Random thoughts on Malayalam Cinema

There is a trend in Tamil Cinema of remaking Malayalam movies of late and all I can say about it is, this was inevitable. Kerala has been doing the finest mainstream cinema for quite a while and each film has something that Tamil film-makers can take a cue from.

I am not going to make a list and grade movies but I will begin talking about the film I saw the latest, Premam. It is touted to be a blockbuster that has rewritten all box office records in Malayalam and that fact alone suffice to make me watch it. One word- ‘refreshing’ it was. To people who say it is a rehash of Autograph, I will have to strongly disagree. On first viewing a decade back, we adolescents were used to rejecting any movie that does not have a plot, that does not have a stunt sequence or a denouement that is not heavily charged. Autograph was refreshing in a way, that as far as I knew, it was the first attempt of a film-maker in Tamil to tell one’s own story even if it was heavily fantasized. The film had all its Tamil cinema must-haves, the romance and the concomitant melodrama, the comedy, strong character arcs and even some message-mongering. Try watching it again, you will find that the film begins strongly with wonderfully written adolescent episodes and slowly the movie deteriorates as Gopika vanishes and a tiring Balachander-archetype Sneha redeems Cheran’s life through outrageous sacrifices with her ‘angelic’ heart. So if you ask me whether I am saying Autograph is a bad movie, I will say no. All I am saying is that it has dated.

Coming back to Premam, what director Alphonse Putharan has done to the Autograph premise is infusing it with some kind of ‘aimlessness’. No scene in the film is in a hurry to leave its place and travel towards a pre-destined climax just like how we expect our movies to do. Every scene lingers at where it is set allowing you to internalize the milieu which the characters occupy. You are given ample time to study people and their actions. I am not saying that this is the first ever film that cares about its people more than its plot. Produced by Anwar Rasheed and supposed to be a commercial movie, it certainly is breaking some new ground. And less significant is the fact that Putharen’s urge to push the envelope is evident in the way his story shapes itself. In Neram, the leading man had no qualms in introducing his love as his ‘sister’ when caught red-handed by a traffic cop. Here too, you keep expecting someone from Tamil Nadu to emerge and ruin Nivin’s unseemly love for his teacher Malar. It happens, though with a tweak, but what I least expected was a reciprocation from her. And it was exciting to find whom Nivin marries finally, actually is.

But trying to push the envelope is fine, but Putharen wants to do it in every frame. The camera movement is supposed to be dynamic but here it is restless, in some scenes. I was told by my friend that the undulating camera movement is supposed to concretize the recurring ‘Butterfly’ motif of the film to the viewer. Also the introduction sequence of Malar, the camera revolves around the characters dizzying the viewer. May be Putharen wanted to propagate the dizzying intoxication of the protagonist on meeting his love through the movement. In a lesser movie, I would be raving about the kind of nuanced film-making the young director has sought to achieve. Here, for a film that is so exquisitely framed for most part-take the instance of Nivin’s introduction in the second episode which sent a usually stone-faced viewer like me into an irrepressible eruption of rapture, I would expect better craft that prevails over the exhibitionist ambitions of an amateur. This was one of the reasons why I liked his Neram a lot lesser than I should have actually. But with Premam, I would have to give it to Putharen to have shown extraordinary progress from his first film.

 

Let me talk about another movie that impressed me in Malayalam- Ayaalum Njaanum Thammil. It should have been the finest Malayalam movie I had ever seen, considering how rock-solid the plot and how terrific the casting were. Still, I was consistently gnawed by poor writing and equally ordinary direction.  When a deeply dejected Prithviraj returns after his unrealized marriage to meet an expectant Prathap Pothan, the latter walks up to his student and asks where his wife was whom he had promised to bring along. Prithviraj replies with a blank ‘No’ and Pothan turns away. Prior to this scene, we are shown how desperate Prithviraj is to realize his long-cherished dream of marrying his love and we are allowed to root for him. When the marriage unexpectedly is spoiled by Kalabhavan, we are left in a state of shock. All that matters at this juncture is how wrenching the pain would be for Prithviraj and how he takes it, which is what is shown to us subsequently through a song. The next scene ideally should reflect how Prithviraj begins to get along with the new life that is going to be completely devoid of any enlivening hope or direction. As a story-teller, I should be least bothered about the inevitability of Pothan getting to know about the unforeseen event, unless I am going to force the character to give Prithviraj some solace or inspiration. A separate scene to show the communication of the event to Pothan, that too in the most mundane manner possible, when it is in no way going to impact my story is utterly superfluous. This is one of many instances where I found the writing below-par.

Barring the scene in which Prithviraj is absolved by the ‘priestly’ Pothan of all his sins where the camera slowly glides out of the window to reveal the name of the ‘Redemption Hospital’, there is no other place in the movie that warrants some direction sense on the part of the film-maker.

All mainstream Malayalam movies I have seen are impressive, mainly due to the fact that their story-writers peak every time, successfully hiding the flaws of the story-teller. Malayalam cinema, to be concise, has great stories, decent screen-writers and okayish directors in spite of the fact that there is so much division of labour among the three, unlike in Tamil where the director proudly dons all the three roles.

Tamil cinema as always has been strongly star-dependent and whenever star power wanes, it chooses to go plot-oriented like it has decided to do now. I am sure we will find more remakes of wonderful Malayalam stories like Indian Rupee, Shutter, Bangalore Days and begin to chest-bang that we are back. Let me concede that we have superb musicians, excellent technicians and fabulous actors and that’s  that. But my dear Tamil film-maker, here I lay down my gauntlet to you- “Try remaking Premam and I will stop writing about you”

A Happy Arranged Marriage? You mus' be joking..!!!

‘Look at her. The way her mouth widens to reveal her wonderfully arranged teeth shrinking her eyes, while devouring the cake her husband offers her. Oh God!! She is terrific’

The first feeling that a wedding photograph of a beautiful girl in facebook elicits in me, is instantaneous envy. The envy is not something completely unfounded but it must be a disorder reserved only for males, to feel rejected even if you have made no attempt to apply for the position. The cheerful wedding selfies and the skillfully captured moments in the photographs do send a message to all the facebook spectators, that the girl is certainly living the best moments of her life and reveling in unparalleled happiness. But you never know until one of your close female friends get married that how difficult, marriages really are and how clueless these women are, at life altering moments such as these.

Recently, I had my colleague expressing with firm emphasis something that sounded like a Santhanam one-liner, ‘Campus-interview rejects and single people are similar. The first one is as unlikely to get a job as much as the second one will end up securing a happy marriage’.

Once women turn 24, they are slapped with a ‘over-aged female’ label and the parents begin to move like electrolyzed reactants inside a tank to finish the process of getting their daughters married. The prime criteria, is that the groom should belong to the exact sub-caste or division under which their family has been placed in the caste hierarchy even if the sub-caste has already been buried under seven layers in a particular community. A community, many a time, will have three or four sub-groups. Each sub-group shall form a caste. Each caste will have at least three sub-castes and each sub-caste will have even more divisions that may either be defined based on geography or languages that were associated with them many hundred years ago. This method of multi-layered distillation shall end up creating more difficulties such as a skewed sex ratio or a wide economic disparitiy among the competing families within the same division. Assuming that in a particular sub-caste that there are more well-to-do families, the concerned girl’s family, if relatively poor, will have to lose more in the ‘business transaction’ that is critical in executing an arranged Indian marriage. With lesser number of males to choose, there will be even lesser chances of getting a groom that matches at least ten percent of the girls’ expectations.

Even if the caste question is resolved and the economic feasibility of the project favourably defined, the parents do not skip any chance to obtain the ‘go-ahead’ signal from the most important ‘stakeholders’ in the project – no, not the boy or the girl- the astrologers. There are a proliferating number of astrologers who are completely oblivious to the personal lives of the boy and the girl, but are entrusted with the responsibility of deciding their next fifty or sixty years.

’Marry within six months or you will have to wait for seven years’

 ‘A love marriage for this boy will surely end up in a divorce’

‘Your man is located 150 kilometres east from your house and if you do not marry this guy, you will never get married in your life’

‘If you marry the guy of this star, you will lose all your wealth’

Please do not conclude that either I should be an atheist or a Periyar follower because I do believe, one hundred percent in the powers of these fore-tellers. Every time I have chosen a girl from a list of photographs my parents have shown to me, our family astrologer has never failed to reject her with only a cursory glance at her horoscope.  Atheism, shit.

Please don’t be led into believing that the aforementioned incident is purely personal and please be aware that I am the fifth guy in the gang of my six friends who have had this complaint. Needless to say, I had a female friend who used to complain that every guy the astrologer recommended to her resembled her father in his shape.

I have heard an even more atrocious incident about a middle class girl who had to choose a guy over another one, only because, only his family was ready to delay the marriage by six months since all the affordable marriage halls had been taken during that span.

To sum up, in India, anyone can decide the lives of the boy and the girl, even if it could be the unknown astrologer, or the owner of the marriage hall or even a mythical king, born thousands of years ago who allotted the clan their present place in the caste hierarchy, but certainly not the boy and the girl.

As I ruminate over all these issues surrounding a marriage, and when I take a look at the same photograph of that beautiful woman, my envy now looks certainly mitigated. But there is more as to why I feel less envious. I know very less about that beautiful woman, who is actually the best friend of my friend.

As I ponder about her, I get reminded of one totally random incident about this woman that my friend told me long back.

The woman, in her high school, had been in a romantic relationship with a guy and her parents had found it out. They had taken great pains to break their relationship and had succeeded. My friend had been present at her house when all this had happened and the girl had refused to eat for more than three days. He told me that her mother never once had spoken with her during the period.

After a long time, when she had broken the silence, she uttered the following.

“Dear, please complete your studies, land up in a job and we promise we will get a wonderful husband for you in the future”.

She reportedly, had grown out of that phase and moved on to join one of the most prestigious engineering institutions in the country. She currently works as a System Analyst in an IT company who was a bright student in her college and is currently being paid twice than what I earn right now. It seems she has had plenty of proposals for marriage from many of her college friends and colleagues but she had turned them down because of one reason. She believed in her parents’ judgement and they could not fail her.

One day, my friend showed me a WhatsApp message sent by her, a few days before her marriage.

‘I do not know whether to call this off or not. I don’t know why I consented to this marriage. I don’t want this marriage to happen. I feel like killing myself’.

DeMonte Colony and young Tamil Cinema

In the first scene of DeMonte Colony, when a young wannabe film maker starts narrating his story to his producer, the producer asks what the title is. He replies “DeMonte Colony” and the title appears on the screen with an eerie background score. This is how young wannabe movie buffs want to make cinema. They are triggered by an urge to do something different from what the audiences have been fed to all these days but are constantly pestered by the itch to ensure that their audiences are not left off the hook for even one moment, and they do it even if it needs the breaking of the fourth wall.

A similar scene in Pizza, Karthik Subbaraj’s debut movie, came at the end where the hero himself is caught in his own concocted story which turns real and the doors shutting around him, giving the audience, a desperate nudge to leave the hall with a shock. The film should have ended when the hero starts his bike in slow motion, getting away with his felony, and the truth is revealed that none of what the audience have been seeing all this time is true. It could have been pulling the rug or even the marbled floor beneath the feet of the audience. It is possible that a section of the audience could have been pissed off at such an ending which pulls off a trick at their expense. May be Karthik would not have wanted to alienate the elders in the audience who would not accept a movie that allows bad guys to live in impunity and happiness.  But if he wanted not to disappoint elders, he would not have spun the story around an unmarried couple living together, at the first place. So please tell me, why do directors do something that they would not want to, only because they have to please their masters (audience)? This is probably what every other working man who chose to do a mediocre job, does at his workplace.  

Today’s young film makers have great ideas and brimming love for cinema more than their predecessors in mainstream cinema possibly had. (Their ability and craft, I am not talking about right now). But they plant themselves in situations similar to a gala wedding, where you are pleased to see your crush which is a great chance to talk with her but, to your disappointment, she is flanked with a mutual friend whom you cannot avoid at all. You want to lavish your crush with all your heart and attention but at the same time cannot afford to disengage your friend and you manage by occasional questions to him about his pending visa process, his parents’ endeavors to get his sister married, etc. But you may know, whatever you do for your friend, he is going to feel disgusted with you.

But I am not going to sermonize, enumerating every tenet of the The Holy ‘Follow Your Heart’ Bible. Both DeMonte Colony and Pizza are well intentioned movies, to say the least. Both are horror movies and made by first time directors. Both are so self-conscious that they were doing something that others had not and both have nods to specific sections of audience through stars like Rajni(in the former),Vijay (in the latter). Pizza focused on ‘living together’ problems and DeMonte Colony features an extra marital affair, though a (needless) backstory. I am getting more similarities if I start rummaging through my ‘compare and contrast’ nerves of my analytical brain. But there is one striking difference. Pizza knew what it was doing. DeMonte Colony loses its consciousness the moment the titles begin.

It is a great idea to plot the story around an evil ghost, precisely because most of the horror movies center on ghosts that are either humanized or ennobled by their flashbacks. And a noble ghost rarely manages to spook me which is why I almost stopped watching horror after Kanchana. It is a great idea to leave the ghost unrelieved from its earthly origins even after the end and to remain mute throughout on why the ghost haunts. It is a laudable idea that there is no attempt to shoehorn a romantic track into the story or allow the audiences to get some comic relief from the ordeal of the haunting.

But the ideas remain attractive only as much as they appear now even after the viewing. As critic Baradwaj Rangan used to repeat in every review, ideas need to be shepherded from the brain to paper and reworked meticulously for the final journey on to the screen. I hear Ajay Gnanamuthu, the director belongs to my age which is possibly too young for any film maker. Dear Ajay, hundred people can have ideas. Fifty people can have good ones and twenty can have great ones like you do. But not even four or five get the stage to narrate them aloud. Since you have qualified into the last four, you can inspire others. We wannabe artists look up to young film makers like you to make it big on the stage. As we predicted, Karthik Subbaraj did it big with Jigarthanda. DeMonte Colony is already a hit, yet we don’t want to predict something for you the way M.S.Bhaskar did in that uninspired movie of yours.

Book Review: Catcher In The Rye

My friend Vinodh used to say: Don’t choose the music. Let the music choose you. Personally, this has been true for every best thing that has ever happened for me in my life till now. Maybe that’s why I got excited, when, in the opening frames of ‘Vinaithandi Varuvayaa’, Karthick ( I prefer Karthick than Simbu as I still think he is an over rated actor) would exclaim, “kathala thedi naama poga mudiyathu… athuva nadakanum...”, for love is the greatest art pursued through life. Likewise, when the book chooses you rather than the other way around, believe me, it can prove lethal. Especially the right book at the right moment can kill you. Catcher in the rye chose me at one such time. A time when every miniscule part of my life was falling apart that it appeared even my shadow was looking down upon me. I really wanted to go inside my cocoon and hit the hibernation button. “Try Catcher”, was all Jeeva said. Usually, I never ever do what he says (same goes with him for all I say) but that day I chose to go different. Maybe that was all needed to be done then.

The book was simple. The protagonist was still simpler. But his psyche looked convoluted. And here was I of the presumption that only my mind can put up such freaky outlandish shows when rattled. Only after a while I realized that his mind was not convoluted but naked. That was the moment of my epiphany. It was like speaking directly to you circumventing all those societal consciousness. I didn’t realize the exact moment but even before half the way down, the book had become anthropomorphous to me. It was like a shot in the arm, pure unadulterated bliss!! . I got kicked, bullied, embarrassed, sympathized, apprehended, impended, killed and I don’t know what not feelings of an adolescent kid intimidated by his mise-en-scenes. By the end of the last page, Holden Caulfield became my Jesus and J.D. Salinger, the Holy Father. The only thing I couldn’t comprehend after closing the book was how the fuck (I have even started revering swear words!!) could a man, half a century before my birth, record the blue print of my brain’s thought process. Then my dormant brain got hit by light. It was not specific to me but to my entire race - The Losers! The race which Fate had designed so deviously during Genesis to make their counter parts dwell in the glories of their own narcissistic world. I swear, this was a book written by a Loser about a Loser to a Loser!! How else could he have known every single stair in the caliginous castle of Losers? He should have dwelled in it.

Subjective narration at its best, it was neither Salinger nor Holden Caulfield but Holden’s mind, or to be exact Holden’s unabridged mind, that was unfolding the events through all the bizarre haphazardness. I remember having this recurring thought during my ruminations, of what if my mind had the capacity to think aloud. I mean what if that infinitesimal time lag between what you think and what you speak had by-passed all your inhibitions so that whatever you thought came exactly as words out of your mouth. How people would react to all those erratic blathers? Well, the book was the metaphor of that abstraction. Never before did a book have such a profound effect in me. There were moments when I put down the book and was laughing out loud with that particular scene going on in rewind mode in my mind. And was it funny? Yes, definitely. But more than that, it was nostalgically funny. Things which I had experienced in my teenage days owing to my vestigial brain started resurrecting. The particular instance where Holden enacts the dodging of bullet invoked my memories of the Anniyan-Ambi changeover scene from the movie ‘Anniyan’ that  my mind tried to emulate when my father got mad and scourged me for my carelessness during my eleventh board exams (It was the only acute moment my father had laid his hand on me!). One other instance was Holden’s penchant for ephemeral platonic romances. At times his he will start choreographing things for future with that girl even though his consciousness would remind him that it’s just a temporary fix.
Having said everything, the distinctive thought that hit me was Catcher in the rye should be felt through if not venerated at least. For every person a moment will come in life when self-detestation will reek in every breath of you for not being able to emulate the image of the societal embodiment that your mind had conceived of yourself. This book will shunt that moment like a blanket does for the poor soul lost in the frost.  Because, it’ll help, though not directly, to recognize the exact opposite of the conceived ideal You. In fact, it’ll celebrate and cherish the unorganized, the disoriented, the impulsive, the alienated and all those not so easily expressible layers of You. In short, it’ll help you to find those missing jigsaw pieces to identify You.

Had I got this book during my teens, my life would have been completely different. Different in the sense my understanding towards the same life would have been way better. For the first time in my life, I was proud of being the way I am. The exact randomness of my life which was a liability till then had all of a sudden become my biggest asset. I don’t know how long it is going to be this way. But I’m sure that whenever I feel like going back to my cocoon, Holden Caulfield would be waiting there with open hands to welcome me. I was jumping with joy like a mad man for my life being the way it is and was looking forward with open arms to confront the next weapon from the arsenal of life. Somewhere deep in mind I could hear the muffled voice of the commander from Tennyson’s verses,

“Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns! ”

-Arulmozhivarman T


   

Jeeva, Why do you read?

This piece shall be in response to a single question that has been put to me numerous times by my group of friends that predominantly consist of people who have not been bitten by the reading bug, possibly yet. “Why do you read?”

Even after multiple instances of encountering such a question, the first time I really felt inclined to answer it, was when I had completed Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. It was some two years ago. I was possessed by Emma’s ghost (Madame Bovary) then and I replied with the serenity of a hermit, “Reading makes me forgive everyone. It helps me empathize even with the insane, the borderline psychotics or even the most sinister minds of the world”. The answer was strongly backed by a very puerile perception that since I was able to empathize even with Emma who in spite of having been blessed with a loving husband and a comfortable existence, subjected herself to adultery and consequent ruin. In fact, I was into believing then, that should a similar real life situation arise of my wife cheating me, I would be able to forgive her and let her free to unite with her illegal lover. Now I am 26 and on the verge of getting married and when I reconstruct such a scenario inside my head, I see no reason why I should not chop the parts of my wife’s anatomy and keep it in refrigeration to show it to my friends.  I am no longer, a Messiah who would carry all the sins of the world and grant them eternal salvation.

Very recently, to the same question of why I read, I had found a different answer when I was under the spell of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It was a ‘magical realist’ novel. I told my inquisitive friend that the book appealed to a centre of my brain which I did not know that it existed before. If that sounds rather vague, I would like to explain better. None can dispute the fact that one cannot draw oneself to reading, unless one of the characters of his book has some traits that resemble that of the reader. The book should look like the reader himself has been installed to operate in a different universe. ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J.D. Salinger is one such novel which appeals to almost all of the reading populace solely because Holden Caulfield, its protagonist acts in some ways, as the adolescent alter ego of the reader. But you cannot expect all novels which you come across to reflect yourself and you are bound to be disappointed sometimes. When I started ‘One Hundred Years’, I could sense that I was in for such a disappointment since there were too many characters and lot of story in it and the author did not care to detail his characters to make them flesh-and-blood so that I would try caring for them. It did not have anything that conforms to the rule book of classic literature but when I was halfway through it, I was not able to pull myself out of the strings through which it had managed to tangle me to its web. As mentioned earlier, there was some unknown centre in my brain that had responded to the call of the book and I still descend into a reverie when I think about the book.

Still I feel I have not responded to the question of my friend convincingly and he might have asked back, ”Alright it appealed to your brain but so what? How did it make you feel better? Did it make you any wiser or help you look at life better?” Frankly I don’t have an answer.

Alright. Let me handle the question with a very different contention.“Reading in many ways kindles your imagination”. You are very much part of the storytelling as much as the writer is. The writer directs you to create his world inside your head and the onus of executing his directions is with you. When Kalki describes Arulmozhivarman as ‘a muscular warrior blessed with enchanting beauty and charisma’, he does not paint his image and display it to me like an Agra doll hawker. It is my duty to construct the image based on his instructions and, for example, to make things easier, when I imagine a slim Sivaji Ganesan for the role, the job is only half done. But when he is prescribed to be muscular, I develop his image of him further by burnishing him with some pounds of neatly sculpted lat muscles supporting a stubborn chest. Now the figure of Arulmozhivarman is neither Kalki’s altogether nor Sivaji Ganesan’s. I chiseled him myself into a man whom you cannot replicate or find anywhere.

In many ways, the writer does not invite you into his head and make you look at exactly the same things he has been seeing so far. It is, to reduce it to simple terms, the act of a carrying mother inviting her husband to place his palm over her protruding womb to feel the agitations of the moving baby. The husband need not, and cannot feel what exactly the woman feels.

Not one explanation I have given above can wholly answer the question. But it cannot be denied that I do empathize with people better than before; I have a better imagination engine inside me; I love more people than I used to do.

Sometimes people ask me, “Ivlo padichu enna kilicha?”(What have you achieved out of reading so much?) I can reply boldly “Why should reading give me some definite measurable output? Why should everything we do be measured solely in terms of the worth of its end product? “  

I slowly realise I can never answer the question properly but I have to the best of my knowledge tried doing that. If this is an examination, I might fail. But as I said earlier, the writer can do only so much. The onus of passing me rests with the reader.

Movie Review- OK Kanmani (2015)

When was the last time I watched a movie concealing an 'inconcealable' sheepish grin that is nothing more than a symptom of pure intoxication throughout its running time ? When Tara tiptoes to rise up to Dulquer feasting his face with her engulfing eyes, and says “Enna Kanmani na koopta?” I was smitten. I frankly want to ask my engaged friends what is the call-out name they have for their sweethearts. Have you ever called them ‘Kanmani’? Doesn’t it sound too old-fashioned ? Doesn’t ‘Kanmani’ sound too incongruous to the exotic plush of the places where you practice love such as Barista, Express Avenue, Pizza Hut? Then how does Tara fall for that 3000 year old word from Adi? Or try calling your love with that word and see how she reacts. I don’t know. This is what a Mani Ratnam or Gautham Menon can do to movies. They hate the so-called, so-much-in-demand trite ‘realism’ and weave worlds of fantasy which becomes instantly relatable to us because they are textured with some kind of a real life sensibility. The real life sensibility is essentially upper-class and rooted in the milieu of the maker. These are niche movies in every sense of the word. If you want realism, download Satyajit Ray and hang yourself from your ceiling.

The reason why I am almost celebrating this movie is because I was responsible for making it work for me more than it would have, even for the film maker. I had a tight schedule for the last three days and nearly forgot that I had booked for this film this weekend. This morning, only when I started for the film I realized that I am going in for a Mani Ratnam movie and what to expect from it. This is in complete contrast to what I did for Shankar’s ‘I’, dreaming about the movie for months together and gathering every piece of information about it like how a hungry hen gleans for its bit of grain when everything is almost over. The film, in short, gave the pleasure of a cancelled plan, the elevating high of an unexpected office holiday, the liberating satiety of a sudden chicken biriyani offered to you when you are being consumed by depression.

A few days back when people were raving about ‘Mental Manadhil’ , I chose to download it and put a testing tongue into it to examine its much-revered taste. I was disappointed frankly. People told me it would improve on subsequent hearings and I could not concur. And when I type this review in the searing heat of my solitary room space, I have to acknowledge that I am stifling my every instinct to break out into an orgiasmic shout of ‘Mana Mana Mana Mental Manadhil’.

Look at the scene when the couple meet for the first time. It happens in a wedding at a church. He spots her distinctly among the crowd and to his surprise, she is already staring at him. They do not go and meet instantly but communicate through charming gesticulations for quite a while. Their world is complete, in just an instant. They keep talking even after they leave the hall and come to the facade of the church. Generally as a convention, scenes like this will show the conversing couple intercut with shots that describe the events that go around them. Here the camera does not leave them for an instant. Their detachment from the external world is total. They have found each other as though they are fulfilling a prophecy. They are unconcerned about their environment as much as we are. The camera leaves them only after they stop talking and rejoin the real world.

People were praising P.C.Sreeram’s cinematography in the movie. By cinematography, they refer to the lighting, the color tone of the film and I don’t know if that is really a talking point in a Mani movie. When you are asked about how well did Dravid play an innings, wouldn’t be superfluous to say that the innings was technically first rate. Isn’t that a taken-for granted aspect? When Dravid swings his bat to play a stunning hook shot that sends the ball to the six and that is something worth noting. When Tara turns to Adi and suggests ‘living’ the rest of the ten days of togetherness to its fullest, I couldn’t prevent myself from wondering at the beauty of the frame. Please look at that shot. ‘How marvelous her motionless face cuts itself out in deep relief against the rippling waters of the calm Arabian sea’.

When I was slowly curling a tuft of my cephalic hair with my fingers to guess how Mani was going to preach the lessons of the old-school morality to the young couple, the scene where they wait in a hospital for a pregnancy test arrived. It was a masterstroke to have Kaniha give tips to Adi on pregnancy issues and childbirth. My heart was sinking and I began prognosticating a climax where a cute, lovable baby unites its parents into a forced marital union.  When Tara, at the end of the scene declares why she actually brought him to the hospital, I was reveling in a relief of amazement.

Performances? Dulquer has nothing to do. Nithya Menon has the upper hand here and a lesser heroine would have fleshed Dulquer’s work out neatly in contrast to others and made it look like a top-notch performance. What a choice Menon is!! She is neither petite nor sexy. Her plumpness teams beautifully with her cherubic face and how effortlessly she nails all men with her irresistible effervescence. I was thankful for keeping the old couple always at bay and hats off to Mani for curbing his instincts to allow the oldies impart life lessons to the fledgling couple.

Let me conclude. Mani Ratnam is back. After a flurry of releases whose mediocrity and loudness was all the more mind-numbing, here is a movie that revived the Tamil film buff from inside me. After five years, I am feeling deeply for the first time that I don’t have a girlfriend. The romantic inside me has been resuscitated after a long coma. I am in love.

Jayakanthan - A tribute

The privilege of writing a tribute to an icon like Jayakanthan should legally be restricted to only those who are well acquainted with his magnificent oeuvre. Otherwise people like me, to whom JK is not more famous than say, Sir C.V.Raman , will start uncorking their bottles of ink to record their so desperately made up obeisances. If someone asks me,  “Who was Sir C.V.Raman?” I would reply with a school-boyish alacrity, “ Sir C.V.Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of Raman Effect”. When faced with the second question ,”Good.  What is Raman Effect?”, I would have to stammer “Well… Umm. I love physics. But…”

My tribute shall be based upon the only interaction I had with his work, that too in a field, where he is not so known for. Cinema. To top it all, I have seen only one of his cinematic works-Sila Nerangalil Sila Manidhargal(SNSM). So as I am wiping my face to rid myself of the guilt that surrounds me as to the crime of deriving mileage to gather attention from his sad demise by flexing my writing muscle, I choose to proceed, with much difficulty.

SNSM was a black and white movie released in 1976 written by JK and directed by Bhimsingh. It narrated the story of an adolescent Brahmin girl, jettisoned away by her own family after she is raped by an anonymous person. She takes refuge in her old uncle who unfortunately, demands her body in return for his care and succor. She does not choose to refuse his help on account of his abominable desires, because she has nowhere to go.  At the same time, she does not succumb to his desires, respects him with all her heart since he has not yet done away with her in spite of her dogged resistance. As time passes, she grows up to become a Government official and gains her much- needed independence only to meet the man of her destiny again -the one who outraged her chastity.  She is fated to meet the man who had turned her life upside down with a sleight of a hand, crushed all her hopes and made her lonely forever. The woman is faced with the question as to whether she should avenge this unscrupulous beast for his heinous act, or wait … is he really the unscrupulous beast she assumed him to be?

We are in for surprises throughout the narrative as the woman moves into her middle age and befriends her rapist.  She discovers that he is married unhappily, and has an adolescent daughter. She finds that, this man is more flesh and blood than she thought, who is deeply repentant of his past and considers his failed marriage as his deserved punishment. The film beautifully meanders into the relationship of the woman with his daughter who suffers from the estrangement of her mother. As the story unfolds, the woman’s uncle grows more like a beast waiting to prey upon her and the man transforming into a pathetic , wounded little animal that needs attention and sympathy. By the end of the movie, it looks more like a role reversal , as everyone who is bound to support the woman,  turning into scary epitomes of selfishness and the supposed bad guy progressing from reprehensibility to respectability.

We need to realize that the film was released in 1976 when our movies still had not learned to sympathize with women who no longer, were considered to be ‘pure’. The film not only broke the rules of life, but also that of Tamil cinema, where, for its first and only time, it had a raped protagonist, entrusted her into the hands of an incestuous care-taker, allowed its villain to go physically unpunished and if that is not enough, shuddered its audience into announcing that the rape was not completely a ‘rape’. You would have declared a film that goes along like – Guy rapes girl;Guy is ‘sentenced’ to marry her; Girl hates him first; Then mistakes Stockholm Syndrome for love;Girl starts loving him to eternal marital bliss- as utterly regressive. Why should the woman always marry her rapist? Is that the maximum punishment a man deserves for his act? But what will you call a film that allows her heroine to develop feelings for such a man out of her own free-will and solid judgment?

No critic, of the yesteryear, I suppose would have been willing to remove the ‘moralist’ hat to analyze the film for its deep complexities. 

 Another surprising aspect of the film was an appreciable amount of unavoidable sexual dialogue, and the censors should have had JK at knife-point, as all these dialogue are spoken in English throughout the film.

It was a beautiful touch to show the young rapist, who reportedly was on a virtual ‘raping’ spree during his scandalous youth, grow into a complaining father, on account of his daughter’s unwillingness to comply with his elderly conservatism on her dressing and relationships.

Every main character in the film, is imbued with shades of irrepressible sexual hunger which blows the tenuous screens of morality to smithereens, questioning every belief that was thrust upon us , right from our childhood. It is not my point here to dispute the significance of morals or to dismiss them, as archaic and completely useless. To study certain slices of real life situations only through the lenses of morality and tradition, shall not yield the solutions that mankind badly needs to fix its daily problems. The very function of art is, to take its patrons on journeys into unchartered territories and offer a multitude of perspectives into the various aspects of life. That’s what SNSM did.

 JK is reported to have infused so much sensibility into the popular art forms. He must have been the first one to introduce his audiences to surrealism, as seen in his chilling short story ‘Nandavanthil Oru Aandi’ . I was ashamed to find that when I was searching for surrealism in the works of Bunuel, Bergman in Europe, here was someone who had mastered it in my mother tongue.

JK was a man who had a dubious resume, that would include a breathtaking variety of jobs he had to do for his livelihood from a proof-reader to a milk-vendor. As a result, it is said that his fiction was all very personal and woven around people from all walks of life, especially around the lumpen elements of society like prostitutes and pickpockets. Hence, the daredevilry to question established foundations of thinking and attempts to empathize with people whom we would generally abhor.

Recently I was surprised to learn that an unprecedented number of 5 lakhs of French people had gathered to protest the murderous attacks unleashed on the magazine Charlie Hebdo, in response to its non-conformist,radical journalism. It is said that any award winning book in Paris sells copies that outnumber the total population of Paris. Tamil Nadu is said to have a population of around the same number but  sells Sahitya Akademi award winning novels to the tune of a mere 3000 per year. We remained mute when right wing elements forced our writer Perumal Murugan out of his profession. That is the respect we pay to our writers. I still feel had JK been an English novelist, he would have joined the canon that houses the likes of Franz Kafka, Dostevysky,etc.

U.R.Ananthamurthy, an icon of Kannada literature was given State Funeral recently on his demise. I could see so much anguish all around me even when K.Balachandar left us. In the last two days, I could not see even one status on Facebook wall or a mention of JK’s name during casual conversations in my office. This is no place to proselytize the masses from their precious pursuits of survival into the noble religion of reading. All I expected was some awareness of the presence of a great icon amongst us. We can excuse ourselves that we are too busy for all this or may be you can accuse me of pretending to be too highbrow. Either way, I am beginning to feel that my aforementioned guilt is slowly withering away off me.