you see a confused Beera expression and wonder why?’’

Though Mani Ratnam has chosen to remain silent, both actor Vikram and cinematographer Santosh Sivan sprang to his defence. Sivan told mediapersons, “Everyone is entitled to his opinion but at the end of the day, it’s the director’s call.’’ Actor Vikram, who is part of both the Hindi and Tamil versions of the film, said, “Mani Ratnam is the best person to answer the question about the film’s editing. The same editing was done in Raavanan and it is doing well in the South. It is the audiences that decides the fate of the film. Even some of my scenes were edited out.’’

Another actor from the film said, “I agree the film has gone wrong but it’s not some national catastrophe for people to over-react in this manner. Let’s not forget the same director gave Abhishek Bachchan a Yuva and a Guru.’’ Another industry source said, “Amitabh Bachchan’s love for his son has made him hit out at Mani Ratnam. Why can’t he just accept that Abhishek failed to live up to the director’s expectation?’’

The distributors of the film Reliance Big Pictures have claimed the film has grossed Rs 53 crore worldwide.