Ketan Mehta talks about time-travelling for Rang Rasiya, his movie on the painter-prince Raja Ravi Varma

Ketan Mehta’s outings in period films, so far, haven’t been very successful (Note: Mangal Pandey: The Rising). “The scales are vastly different here,” argues Mehta, in defence of Rang Rasiya which was screened at the London Film Festival and which he is currently promoting at the International Film Festival of India in Goa.

The long-in-the-making, much-talked-about movie about the 19th century painter-prince Raja Ravi Varma will finally release in India in January.

Varma’s paintings, peopled by gods, sari-clad celestial beings and ordinary women, catapulted him to fame in his lifetime, yet little remains known of the artist whose works are now displayed on calendars and listed as national treasures.

Putting together a celluloid biography of the man who never even kept a journal was a tough task, says Mehta. He scanned historical texts and pictorial records from Kerala. “Marathi writer Ranjit Desai’s book Raja Ravi Varma provided some insight into his life but little about his philosophy,” says Mehta.

“Even as a student at the FTII in Pune, I was fascinated by how he influenced the father of Indian cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke.”

Randeep Hooda, who impressed with his brooding intensity in the forgettable Ram Gopal Varma film D, leaves the gun for the brush — and another Varma. Hooda plays Ravi Varma — from his struggling days in Kerala to his eventual success at a Vienna exhibition.

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