Whether comedy or drama, Manorama’s success sprang not just from her remarkable talent but also her amazing ability to adapt.

Maalayitta Mangai, the 1958 drama produced by Kannadasan and directed by GR Nathan, is remembered mainly for two reasons today. One, the magical Viswanathan-Ramamurthy score, studded with hits like Naanandri yaar varuvaar and Senthamizh thenmozhiyaal. And two, the actress listed as “puthumuga arimugam” at the bottom of the second scroll of cast names, far below the character artists: Manorama. She plays Anjalai, the domestic help earning a salary of six rupees in a rich household. It’s a supporting role, with comic shades – she would go on to play a similar role in many films. Forty-four years later, in 2002, she told The Hindu, “[Kannadasan] told me that if I did that comic role, I’d come up in life. Today, his words have come true.” The year she gave this interview, she had four releases – one in Telugu (Ninu Choodaka Nenundalenu) and three in Tamil (Thamizh, Jaya, Gemini). She got her start when TR Mahalingam was a hero. She was still at it when Vikram burst on the scene.

This kind of longevity is the blessing of a character artist – even after stars fade, supporting actors keep shining. Even so, Manorama was unique. It wasn’t just her talent, evident in the numerous films that remain forgotten even as their “comedy tracks” find a new life on YouTube. It was also her ability to adapt – to drama, and to the times. For a while, she played along, establishing herself as a comedienne. One of the earliest instances of her cutting loose is in Kalathur Kannamma (1959), where her character, named Alamu, is caught between a younger suitor and an old man who wants her for himself. Heeding the suggestion of the film’s overall fixer-upper, played by a boy named Kamalahasan, Alamu decides to frighten the old man away. She invites him to dinner. She sweet-talks him, casually letting slip the information that she’s alone. Her mother is at the temple praying for her, as she tends to get possessed by the spirit of Maariyatha. Then, slowly, she loosens her hair. She pretends to feel faint. Slowly, her tone changes – no longer pliant, but harsh. Soon she’s yelling, Ey manidha poochiye, you human insect… The terrified old man flees.

In certain critical circles, this would be called “low comedy,” which, to steal from the encyclopaedia definition, has no underlying purpose except to provoke laughter by boisterous jokes, buffoonery, and other riotous activity. That, in general, is how comedy is in our cinema, and that’s what actors like Manorama did over and over, with great skill, to great success. Without her comedy track, Kalathur Kannamma is just a turgid melodrama about a star-crossed couple and the son who unites them. A few years later, Manorama played a character named Kannamma herself, in the comedy track in Anbe Vaa (1966), where she threatens to blind Nagesh with a pair of knitting needles. The name seems to have followed Manorama through her career. She played another Kannamma in Samsaaram Adhu Minsaaram (1986), another domestic worker who’s practically part of the family.

It’s flat-out  impossible to talk about all her memorable roles – there are just so many. But we should certainly pause to note that she co-starred with all the top comics – Nagesh, most famously, but also Cho (Bommalaattam, where Manorama sang that legendary ode to ‘Madras Tamil,’ Vaa vaadhyaare vootanda) Surulirajan (Thirumalai Thenkumari), Mouli (a double role in Oru Malarin Payanam) and ‘Thengai’ Srinivasan (Kaasedhaan Kadavulada). Not that Manorama needed a co-star. In Savaal (1981), she played the lungi-clad ‘Burma’ Pappa, a Fagin-like leader of a gang of young pickpockets. In Kodai Mazhai (1986), she guest-starred as a schoolteacher who cannot help winking. (Just how big was Manorama by then? Another guest star in the film, which starred newcomers, was… Rajinikanth.) And of course, ‘Jil Jil’ Ramamani, that walking sine curve in Thillana Mohanambal (1968), named after her tinkling anklet bells. By this time, Manorama’s name was at the top of the supporting-cast scroll. The Sivaji Ganesan character refers to her as sakalakalavalli, the mistress of arts. He could be talking about her affecting dramatic turns in subsequent decades.

Watch Manorama as Gemini Ganesan’s devoted daughter-in-law in Unnal Mudiyum Thambi (1988) or as  the sympathetic slum-dweller who harbours the heroine in Pudhiya Paadhai (1989) and you’ll see why she was referred to, sometimes, as the female Sivaji Ganesan. It wasn’t just the force of these performances but also the style – a style that harked back to theatre and its emphasis on powerful dialogue delivery and a gestural range to match. Down the decades, Manorama became so beloved that  directors began to cast her in parts calculated to extract extreme sympathy. To see any actress suffer in circumstances like the one in Chinna Thambi (1991; another Kannamma) is horrible, but to see Manorama suffer… To acquire that kind of goodwill in the hearts of audiences takes a special kind of talent, and frankly, a special kind of person.

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

Era. Saravanan, a long-time Junior Vikatan hand, makes his debut as director with Kathukutty. It’s one of those stories where a wastrel son (Arivazhagan, played by Narain) redeems himself in the eyes of his concerned father (Santhanam, played by Bharathiraja’s dead-ringer brother, Jayaraj) – but with a twist. The arena is politics. Santhanam has been with a party for over forty years, and he thinks he will be asked to contest in the assembly elections, but the party higher-ups decide that in this age of social media, it’s better to nominate a younger man. And Arivazhagan is chosen to compete against another youth, whose name – Vasanth Balakrishnan – makes it amply clear, at least in Tamil cinema, that he doesn’t stand a chance. If you recall the fates of VIP’s Arun Subramaniam and Thani Oruvan’s Siddharth Abhimanyu, you’ll know this is not a spoiler.

We don’t get too many movies about youth politics. In these cynical times, it’s nice, at least in fiction, to see idealistic men and women saying they’ll be the change. (That’s why Mudhalvan worked so well. We all warmed to the wish-fulfilment.) But Kathukutty struggles between wanting to show Michael from Aayidha Ezhuthu and having to show the kind of youth today’s Tamil cinema apparently mandates. Arivazhagan, like Michael, is a brain – an M.Sc. gold medallist. And like Michael, he’s committed to his cause. He prefers to stay in his Thanjavur village and be a farmer. Only, we don’t see him being much of a farmer. For the longest time, the closest he comes to irrigation is at the local bar. Like many Tamil films these days, Kathukutty doubles as a commercial for pickle. Another side dish comes in the form of ‘Kadhal’ Sandhya, who’s begun to do item numbers where she’s referred to as “Bombay pappali.” But the director has guts. He gives Arivazhagan’s grandmother this line: “Unagala ellam andha TASMAC dhaan naasamaakkudhu.” I don’t recall another Tamil film openly denouncing this government-run organisation whose outlets have practically taken over the hero’s-best-friend character.

Era. Saravanan’s roots as a journalist are evident. He isn’t much of a director yet, but he’s a grade-A denouncer. Kathukutty is dedicated to Nammalwar, the agriculturist who died in the midst of a campaign against a methane exploration project in the Cauvery delta. Saravanan continues the fight. He tells us – through an animated stretch – why methane exploration is poison for agriculture, how it ruins the soil. The film’s timing is uncanny. Just a few days ago, the state banned methane exploration in delta districts. (See report here.) Saravanan talks about the evils of cell-phone towers, the radiation from which destroys local fauna. He talks about farmers who find it difficult to get loans, and whose lands are sold off as “real estate” through television ads featuring gaudy actresses. Saravanan even denounces God. A character says something like, Stop hoping that God will take care of things and try to do something yourself.

But Kathukutty doesn’t do enough to dramatise these issues. The film needed more scenes like the one in which Arivazhagan explodes when he hears an urban-type mock farmer suicides. The man says he’s sick of hearing about them, because the government gives these farmers rice – why don’t they just live on that? Arivazhagan yanks his shirt, pulls him close and tells him that these farmers aren’t dying because they cannot feed themselves, they’re dying because they can no longer feed others. What a great masala line. AR Murugadoss must be kicking himself that he didn’t think this up for Kaththi. This kind of sugar coating can really sell the bitter pill of a message – but the rest of the film is just one bitter message after another.

The emotions aren’t exploited either. A father whose dreams are shattered, who now has to work for his son (to ensure the latter’s election) who hasn’t spent a day in politics – this subtext stays as barren as the fields. You can understand if Kathukutty were a full-length comedy, but the director doesn’t shy away from drama, so why mute this dimension? Why downplay Arivazhagan’s efforts? Why not show him plotting, strategising to, say, win over the many people he has alienated with his loutishness? But the strong plot points keep you watching. Soori contributes solid laughs, and Narain – despite an accent that hints at his roots (“gam-bhee-ram”) – holds the film together. He has presence, and I kept wondering why we don’t see more of him. The romantic track (with Srushti Dange, who’s no one’s idea of a villager) is nicely done. Translation: the heroine has more to do than just show up for duets. But after a while, she’s coolly brushed aside. Yes, this story is about Arivazhagan’s entry into politics, but surely the heroine’s arc needs closure. A freeze-frame of an embrace, perhaps? This idealistic film is a fairy tale, after all. Why deny us the happily-ever-after?

KEY:

• Kaththukkutti = novice
• Junior Vikatan = see here
• VIP = see here
•  Thani Oruvan = see here
• Mudhalvan = see here
• Aayidha Ezhuthu = see here
• Kadhal = see here
• pappali = papaya
• “Unagala ellam andha TASMAC dhaan naasamaakkudhu.” = You kids have been ruined by TASMAC.
• Nammalwar = see here
• Kaththi = see here
• “gam-bhee-ram” = majesty

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

As a history lesson, Rudhramadevi checks all the boxes. A girl is born to the queen of the Kakatiya dynasty, and because women cannot rule – even palaces, apparently, have a glass ceiling – the king raises the child as a boy, a warrior. He’s worried that his vassals will revolt at the prospect of serving a queen, and with good reason. One of them (Suman) declares that women were put on this earth solely to serve men and quench their desires. But such a secret can only remain secret for so long, and the rest of the film is about Rudhramadevi (Anushka) fulfilling her destiny and proving that she deserves that crown. It’s a great story, and it needs to be told. Even Amar Chitra Katha, which chronicled the lives of Rani Abbakka and Ahilyabai Holkar and the Rani of Jhansi, seems to have missed out on Rudhramadevi.

But what was she like as a person? “Gender identity” may be too modern, too psychoanalytical, a term – but surely a girl who grows up thinking she’s a boy is bound to have had some confusion. All we get is a scene where the girl comes of age and falls into her mother’s arms. But soon, she’s back as a boy. She thrills her people by taming an elephant – she drops the disguise only in her private quarters, wearing silks that no one else can see. It can’t have been easy. There’s a hilarious, yet troubling, scene in which the king sees women swooning over his “son” – he’s delighted that his ruse has worked so well, or maybe he’s begun to believe he really has a son. He gets Rudhramadevi married off to Muktamba (Nithya Menen). Did Rudhramadevi, at least for an instant, balk at the deceit? She only seems to care about keeping up appearances for the sake of her kingdom. And what about Muktamba? She, too, is a patriot, and she cheerfully reconciles herself to this “marriage” – but was there a moment the woman in her registered disappointment? This is a kingdom filled with saints.

Rudhramadevi, directed by Gunasekhar, is filled with eye-popping colour, but its characters are resolutely black-and-white. Anushka certainly looks the part. She isn’t the typical stick-figure model. She’s imposing, regal. But she has nothing to play. The character is all externalities. There’s no inner life to portray. Everything is conveyed through dialogue, and it’s purely functional – there’s no music in the words. The visual effects are strictly at a made-for-TV level, the battle scenes are anaemic, and the events are so rushed that even Ilayaraja, who has rescued countless films with his magic, can’t do much. Characters come and go without making us feel anything. There’s no tension. Shattering discoveries – a hidden passageway; the fact that Rudhramadevi is a woman – are ticked off perfunctorily, like a list of chores stuck on a refrigerator.

It’s sad. Our women-centric films are either those amman movies with special effects cobbled together on PaintShop Pro or modest empowerment tales like 36 Vayadhinile. Here’s a multi-crore epic centred on a female character, with the men (huge stars like Allu Arjun and Rana Daggubati) sawing away gamely on second fiddles – but the director treats it like any other masala movie, with the heroine performing gravity-defying stunts like… a hero. At some level, you see why. With so much money at stake, you have to give the audience something to whistle at, like that shot of Rudhramadevi leaping onto an elephant – it’s like performing a pole vault without the pole. But commercial considerations alone cannot drive an epic, especially when the central character is so complex. You need those Amar Chitra Katha thought bubbles too.

KEY:

• Kakatiya dynasty = see here
• Amar Chitra Katha = see here
• amman = see here
• 36 Vayadhinile = see here

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

Era. Saravanan, a long-time Junior Vikatan hand, makes his debut as director with Kathukutty. It’s one of those stories where a wastrel son (Arivazhagan, played by Narain) redeems himself in the eyes of his concerned father (Santhanam, played by Bharathiraja’s dead-ringer brother, Jayaraj) – but with a twist. The arena is politics. Santhanam has been with a party for over forty years, and he thinks he will be asked to contest in the assembly elections, but the party higher-ups decide that in this age of social media, it’s better to nominate a younger man. And Arivazhagan is chosen to compete against another youth, whose name – Vasanth Balakrishnan – makes it amply clear, at least in Tamil cinema, that he doesn’t stand a chance. If you recall the fates of VIP’s Arun Subramaniam and Thani Oruvan’s Siddharth Abhimanyu, you’ll know this is not a spoiler.

We don’t get too many movies about youth politics. In these cynical times, it’s nice, at least in fiction, to see idealistic men and women saying they’ll be the change. (That’s why Mudhalvan worked so well. We all warmed to the wish-fulfilment.) But Kathukutty struggles between wanting to show Michael from Aayidha Ezhuthu and having to show the kind of youth today’s Tamil cinema apparently mandates. Arivazhagan, like Michael, is a brain – an M.Sc. gold medallist. And like Michael, he’s committed to his cause. He prefers to stay in his Thanjavur village and be a farmer. Only, we don’t see him being much of a farmer. For the longest time, the closest he comes to irrigation is at the local bar. Like many Tamil films these days, Kathukutty doubles as a commercial for pickle. Another side dish comes in the form of ‘Kadhal’ Sandhya, who’s begun to do item numbers where she’s referred to as “Bombay pappali.” But the director has guts. He gives Arivazhagan’s grandmother this line: “Unagala ellam andha TASMAC dhaan naasamaakkudhu.” I don’t recall another Tamil film openly denouncing this government-run organisation whose outlets have practically taken over the hero’s-best-friend character.

Era. Saravanan’s roots as a journalist are evident. He isn’t much of a director yet, but he’s a grade-A denouncer. Kathukutty is dedicated to Nammalwar, the agriculturist who died in the midst of a campaign against a methane exploration project in the Cauvery delta. Saravanan continues the fight. He tells us – through an animated stretch – why methane exploration is poison for agriculture, how it ruins the soil. The film’s timing is uncanny. Just a few days ago, the state banned methane exploration in delta districts. (See report here.) Saravanan talks about the evils of cell-phone towers, the radiation from which destroys local fauna. He talks about farmers who find it difficult to get loans, and whose lands are sold off as “real estate” through television ads featuring gaudy actresses. Saravanan even denounces God. A character says something like, Stop hoping that God will take care of things and try to do something yourself.

But Kathukutty doesn’t do enough to dramatise these issues. The film needed more scenes like the one in which Arivazhagan explodes when he hears an urban-type mock farmer suicides. The man says he’s sick of hearing about them, because the government gives these farmers rice – why don’t they just live on that? Arivazhagan yanks his shirt, pulls him close and tells him that these farmers aren’t dying because they cannot feed themselves, they’re dying because they can no longer feed others. What a great masala line. AR Murugadoss must be kicking himself that he didn’t think this up for Kaththi. This kind of sugar coating can really sell the bitter pill of a message – but the rest of the film is just one bitter message after another.

The emotions aren’t exploited either. A father whose dreams are shattered, who now has to work for his son (to ensure the latter’s election) who hasn’t spent a day in politics – this subtext stays as barren as the fields. You can understand if Kathukutty were a full-length comedy, but the director doesn’t shy away from drama, so why mute this dimension? Why downplay Arivazhagan’s efforts? Why not show him plotting, strategising to, say, win over the many people he has alienated with his loutishness? But the strong plot points keep you watching. Soori contributes solid laughs, and Narain – despite an accent that hints at his roots (“gam-bhee-ram”) – holds the film together. He has presence, and I kept wondering why we don’t see more of him. The romantic track (with Srushti Dange, who’s no one’s idea of a villager) is nicely done. Translation: the heroine has more to do than just show up for duets. But after a while, she’s coolly brushed aside. Yes, this story is about Arivazhagan’s entry into politics, but surely the heroine’s arc needs closure. A freeze-frame of an embrace, perhaps? This idealistic film is a fairy tale, after all. Why deny us the happily-ever-after?

KEY:

• Kaththukkutti = novice
• Junior Vikatan = see here
• VIP = see here
•  Thani Oruvan = see here
• Mudhalvan = see here
• Aayidha Ezhuthu = see here
• Kadhal = see here
• pappali = papaya
• “Unagala ellam andha TASMAC dhaan naasamaakkudhu.” = You kids have been ruined by TASMAC.
• Nammalwar = see here
• Kaththi = see here
• “gam-bhee-ram” = majesty

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

As a history lesson, Rudhramadevi checks all the boxes. A girl is born to the queen of the Kakatiya dynasty, and because women cannot rule – even palaces, apparently, have a glass ceiling – the king raises the child as a boy, a warrior. He’s worried that his vassals will revolt at the prospect of serving a queen, and with good reason. One of them (Suman) declares that women were put on this earth solely to serve men and quench their desires. But such a secret can only remain secret for so long, and the rest of the film is about Rudhramadevi (Anushka) fulfilling her destiny and proving that she deserves that crown. It’s a great story, and it needs to be told. Even Amar Chitra Katha, which chronicled the lives of Rani Abbakka and Ahilyabai Holkar and the Rani of Jhansi, seems to have missed out on Rudhramadevi.

But what was she like as a person? “Gender identity” may be too modern, too psychoanalytical, a term – but surely a girl who grows up thinking she’s a boy is bound to have had some confusion. All we get is a scene where the girl comes of age and falls into her mother’s arms. But soon, she’s back as a boy. She thrills her people by taming an elephant – she drops the disguise only in her private quarters, wearing silks that no one else can see. It can’t have been easy. There’s a hilarious, yet troubling, scene in which the king sees women swooning over his “son” – he’s delighted that his ruse has worked so well, or maybe he’s begun to believe he really has a son. He gets Rudhramadevi married off to Muktamba (Nithya Menen). Did Rudhramadevi, at least for an instant, balk at the deceit? She only seems to care about keeping up appearances for the sake of her kingdom. And what about Muktamba? She, too, is a patriot, and she cheerfully reconciles herself to this “marriage” – but was there a moment the woman in her registered disappointment? This is a kingdom filled with saints.

Rudhramadevi, directed by Gunasekhar, is filled with eye-popping colour, but its characters are resolutely black-and-white. Anushka certainly looks the part. She isn’t the typical stick-figure model. She’s imposing, regal. But she has nothing to play. The character is all externalities. There’s no inner life to portray. Everything is conveyed through dialogue, and it’s purely functional – there’s no music in the words. The visual effects are strictly at a made-for-TV level, the battle scenes are anaemic, and the events are so rushed that even Ilayaraja, who has rescued countless films with his magic, can’t do much. Characters come and go without making us feel anything. There’s no tension. Shattering discoveries – a hidden passageway, the fact that Rudhramadevi is a woman – are ticked off perfunctorily, like a list of chores stuck on a refrigerator.

It’s sad. Our women-centric films are either those amman movies with special effects cobbled together on PaintShop Pro or modest empowerment tales like 36 Vayadhinile. Here’s a multi-crore epic centred on a female character, with the men (huge stars like Allu Arjun and Rana Daggubati) sawing away gamely on second fiddles – but the director treats it like any other masala movie, with the heroine performing gravity-defying stunts like… a hero. At some level, you see why. With so much money at stake, you have to give the audience something to whistle at, like that shot of Rudhramadevi leaping onto an elephant – it’s like performing a pole vault without the pole. But commercial considerations alone cannot drive an epic, especially when the central character is so complex. You need those Amar Chitra Katha thought bubbles too.

KEY:

• Kakatiya dynasty = see here
• Amar Chitra Katha = see here
• amman = see here
• 36 Vayadhinile = see here

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

Vijay Milton’s 10 Enradhukulla wastes little time in letting us know that it is a hero-centric masala movie. A battered, bloody man who’s being held hostage has with him a package. He’s waiting for someone to pick it up. Pasupathy, who plays one of the villains, asks him the name of the pickup guy. The hostage says he doesn’t have a name. Pasupathy asks mockingly if the man’s God. The hostage’s reply is a punch line: “Kadavulukku car otta theriyaadhu.” He’s just kidding. Soon enough, God comes speeding through the air – in a red sports car, somersaulting over a broken bridge. It’s Vikram, of course – and we never learn His name. Through the course of the film, He tells us it’s… Bill Gates… James Bond… Mani Ratnam… Sunil Gavaskar. It’s supposed to be a running gag, even if He seems to be the only one laughing. By the end, it doesn’t matter. The film is as anonymous as its leading man.

On paper, the union of Vijay Milton and Vikram sounds like masala heaven. Vikram has made terrific masala entertainers like Dhool and Saamy, and Milton’s last film was the marvellously entertaining Goli Soda, of which I wrote in this space, “Its signature achievement is its ruthless unmasking of how hollow most of our masala movies are, and how, with a little imagination, just a little, you can make a film whose appeal is broad and which does not insult the audience.” With 10 Enradhukulla, Milton has made exactly the kind of movie for which Goli Soda appeared an antidote. The writing is shockingly scattershot, right from the scene that’s supposed to set up the story – the butchering of lower-caste people by an upper-caste clan in Uttarakhand. This is a crucial event, one we’re meant to hold on to, but the director seems in a hurry to stage it. It goes by in a blur of disjointed speechifying and dismembered limbs.

And instead, what does the film choose to depict in detail? The efforts of Shakila (Samantha) to obtain a driving licence. She’s failed 14 times, and this time she says she’s sure to succeed. She is, after all, wearing her lucky dress. It’s in maroon. If there was a college-level course called Loosu Ponnu Studies, Shakila would graduate with a gold medal. There’s a scene where the warden of the hostel she lives in barges into her room and demands to see her. Her roommate says she’s not there. The warden makes angry noises about rent that hasn’t been paid. It seems like a serious situation. The warden leaves, slamming the door shut behind her. Shakila, we discover, is hiding behind that door, giggling as if she slipped a frog into the warden’s lunchbox. Gee, what fun it must be, this prospect of finding yourself out on the streets. Maybe she’ll burst into a happy song.

Or take the scene where the hero slips his car keys into a cardigan Shakila has hung out to dry. After a while, she slips the garment on. He says the keys are in the pocket. She says they aren’t. A tussle ensues. He puts a hand into the pocket and ends up touching a lady part. In case we’re in any doubt about which part, the soundtrack helpfully alerts us – we hear the honk of a horn. Shakila looks as if she’s been violated – for two seconds. We expect some kind of closure to the awkward scene. Maybe he’s appalled. Maybe he’ll apologise. Maybe she’ll tear into him for violating her personal space. But the scene ends. Soon, she finds something else to giggle about. Shakila is the kind of character who, if you hear she’s being targeted by a gun-toting assassin, makes you pray he’s got firm hands and a good aim. She’s the centrepiece of 10 Enradhukulla, there in practically every scene. Vikram help us.

The film is a road movie that makes pit stops at the most interesting places, like a Renigunta bar where item girl Charmi gradually loses various items of her clothing. Elsewhere, Abhimanyu Singh lies in wait. The actor gnashes his teeth as if auditioning for the Ashish Vidyarthi slot of Talented But Underused Bollywood Performers Who Find Fat Pay Cheques Down South Playing Villains. There’s another villain, played by Rahul Dev, who possesses magical powers. One minute, he’s on a horse. The next, he’s on a train. There’s no rhythm to the proceedings, no continuity – even the stunts are underwhelming. And there’s a laughable twist at the end that has to be seen to be disbelieved. What is it about snagging big stars that makes our filmmakers so lax about the other aspects of filmmaking? The star is the one who puts people in the seats, but the writer, the director is the one who keeps them there. It’s hard to grudge Vikram this fluff. After his back-breaking efforts in I, he deserves some fun. But what about us?

KEY:

• 10 Enradhukulla = Before counting to ten…
• “Kadavulukku car otta theriyaadhu.” = God can’t drive a car.
• Dhool = see here
• Saamy = see here
• Goli Soda = see here
• I = see here

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

A kid in a jail cell. That’s an unusual image to begin a movie with. He seems to be filling out some sort of what-I-want-be-when-I-grow-up questionnaire, and against “Ambition,” he scrawls, carefully, “Police.” His mother, after all, is a cop (played by Raadhika Sarathkumar). Soon, he slips out of the cell – he was just hanging out. And a prisoner (Rajendran) takes his place. They strike up a conversation. “Rowdy perisaa police perisaa?” The prisoner makes a case for his kind and we slip into his story, detailing the conflict between a cop (Azhagamperumal) and a rowdy (Parthiban). The narrative is amazingly fluid – the two storylines slip into one another like pleats of silk. And then we discover it isn’t a story after all. These characters are real. Their conflict is real.

The writer-director Vignesh Shivan uses this technique a lot. He’ll show us the last bit of a series of events, and then, a little later, he’ll take us back and show everything that happened. We see Kadambari (Nayantara, who looks fantastic) enter the police station with a broken cell phone – later, we see how she was apprehended, how the phone was broken. We hear about a dead parent – later, we’re shown how the death occurred. What’s surprising is the tone. Pandi (Vijay Sethupathi) – the kid at the story’s beginning – wants to become a rowdy. But this isn’t Pudhupettai. Kadambari is out to avenge herself on the man who annihilated her family. But this isn’t Kill Bill. The beautifully shot Naanum Rowdy Dhaan (the cinematographer is George C. Williams) is, instead, a comedy – sometimes a very black one.  I haven’t laughed this hard over innocent men being snuffed out by a silencer-outfitted gun. Anirudh’s jaunty score clues us in to the mood. Even when someone is being stabbed to death, a mariachi band seems to be playing in a corner. Remember Thirudan Police, which treated a revenge drama like a comedy? Naanum Rowdy Dhaan is a sibling. With a dash of Thamizh Padam, in the way it skewers our cinema’s obsession with antiheroes. Pandi is an… anti-rowdy.

There are a few rough patches, and the overtly sentimental scenes are a mistake. (Nayantara’s fussy emoting doesn’t help.) When you’re trying to make the audience laugh, you don’t dwell too much on a girl’s reaction to her father’s gory death. Or a man receiving the news that his mother has been kidnapped and, most likely, killed. But these passages are easy to overlook because the film is such fun. Take Pandi. The extent of his “rowdy-ness” is the adjudication of a dispute between two schoolboys – Ramesh, Suresh – who happen to be in love with the same girl. And his “lair,” bathed in fluorescent light, is hilarious. Graffitied on the walls are his rates. Hand breaking – Rs. 10000. Leg breaking – Rs. 15000. And at a corner, this admonition: “ID proof compulsory.” Pandi is so patently unfit for the job, the film could be called Non Rowdy Dhaan.

This is a welcome return to form for Vijay Sethupathi, who seemed to be trying too hard to become a star, with films like Vanmam and Rummy. He shines best in roles with a lower wattage – Pandi is an endearing dimbulb. And he’s surrounded by a crack team of comics. Rajendran, of course – but also RJ Balaji, who keeps tossing out pop-culture nuggets. Looking at a giant of a man, he exclaims, “Audio launch-ukku vandha Arnold maadhiri…” And Parthiban is in glorious form. The scene where a bunch of amateurs try to assassinate him is the most sustained stretch of farce I’ve seen in ages. They try everything – eggs, petrol, a burning tire. The audience explodes.

KEY:

• Naanum Rowdy Dhaan = I, too, am a rowdy
• “Rowdy perisaa police perisaa?” = Who’s bigger? A rowdy? Or a cop?
• Pudhupettai = see here
• Kill Bill = see here
• Thirudan Police = see here
• Thamizh Padam = see here
• Vanmam = see here
• Rummy = see here
• “Audio launch-ukku vandha Arnold maadhiri…” = A reference to Schwarzenegger

Copyright ©2015 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

Sivappu, directed by Sathyashiva, begins with some tight writing. A construction worker falls to her death, and this tragedy gives us multiple insights. One, the working conditions are unsafe. Two, women are in especial danger. (The fall may have been the result of a rape attempt.) Three, Konaar (Rajkiran) is the general fixer-upper around – he has contacts with an MP (Selva), and he also has good equations with other workers, especially Pandian (Naveen Chandra), whom he regards as something of a son. The woman’s death causes a chain of events. Workers protest and leave the site, so Konaar has to get replacements. He finds them when he stumbles upon a group of Sri Lankan Tamils, duped by an agent who said he’d take them to Australia. The construction site, thus, becomes a refugee camp. The inner life of characters, their external relationships, the overall circumstances, and the engine of a plot – everything’s established with admirable efficiency. The film’s running time, after all, is just about two hours.

But soon, our admiration dims. Formula kicks in. First half = comedy + romance + dramatic pre-interval block. Thambi Ramaiah, the foreman at the site, hears moans from inside a room. He suspects sexual activity and barges in. It’s the toilet. A man is taking a dump. Ha ha, et cetera. Pandian, meanwhile, falls for Parvathi (Rupa Manjari), one of the refugees. Actually, they fall in hate first, getting off on the wrong foot. Then they fall in love. All this is stupefyingly generic. And filmmakers have got to do something about the interval block. I’m talking about how the film’s rhythm changes as it approaches this point, how its pulse rate shoots up gradually, and how we can predict exactly when we’re going to spring out of our seats. Can you remember the last time an interval block snuck up behind you, surprised you?

A more important question: How seriously are we to take an “issue film” when it would have worked just as well (or just as badly) without this issue? Sivappu opens with an impassioned, gravelly-voiced screed about Tamils in the island nation – how they were there before Christ, how they fared through the Chola and Pandiya empires, how a lot of this can be proved from the Arikamedu excavations, and how, in 1948, Sri Lanka obtained freedom but Tamils did not. The screen, then, fills with blood, and the title appears: Sivappu. There’s a bookend too. At the close, we are left with the thought that we should either welcome refugees or close our doors, but we should not play politics with (or using) them. Somewhere in the middle, we get the throwaway shot of a procession commemorating someone who set himself on fire for the Sri Lankan Tamil cause. All very well – but why such solemnity for a star-crossed love story that’s essentially a Kaadhal where the class/caste divide is replaced by the fact that hero and heroine hail from different nations?

Films like Sivappu make you think – not just about the issues at hand, but also about the validity of their dramatisation for narrative purposes. The events in a film like Bombay take place in the city of the title, in 1992. The storyline of The Terrorist cannot be divorced from its (implied) Sri Lankan roots. Sivappu, on the other hand, is like a Ratha Thilakam, where the Sino-Indian war was just a great dramatic device, something to fuel the narrative. This isn’t very different from the way “issues” about migrant workers or organ theft or exploitation by MNCs are appropriated into masala movies just so that there’s a “fresh” villain. But at least these films don’t pretend to be about these issues. They don’t begin and end with lectures about the issue. There’s a point about how Pandian cannot afford to rent the kind of houses he’s building – a touching point, and it would be just as effective without the Sri Lankan angle. Sivappu may have been more effective had it simply told a story and let that story comment on the issue, tangentially, the way Kaadhal did.

Or the way Nandha did. The Sri Lankan issue is never forgotten, and some images are seared into our brains, but the film doesn’t disrespect the gravity of the issue by pretending to be about it and then going on to focus on a rowdy’s life. Because after all that noise, the Sri Lankan issue in Sivappu is buried under all the melodrama about the lovers and the will-they-won’t-they-unite plot points, peppered with stray character touches illustrating Parvathi’s plight – her fear of helicopters, her shrinking back from the sea that others so joyously plunge into (remember what’s on the other side!), or her dislike of the colour of the film’s title. I suppose the question really boils down to this: Do you want to judge these films on the intent-versus-execution curve, the way one ideally should, or do you want to simply express gratitude that at least a handful of filmmakers are making movies about something, and without stars?

KEY:

• Sivappu = red
• Arikamedu excavations = see here
•  Bombay = see here
• The Terrorist = see here
• Ratha Thilakam = see here
•  Kaadhal = see here
• Nandha = see here

Copyright ©2015 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

Era. Saravanan, a long-time Junior Vikatan hand, makes his debut as director with Kathukutty. It’s one of those stories where a wastrel son (Arivazhagan, played by Narain) redeems himself in the eyes of his concerned father (Santhanam, played by Bharathiraja’s dead-ringer brother, Jayaraj) – but with a twist. The arena is politics. Santhanam has been with a party for over forty years, and he thinks he will be asked to contest in the assembly elections, but the party higher-ups decide that in this age of social media, it’s better to nominate a younger man. And Arivazhagan is chosen to compete against another youth, whose name – Vasanth Balakrishnan – makes it amply clear, at least in Tamil cinema, that he doesn’t stand a chance. If you recall the fates of VIP’s Arun Subramaniam and Thani Oruvan’s Siddharth Abhimanyu, you’ll know this is not a spoiler.

We don’t get too many movies about youth politics. In these cynical times, it’s nice, at least in fiction, to see idealistic men and women saying they’ll be the change. (That’s why Mudhalvan worked so well. We all warmed to the wish-fulfilment.) But Kathukutty struggles between wanting to show Michael from Aayidha Ezhuthu and having to show the kind of youth today’s Tamil cinema apparently mandates. Arivazhagan, like Michael, is a brain – an M.Sc. gold medallist. And like Michael, he’s committed to his cause. He prefers to stay in his Thanjavur village and be a farmer. Only, we don’t see him being much of a farmer. For the longest time, the closest he comes to irrigation is at the local bar. Like many Tamil films these days, Kathukutty doubles as a commercial for pickle. Another side dish comes in the form of ‘Kadhal’ Sandhya, who’s begun to do item numbers where she’s referred to as “Bombay pappali.” But the director has guts. He gives Arivazhagan’s grandmother this line: “Unagala ellam andha TASMAC dhaan naasamaakkudhu.” I don’t recall another Tamil film openly denouncing this government-run organisation whose outlets have practically taken over the hero’s-best-friend character.

Era. Saravanan’s roots as a journalist are evident. He isn’t much of a director yet, but he’s a grade-A denouncer. Kathukutty is dedicated to Nammalwar, the agriculturist who died in the midst of a campaign against a methane exploration project in the Cauvery delta. Saravanan continues the fight. He tells us – through an animated stretch – why methane exploration is poison for agriculture, how it ruins the soil. The film’s timing is uncanny. Just a few days ago, the state banned methane exploration in delta districts. (See report here.) Saravanan talks about the evils of cell-phone towers, the radiation from which destroys local fauna. He talks about farmers who find it difficult to get loans, and whose lands are sold off as “real estate” through television ads featuring gaudy actresses. Saravanan even denounces God. A character says something like, Stop hoping that God will take care of things and try to do something yourself.

But Kathukutty doesn’t do enough to dramatise these issues. The film needed more scenes like the one in which Arivazhagan explodes when he hears an urban-type mock farmer suicides. The man says he’s sick of hearing about them, because the government gives these farmers rice – why don’t they just live on that? Arivazhagan yanks his shirt, pulls him close and tells him that these farmers aren’t dying because they cannot feed themselves, they’re dying because they can no longer feed others. What a great masala line. AR Murugadoss must be kicking himself that he didn’t think this up for Kaththi. This kind of sugar coating can really sell the bitter pill of a message – but the rest of the film is just one bitter message after another.

The emotions aren’t exploited either. A father whose dreams are shattered, who now has to work for his son (to ensure the latter’s election) who hasn’t spent a day in politics – this subtext stays as barren as the fields. You can understand if Kathukutty were a full-length comedy, but the director doesn’t shy away from drama, so why mute this dimension? Why downplay Arivazhagan’s efforts? Why not show him plotting, strategising to, say, win over the many people he has alienated with his loutishness? But the strong plot points keep you watching. Soori contributes solid laughs, and Narain – despite an accent that hints at his roots (“gam-bhee-ram”) – holds the film together. He has presence, and I kept wondering why we don’t see more of him. The romantic track (with Srushti Dange, who’s no one’s idea of a villager) is nicely done. Translation: the heroine has more to do than just show up for duets. But after a while, she’s coolly brushed aside. Yes, this story is about Arivazhagan’s entry into politics, but surely the heroine’s arc needs closure. A freeze-frame of an embrace, perhaps? This idealistic film is a fairy tale, after all. Why deny us the happily-ever-after?

KEY:

• Kaththukkutti = novice
• Junior Vikatan = see here
• VIP = see here
•  Thani Oruvan = see here
• Mudhalvan = see here
• Aayidha Ezhuthu = see here
• Kadhal = see here
• pappali = papaya
• “Unagala ellam andha TASMAC dhaan naasamaakkudhu.” = You kids have been ruined by TASMAC.
• Nammalwar = see here
• Kaththi = see here
• “gam-bhee-ram” = majesty

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

As a history lesson, Rudhramadevi checks all the boxes. A girl is born to the queen of the Kakatiya dynasty, and because women cannot rule – even palaces, apparently, have a glass ceiling – the king raises the child as a boy, a warrior. He’s worried that his vassals will revolt at the prospect of serving a queen, and with good reason. One of them (Suman) declares that women were put on this earth solely to serve men and quench their desires. But such a secret can only remain secret for so long, and the rest of the film is about Rudhramadevi (Anushka) fulfilling her destiny and proving that she deserves that crown. It’s a great story, and it needs to be told. Even Amar Chitra Katha, which chronicled the lives of Rani Abbakka and Ahilyabai Holkar and the Rani of Jhansi, seems to have missed out on Rudhramadevi.

But what was she like as a person? “Gender identity” may be too modern, too psychoanalytical, a term – but surely a girl who grows up thinking she’s a boy is bound to have had some confusion. All we get is a scene where the girl comes of age and falls into her mother’s arms. But soon, she’s back as a boy. She thrills her people by taming an elephant – she drops the disguise only in her private quarters, wearing silks that no one else can see. It can’t have been easy. There’s a hilarious, yet troubling, scene in which the king sees women swooning over his “son” – he’s delighted that his ruse has worked so well, or maybe he’s begun to believe he really has a son. He gets Rudhramadevi married off to Muktamba (Nithya Menen). Did Rudhramadevi, at least for an instant, balk at the deceit? She only seems to care about keeping up appearances for the sake of her kingdom. And what about Muktamba? She, too, is a patriot, and she cheerfully reconciles herself to this “marriage” – but was there a moment the woman in her registered disappointment? This is a kingdom filled with saints.

Rudhramadevi, directed by Gunasekhar, is filled with eye-popping colour, but its characters are resolutely black-and-white. Anushka certainly looks the part. She isn’t the typical stick-figure model. She’s imposing, regal. But she has nothing to play. The character is all externalities. There’s no inner life to portray. Everything is conveyed through dialogue, and it’s purely functional – there’s no music in the words. The visual effects are strictly at a made-for-TV level, the battle scenes are anaemic, and the events are so rushed that even Ilayaraja, who has rescued countless films with his magic, can’t do much. Characters come and go without making us feel anything. There’s no tension. Shattering discoveries – a hidden passageway, the fact that Rudhramadevi is a woman – are ticked off perfunctorily, like a list of chores stuck on a refrigerator.

It’s sad. Our women-centric films are either those amman movies with special effects cobbled together on PaintShop Pro or modest empowerment tales like 36 Vayadhinile. Here’s a multi-crore epic centred on a female character, with the men (huge stars like Allu Arjun and Rana Daggubati) sawing away gamely on second fiddles – but the director treats it like any other masala movie, with the heroine performing gravity-defying stunts like… a hero. At some level, you see why. With so much money at stake, you have to give the audience something to whistle at, like that shot of Rudhramadevi leaping onto an elephant – it’s like performing a pole vault without the pole. But commercial considerations alone cannot drive an epic, especially when the central character is so complex. You need those Amar Chitra Katha thought bubbles too.

KEY:

• Kakatiya dynasty = see here
• Amar Chitra Katha = see here
• amman = see here
• 36 Vayadhinile = see here

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

Vijay Milton’s 10 Enradhukulla wastes little time in letting us know that it is a hero-centric masala movie. A battered, bloody man who’s being held hostage has with him a package. He’s waiting for someone to pick it up. Pasupathy, who plays one of the villains, asks him the name of the pickup guy. The hostage says he doesn’t have a name. Pasupathy asks mockingly if the man’s God. The hostage’s reply is a punch line: “Kadavulukku car otta theriyaadhu.” He’s just kidding. Soon enough, God comes speeding through the air – in a red sports car, somersaulting over a broken bridge. It’s Vikram, of course – and we never learn His name. Through the course of the film, He tells us it’s… Bill Gates… James Bond… Mani Ratnam… Sunil Gavaskar. It’s supposed to be a running gag, even if He seems to be the only one laughing. By the end, it doesn’t matter. The film is as anonymous as its leading man.

On paper, the union of Vijay Milton and Vikram sounds like masala heaven. Vikram has made terrific masala entertainers like Dhool and Saamy, and Milton’s last film was the marvellously entertaining Goli Soda, of which I wrote in this space, “Its signature achievement is its ruthless unmasking of how hollow most of our masala movies are, and how, with a little imagination, just a little, you can make a film whose appeal is broad and which does not insult the audience.” With 10 Enradhukulla, Milton has made exactly the kind of movie for which Goli Soda appeared an antidote. The writing is shockingly scattershot, right from the scene that’s supposed to set up the story – the butchering of lower-caste people by an upper-caste clan in Uttarakhand. This is a crucial event, one we’re meant to hold on to, but the director seems in a hurry to stage it. It goes by in a blur of disjointed speechifying and dismembered limbs.

And instead, what does the film choose to depict in detail? The efforts of Shakila (Samantha) to obtain a driving licence. She’s failed 14 times, and this time she says she’s sure to succeed. She is, after all, wearing her lucky dress. It’s in maroon. If there was a college-level course called Loosu Ponnu Studies, Shakila would graduate with a gold medal. There’s a scene where the warden of the hostel she lives in barges into her room and demands to see her. Her roommate says she’s not there. The warden makes angry noises about rent that hasn’t been paid. It seems like a serious situation. The warden leaves, slamming the door shut behind her. Shakila, we discover, is hiding behind that door, giggling as if she slipped a frog into the warden’s lunchbox. Gee, what fun it must be, this prospect of finding yourself out on the streets. Maybe she’ll burst into a happy song.

Or take the scene where the hero slips his car keys into a cardigan Shakila has hung out to dry. After a while, she slips the garment on. He says the keys are in the pocket. She says they aren’t. A tussle ensues. He puts a hand into the pocket and ends up touching a lady part. In case we’re in any doubt about which part, the soundtrack helpfully alerts us – we hear the honk of a horn. Shakila looks as if she’s been violated – for two seconds. We expect some kind of closure to the awkward scene. Maybe he’s appalled. Maybe he’ll apologise. Maybe she’ll tear into him for violating her personal space. But the scene ends. Soon, she finds something else to giggle about. Shakila is the kind of character who, if you hear she’s being targeted by a gun-toting assassin, makes you pray he’s got firm hands and a good aim. She’s the centrepiece of 10 Enradhukulla, there in practically every scene. Vikram help us.

The film is a road movie that makes pit stops at the most interesting places, like a Renigunta bar where item girl Charmi gradually loses various items of her clothing. Elsewhere, Abhimanyu Singh lies in wait. The actor gnashes his teeth as if auditioning for the Ashish Vidyarthi slot of Talented But Underused Bollywood Performers Who Find Fat Pay Cheques Down South Playing Villains. There’s another villain, played by Rahul Dev, who possesses magical powers. One minute, he’s on a horse. The next, he’s on a train. There’s no rhythm to the proceedings, no continuity – even the stunts are underwhelming. And there’s a laughable twist at the end that has to be seen to be disbelieved. What is it about snagging big stars that makes our filmmakers so lax about the other aspects of filmmaking? The star is the one who puts people in the seats, but the writer, the director is the one who keeps them there. It’s hard to grudge Vikram this fluff. After his back-breaking efforts in I, he deserves some fun. But what about us?

KEY:

• 10 Enradhukulla = Before counting to ten…
• “Kadavulukku car otta theriyaadhu.” = God can’t drive a car.
• Dhool = see here
• Saamy = see here
• Goli Soda = see here
• I = see here

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

A kid in a jail cell. That’s an unusual image to begin a movie with. He seems to be filling out some sort of what-I-want-be-when-I-grow-up questionnaire, and against “Ambition,” he scrawls, carefully, “Police.” His mother, after all, is a cop (played by Raadhika Sarathkumar). Soon, he slips out of the cell – he was just hanging out. And a prisoner (Rajendran) takes his place. They strike up a conversation. “Rowdy perisaa police perisaa?” The prisoner makes a case for his kind and we slip into his story, detailing the conflict between a cop (Azhagamperumal) and a rowdy (Parthiban). The narrative is amazingly fluid – the two storylines slip into one another like pleats of silk. And then we discover it isn’t a story after all. These characters are real. Their conflict is real.

The writer-director Vignesh Shivan uses this technique a lot. He’ll show us the last bit of a series of events, and then, a little later, he’ll take us back and show everything that happened. We see Kadambari (Nayantara, who looks fantastic) enter the police station with a broken cell phone – later, we see how she was apprehended, how the phone was broken. We hear about a dead parent – later, we’re shown how the death occurred. What’s surprising is the tone. Pandi (Vijay Sethupathi) – the kid at the story’s beginning – wants to become a rowdy. But this isn’t Pudhupettai. Kadambari is out to avenge herself on the man who annihilated her family. But this isn’t Kill Bill. The beautifully shot Naanum Rowdy Dhaan (the cinematographer is George C. Williams) is, instead, a comedy – sometimes a very black one.  I haven’t laughed this hard over innocent men being snuffed out by a silencer-outfitted gun. Anirudh’s jaunty score clues us in to the mood. Even when someone is being stabbed to death, a mariachi band seems to be playing in a corner. Remember Thirudan Police, which treated a revenge drama like a comedy? Naanum Rowdy Dhaan is a sibling. With a dash of Thamizh Padam, in the way it skewers our cinema’s obsession with antiheroes. Pandi is an… anti-rowdy.

There are a few rough patches, and the overtly sentimental scenes are a mistake. (Nayantara’s fussy emoting doesn’t help.) When you’re trying to make the audience laugh, you don’t dwell too much on a girl’s reaction to her father’s gory death. Or a man receiving the news that his mother has been kidnapped and, most likely, killed. But these passages are easy to overlook because the film is such fun. Take Pandi. The extent of his “rowdy-ness” is the adjudication of a dispute between two schoolboys – Ramesh, Suresh – who happen to be in love with the same girl. And his “lair,” bathed in fluorescent light, is hilarious. Graffitied on the walls are his rates. Hand breaking – Rs. 10000. Leg breaking – Rs. 15000. And at a corner, this admonition: “ID proof compulsory.” Pandi is so patently unfit for the job, the film could be called Non Rowdy Dhaan.

This is a welcome return to form for Vijay Sethupathi, who seemed to be trying too hard to become a star, with films like Vanmam and Rummy. He shines best in roles with a lower wattage – Pandi is an endearing dimbulb. And he’s surrounded by a crack team of comics. Rajendran, of course – but also RJ Balaji, who keeps tossing out pop-culture nuggets. Looking at a giant of a man, he exclaims, “Audio launch-ukku vandha Arnold maadhiri…” And Parthiban is in glorious form. The scene where a bunch of amateurs try to assassinate him is the most sustained stretch of farce I’ve seen in ages. They try everything – eggs, petrol, a burning tire. The audience explodes.

KEY:

• Naanum Rowdy Dhaan = I, too, am a rowdy
• “Rowdy perisaa police perisaa?” = Who’s bigger? A rowdy? Or a cop?
• Pudhupettai = see here
• Kill Bill = see here
• Thirudan Police = see here
• Thamizh Padam = see here
• Vanmam = see here
• Rummy = see here
• “Audio launch-ukku vandha Arnold maadhiri…” = A reference to Schwarzenegger

Copyright ©2015 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

Sivappu, directed by Sathyashiva, begins with some tight writing. A construction worker falls to her death, and this tragedy gives us multiple insights. One, the working conditions are unsafe. Two, women are in especial danger. (The fall may have been the result of a rape attempt.) Three, Konaar (Rajkiran) is the general fixer-upper around – he has contacts with an MP (Selva), and he also has good equations with other workers, especially Pandian (Naveen Chandra), whom he regards as something of a son. The woman’s death causes a chain of events. Workers protest and leave the site, so Konaar has to get replacements. He finds them when he stumbles upon a group of Sri Lankan Tamils, duped by an agent who said he’d take them to Australia. The construction site, thus, becomes a refugee camp. The inner life of characters, their external relationships, the overall circumstances, and the engine of a plot – everything’s established with admirable efficiency. The film’s running time, after all, is just about two hours.

But soon, our admiration dims. Formula kicks in. First half = comedy + romance + dramatic pre-interval block. Thambi Ramaiah, the foreman at the site, hears moans from inside a room. He suspects sexual activity and barges in. It’s the toilet. A man is taking a dump. Ha ha, et cetera. Pandian, meanwhile, falls for Parvathi (Rupa Manjari), one of the refugees. Actually, they fall in hate first, getting off on the wrong foot. Then they fall in love. All this is stupefyingly generic. And filmmakers have got to do something about the interval block. I’m talking about how the film’s rhythm changes as it approaches this point, how its pulse rate shoots up gradually, and how we can predict exactly when we’re going to spring out of our seats. Can you remember the last time an interval block snuck up behind you, surprised you?

A more important question: How seriously are we to take an “issue film” when it would have worked just as well (or just as badly) without this issue? Sivappu opens with an impassioned, gravelly-voiced screed about Tamils in the island nation – how they were there before Christ, how they fared through the Chola and Pandiya empires, how a lot of this can be proved from the Arikamedu excavations, and how, in 1948, Sri Lanka obtained freedom but Tamils did not. The screen, then, fills with blood, and the title appears: Sivappu. There’s a bookend too. At the close, we are left with the thought that we should either welcome refugees or close our doors, but we should not play politics with (or using) them. Somewhere in the middle, we get the throwaway shot of a procession commemorating someone who set himself on fire for the Sri Lankan Tamil cause. All very well – but why such solemnity for a star-crossed love story that’s essentially a Kaadhal where the class/caste divide is replaced by the fact that hero and heroine hail from different nations?

Films like Sivappu make you think – not just about the issues at hand, but also about the validity of their dramatisation for narrative purposes. The events in a film like Bombay take place in the city of the title, in 1992. The storyline of The Terrorist cannot be divorced from its (implied) Sri Lankan roots. Sivappu, on the other hand, is like a Ratha Thilakam, where the Sino-Indian war was just a great dramatic device, something to fuel the narrative. This isn’t very different from the way “issues” about migrant workers or organ theft or exploitation by MNCs are appropriated into masala movies just so that there’s a “fresh” villain. But at least these films don’t pretend to be about these issues. They don’t begin and end with lectures about the issue. There’s a point about how Pandian cannot afford to rent the kind of houses he’s building – a touching point, and it would be just as effective without the Sri Lankan angle. Sivappu may have been more effective had it simply told a story and let that story comment on the issue, tangentially, the way Kaadhal did.

Or the way Nandha did. The Sri Lankan issue is never forgotten, and some images are seared into our brains, but the film doesn’t disrespect the gravity of the issue by pretending to be about it and then going on to focus on a rowdy’s life. Because after all that noise, the Sri Lankan issue in Sivappu is buried under all the melodrama about the lovers and the will-they-won’t-they-unite plot points, peppered with stray character touches illustrating Parvathi’s plight – her fear of helicopters, her shrinking back from the sea that others so joyously plunge into (remember what’s on the other side!), or her dislike of the colour of the film’s title. I suppose the question really boils down to this: Do you want to judge these films on the intent-versus-execution curve, the way one ideally should, or do you want to simply express gratitude that at least a handful of filmmakers are making movies about something, and without stars?

KEY:

• Sivappu = red
• Arikamedu excavations = see here
•  Bombay = see here
• The Terrorist = see here
• Ratha Thilakam = see here
•  Kaadhal = see here
• Nandha = see here

Copyright ©2015 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Baradwaj Rangan reports on a film market at the Mumbai Film Festival, which hopes to help directors like Vetri Maaran target the screens on your laptops and smartphones.

On the second day of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, the producer Guneet Monga (The Lunchbox, Gangs of Wasseypur, Shaitan) screened a two-minute trailer of her film Monsoon Shootout to a bunch of distributors gathered in a small room. Afterwards, she recalled the Orson Welles quote about a filmmaker’s life being about 2 per cent movie-making and 98 per cent hustling. “We’re starting the journey of hustling from here,” she said. Everyone laughed.

Monga went on to apologise for the lack of subtitles in the trailer, but there was really no need. The slickly photographed clip had candlelit romance, cops, a snarling Nawazuddin Siddiqui, lots of gunfire. Perhaps sensing that the film might be perceived as male-oriented actioner, Amit Kumar, the director, quickly added that the women in the audience during a screening in Russia saw the story as one about choices: to be with the good guy or the bad guy, to be with the guy with money or the guy without money. In case the distributors were still not convinced, he said that the film had been tweaked from the version that was shown at Cannes, in 2013. Now, it was India-ready. Now, there was an explanatory voiceover. Now, there were songs. This was 100 per cent hustling.

Monsoon Shootout was part of 24 films (18 features, 6 feature-length documentaries) selected for the Mumbai Film Market (MFM), an initiative by Kiran Rao (Chairperson of MAMI), Anupama Chopra (Festival Director), and Smriti Kiran (Creative Director, Programming, Production and Operations). “For a while now, I’ve been wondering how to make films that are not market-driven,” Rao told me. “Building a bridge between risky/independent/small films and the audiences for them – this concerns me as a filmmaker. When I came on board MAMI last year, I thought it was an opportunity to start looking at this.”

Both Rao and Chopra have deep-rooted connections in the industry – the big players, the distributors and studios and sales agents. They called on them. “It’s a small, one-day market,” Rao said. “The vision is that MAMI should be a place where independent films are discovered and encouraged and celebrated.” Chopra joked that this was their version of an arranged marriage. “The boys and girls are going to check each other out.” To officiate the proceedings, Rao and Chopra called on Saameer Mody, Managing Director of Pocket Films. With good reason. He helped them round up the grooms, produce the market.

* * *

When Pocket Films began operations – as a database (a sort of online yellow pages, really) for the film industry, named 1takemedia.com – Mody met a lot of people who’d made short films as a show reel but did not know what to do with them, how to take them to a wider audience. This was around the time YouTube had launched in India. Mody and his partners saw an opportunity and became channel partners. Today, Pocket Films is India’s largest aggregator and distributor of short films in the digital space. “Anyone can load their film on YouTube,” Mody said. “But Pocket Films comes with advantage.” It’s a site people seek out. It has films listed under categories: Short Films to Make You Believe in Destiny, Short Films That Will Put You in a Good Mood, Short Films That Will Make You Learn to be Happy with Small Things in Life. All of which means that the chances of your film being found by a viewer is much higher, especially after the debut of a one-hour TV show dedicated to short films on NDTV Prime, titled Prime Talkies With Pocket Films.

With MFM, Mody is extending his experience – one might even say expertise – to feature films and feature-length documentaries. This is not the first time a film festival has hosted a market, but this is the first time a curated set of films (culled from the Indian submissions to MAMI) is being presented to potential buyers. “The initial pool consisted of around 225 films,” said Bina Paul, Head of the Indian Program at MAMI, whose partner in the two-and-a-half-month curation process was Deepti DCunha (Programmer, Indian Selection). “We were really keen on the whole business of not concentrating on Hindi cinema, putting an emphasis on the fact that India is not just Hindi cinema.”

Hence the line-up of – apart from Hindi – Tamil, Assamese, Malayalam, Marathi, Haryanvi, Gujarati, Bengali, Telugu and Kannada films. There’s even a Hindi/Nepali/English entry, Chandrashekhar Reddy’s Fireflies in the Abyss. (Official synopsis: Even with the odds stacked against him, Suraj, an 11 year-old boy, fights his way out of a life in the ‘rat-hole’ coalmines to put himself in school.) “The market works in various ways,” Paul said. “Some might buy the film’s rights. Some may buy remake rights. Others may be interested in distributing the film with subtitles.”

“We have two objectives,” Mody said. One, to highlight good independent films for different distributors. “Sometimes filmmakers lose out because they don’t have the right sources or contacts. We are getting all these distributors in one room.” He spoke of theatrical distributors like Yash Raj, Eros, Fox, and also non-traditional buyers like hotstar.com and Amazon Instant Video, which brings us to Point Two. “Impress upon filmmakers that theatrical distribution is not the be all and end all.” Smita Jha, Leader – Entertainment and Media Practice India, PricewaterhouseCoopers, told the audience, “Put the mobile at the centre of your business strategy. In less than two years, 50 per cent of the world’s population will be mobile internet subscribers.” It’s no accident that the logo of Pocket Films is a smartphone peeking out of a denim pocket.

I asked Anupama Chopra if filmmakers would find it hard to reconcile to the fact that their films will be seen on a smartphone. “I know it can seem like defeat,” she said. “But filmmakers need to rethink.” She said that the Indian business model is now like Hollywood’s, where it’s easier to make a $200 million film than one costing $40 million. “For a mid-level film, costing around Rs. 4-5 crore, you have to spend something like 5-7 crore on publicity. And movie-going is so expensive today that the average viewer will choose the big mainstream movie at the theatre. You have to seduce them on other platforms. It’s the choice between not finding viewers at all versus finding them while they’re, say, having a meal. If your work is good, they may begin to seek you out, even in theatres.”

* * *

Vetri Maaran, the acclaimed Tamil filmmaker who is currently readying his Visaaranai for release, didn’t seem overly concerned about finding audiences through non-theatrical avenues. “I make films for my people, but with some international sensibilities,” he told me. “These markets can help to take my films to non-diaspora audiences.” He’s been to film markets at Cannes and Montreal, hawking his 2011 feature Aadukalam, and he pointed to Kaaka Muttai, which took the film-festival route to success in both domestic and international markets. He said he was interested in meeting with Amazon Instant Video, to explore the possibility of digital release a week after a film is released in theatres. “I want to see how they can help.”

But this isn’t about finding viewers, he said. At least, it’s not just that. “People who don’t go to theatres are going to see the film on a pirated DVD. This is about making more money for my investors.” He sees this as a way to recoup the money he loses by not compromising – only, when I dropped the word, he gently corrected me. “Filmmaking is about compromise at every stage.” He prefers the term “exploitation of viewers,” through commercial ingredients like item songs. He wants to reduce this exploitation. “That’s why we need to do something unconventional about the way we market films.”

There was another Tamil filmmaker on the list – Anucharan, who made the excellent Kirumi. When I asked Kiran Rao about the inclusion of films (like Kirumi) that have already been released in theatres, she said, “With some films, the run in cinemas is so short that you can’t really say they had a theatrical release. They have the potential to reach more audiences on different platforms.” Plus, the intent was to present to distributors a combination of attractive, mainstream-enough films and films that are a harder sell. “I know Visaaranai will find a release in the Chennai market,” she said. “But it’s a tough, intense film, and I don’t see it being widely distributed elsewhere. So it’s much smarter to consider a platform-release mode, wherein you release a film in a few territories and then expand the release based on word of mouth, or allow people to watch the film online, legally. This is going to be essential for filmmakers like me, who make films without stars.”

I asked Mody if the market was a level playing field, given its pre-selection of films that were allowed to make a pitch to distributors. These chosen filmmakers were even coached on how to make their pitch, how to work out sales strategies. Mody said, “We are inviting top-level distributors and decision makers. They have extremely busy schedules. We value their time and want to give them projects that have been curated.” Bina Paul used the word “accessible” a lot. “We chose films that are accessible at some level. This is, after all, the first year, the first time something is being done like this. It might be self-defeating if we put in films that the market is not interested in. We want to build this.” A few days after the market, Mody told me that “a lot of interesting conversations” have been happening, though nothing has been officially closed yet. I asked Anupama Chopra if the MFM could be seen as some sort of movement. She said, “It’s too ambitious to think about the market like that. But look, it’s finally a business. It’s dhandha, as crass as that sounds. Even if one film finds a distributor, we would have done our job.”

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Thoughts from a few days when Fassbinder rubbed shoulders with Rajinikanth and Guru Dutt….

How do you plan your viewing schedule at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival? One way is to simply let the film find you. Earlier this year, at the Berlinale, the documentary Fassbinder – To Love Without Demands was one of the hottest tickets. Understandably so. The subject, after all, was only the most important German filmmaker of the post-War period. And someone who died tragically young, at 37, leaving behind a huge if-only on the lips of filmgoers and critics. But in a span of 14 years, he directed 60 films, acted in films, put together 30 stage shows – it was almost as if he knew he did not have much time, that he had to cram it all in while he could. “Such a rate of production is unparalleled in cinema history,” says the Danish director and film historian Christian Braad Thomsen, who splices together his interviews with Fassbinder and reminiscences from collaborators. The result is a deeply moving tribute.

I couldn’t watch the film in Berlin. It was all sold out. So when I saw it in the MAMI line-up, the film practically sidled its way into my schedule. “I didn’t want to copy or imitate Hollywood,” Fassbinder says. He wanted to make films based on his understanding of Hollywood movies. But it’s not just about his career. It’s about his life. His childhood. His thoughts on the Oedipal myth. His reverence for the German émigré filmmaker Douglas Sirk. His dismissal of “art films,” which makes us wonder, with a smile, just what category he thought his own films would be clubbed under. His desire for a child versus his feelings about bringing one into this world. And, of course, sadomasochism. The latter trait announced itself in another documentary as well, one about Rajinikanth’s fans. It’s no news, at least to us down south, that the actor is revered as a god, but a fan gets so literal about it, he pierces his skin with hooks and hangs from a wire, the way devotees do at temples.

For the Love of a Man. That’s what Rinku Kalsy’s documentary is titled, never mind that a lot of the people featured in the film would take offence to their hero being called a mere man. The film lays out some basics about the cult of the star in Tamil cinema (and Tamil Nadu), and then follows a few men who aren’t just fans. One of them begins to weep remembering the time Rajinikanth was hospitalised. He couldn’t function. His brother had to go to Singapore and take pictures standing in front of the hospital in which Rajinikanth was admitted – only then did some semblance of normalcy return. Another fan is an auto driver. Near the steering, where others usually paste pictures of gods, for luck, he has pictures of Rajinikanth. I kept wondering what a foreign audience would make of all this, given that the sometimes fun, other times chilling phenomenon of star worship is so alien to them. And we’re talking star worship to the power of infinity. As a fan says, “This is not Kollywood or Hollywood. This is Rajiniwood.”

The film’s biggest laugh came from the mimicry artist who regales fans by impersonating Rajinikanth, and then admits, “Basically I am a Kamal Haasan fan.” If you don’t find this funny, you’re probably not from Tamil Nadu. I always try to squeeze a few documentaries into my viewing schedule at film festivals. For one, they are best seen on the screen, without distraction. At home, there’s always something else that’s an easier watch that you reach for at the end of a working day. Also, these documentaries are hard to come by once they disappear from the festival circuit. Vetri Maaran’s Visaaranai, on the other hand, is sure to get a theatrical release. But I watched it anyway because there’s no telling what the powerful film will look like once the censors get their hands on it. Aligarh, which opened the festival, was pretty controversial too. I couldn’t catch it, but  I wasn’t too bummed. It’s sure to land up in theatres, though someone told me later that there was a sort-of sex scene that might not make it.

The highlight of the festival, for me, was the restored version of Pyaasa, though I wouldn’t exactly call the film a favourite. I’m a bit ambivalent about this story of a Devdas-like masochist who reaches for balladry instead of the bottle. The film is rivalled only by Mera Naam Joker in the self-pity sweepstakes. My God, does he go on, right from the first scene in which a bee is crushed under the sole of a shoe. Guru Dutt plays the bee. The shoe is embodied, at different times, by his callous brothers, his callous ex-girlfriend, his callous publisher, the callous society. And yet, the film is a marvel, a true testament to cinema being a collaborative art. As a novel, as a lone creator’s creation, Pyaasa might have been unbearable, but with this music, with these lyrics, with this (often symbolic, and always breathtaking) cinematography, you cannot look away. And it was amazing watching the film with an audience. They cheered when Johnny Walker walked in with his bottles of massage oil. They knew when the songs were coming. Almost six decades later, Jinhen naaz hai Hind par is still so relevant, it could be the soundtrack to the lives of everyone who’s returning an award today.

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

Kamal Haasan’s films are increasingly beginning to look like the “circus thuppakki” so memorably showcased in Aboorva Sagotharargal – the kind of gun that fires from both ends. The targets at one end are the general viewers, who just want a good time at the movies. At the other end are the fans who are especially invested in the actor’s mythology (which Kamal Haasan himself has been instrumental in propagating, through his fantastically layered screenplays). Which side of the divide you fall on will decide your enjoyment of the actor’s latest film, Thoongavanam (directed by Rajesh M. Selva, and based on Frederic Jardin’s French thriller Sleepless Night) – but I wonder if there are others like me, who find themselves on the fence. Why does one have to choose? Why not wish for a film that entertains at a surface level, but also invites us to scratch our chins gravely and converse with the actor’s persona?

The general viewer in me just couldn’t see what was so great about Sleepless Night that it had to be remade – at least until I looked up a couple of reviews. (I haven’t seen the film.) Variety said it “starts in high gear and accelerates steadily from there.” That’s certainly not the case with Thoongavanam, and part of the reason is surely Kamal Haasan’s inability to rein in the Kamal-isms, as I like to call them – those little asides that are the cinematic equivalent of daydreaming during a final exam. Something about soya milk. A telephone-cleaner wife. Gay sex. ‘Crazy’ Mohan-style wordplay on the word “kathi.” A comment about champagne. Maybe even something about the machinery that prevents films from releasing as scheduled, leaving fans frustrated about not being able to watch their “nayakan.” By themselves, these scribbles on the margins are fascinating (and myth-building), but not in a film that needs us perched at the edge of our seats, with dry mouths and pounding hearts.

Or maybe the problem is the director’s workmanlike handling (a regrettable recurrence in Kamal’s recent films), when the script demanded the dazzle of a Brian De Palma. There’s one shot from the De Palma playbook, a smooth camera move that takes off from a toilet stall in the ladies’ room, courses through the ventilation duct above, and lands in a stall in the men’s room – the film needed more such showmanship, given that it’s set almost entirely in a nightclub. The story has to do with inspector Diwakar (Kamal Haasan) and a bag of cocaine, and the title, which appears in flickering neon, is perfect. Thoongavanam – an insomniac’s version of poongavanam, which suggests parks and children playing. Here, the game is hide-and-seek. The people looking for Diwakar include cops (Trisha, Kishore) as well as murderous gangsters (Sampath, Prakash Raj).

It’s a revolving-door thriller, with a breathless series of entries and exits. But for a while, the smoothness of the writing (note the “invisible” nature of Sampath’s introduction) doesn’t translate to screen. The rhythms are stiff, the pauses in the dialogues seem a few seconds off, the humour looks forced. Things pick up in the post-interval portions, especially after a superb action sequence in the club’s kitchen. Everything comes together beautifully – the kitchen-sink action choreography, the sounds of things breaking and clattering, the bursts of background score, and the jittery camerawork. This is one stretch that does something worthwhile with the claustrophobia of the setting. From here, Thoongavanam truly takes off, both for the casual viewer as well as the Kamal-watcher, who will surely make a mental note of another “first” from the films of this actor, the unflinching gaze on the contents of a water closet. When lives are at stake, shit happens.

As with Uttama Villain, it’s the latter viewer who wins. Diwakar is yet another grey character for Kamal Haasan – not just in age (an indeterminate middle-age) but also in terms of his morality. (We keep thinking: Is he a bad guy?) And the actor continues to chip away at the Tamil hero’s “heroism.” Even as late as Vettaiyaadu Vilayaadu, a cop character still meant a degree of macho posturing. But look at Diwakar. The mission is in the background. In the foreground is family, which he is literally handcuffed to, even after divorce. He keeps calling his ex (Asha Sarath) to reassure her. And while it’s no surprise to see Kamal Haasan being beaten up (by men much younger), have you seen another film whose hero is so preoccupied that he doesn’t swoop in, at once, to save a girl being date-raped? She has to call out to him. Only then does the hero-switch go on. Diwakar even relinquishes the bad-guy-nabbing duties – it’s refreshing who finally ends up with them.

You have to smile at the way the things we expect from this actor – lip-locks, for instance, with the hottest nurse in all of hospitaldom – are sutured organically into the screenplay. By the end, Kamal’s image as a romantic hero is resurrected too – it’s the film’s cheekiest line. And a few new preoccupations make themselves felt. As in Uttama Villain, we have here a work-obsessed father who negotiates a troubled relationship with his lippy son. Diwakar thinks the boy plays cricket; he’s actually a footballer. The real games, though, are the ones Kamal Haasan continues to play with his audience, with teasing autobiographical hints and touches that invite theses.

KEY:

• thuppakki = gun
• Sleepless Night = see here
• kathi = knife
• nayakan = hero; also this little-known movie
• poongavanam = park
• Uttama Villain = see here
• Vettaiyaadu Vilayaadu = see here

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Much kindness from a reader. Thank you Ravishankar.

Dear Sir

I was gifted the book ‘Conversations with Mani Ratnam’ recently by a talented “kid” in my office for my birthday.

Contrary to what I expected it was an extremely breezy read. I read Conversations with Hitchcock by Truffaut twenty five years ago in college and I found this atleast as good.

To paraphrase many movie critics – You’ve gone beyond the script and the director. In fact I thought in some places Mani came up short by responding irritably to your very valid phrase “Masala pitch”.

I’m sending you a cartoon to show my appreciation which I drew myself under my nickname Zola (I’m an accountant by day and a wannabe writer and cartoonist by night and a dutiful householder on weekends :((  .

Request you to post the cartoon on your blog /website as an offerring from a  grateful fan.

best

S.Ravishanker  (https://thezolazone.wordpress.com/)

Spoilers ahead…

Among the mass heroes, Ajith may be the most interesting. It’s the grey shades – not just in the hair, but also in the characterisations he gets away with. There’s something about watching a hero who isn’t virtue incarnate, whose image allows him to do things other heroes can’t, and Vedalam makes pretty good use of this aspect of the actor. The film, directed by Siva, isn’t so much a movie as a vending machine for dispensing star-isms. Consider the star’s first shot. (He plays a cabbie named Ganesh.) A glimpse of wavy grey hair. A glimpse of the eyes. A glimpse of a smile. All this in a scene that involves a… kathi. (Remind you of anyone else’s movie?) Or consider the scene where someone asks him, “Unakku car otta theriyuma?” These aren’t dialogues between the characters. They’re conversations between the film and fans, who go berserk. (They know the line is for them.) This blatant demolition of the fourth wall is why these “mass” films can’t be analysed like other films, on grounds of logic. Or even sense.

The last time Ajith was in a Siva film (Veeram), he played a character with four brothers. This time, he’s got a reason for a flashback sister, Thamizh (Lakshmi Menon), who thinks he’s as innocent as he looks, with that streak of ash on his forehead, with that tendency to also pray in church, with that impulse to help the blind across the street. But guess what? To the surprise of nobody who’s seen the trailer, there’s a side to Ganesh that makes him smile and snarl and deliver aphrodisiacal punch lines. (I am as important as your parents. They were instrumental in your birth. I’m going to be instrumental in your death.) Forget dirty magazines – these clips are all Ajith fans will need if they decide to become sperm donors. The actor plays the two sides as if outfitted with an on/off switch. Good guy/bad guy. Meek guy/Superman. And he doesn’t even have to duck into a phone booth. Is it great acting? No. But it’s something.

That something keeps us watching, and the anticipation of that something tides us over the lulls. A catalogue of the latter would begin with the supremely un-comedic comedy track by Soori & Co. He pretends to be faithful to his wife, then he slips into a nightclub, then his wife lands up there with her mother… This sort of thing could function as a litmus test for a couple considering marriage. If he or she laughs… The film’s biggest laugh, for me, came from a doctor who says things like, “His survival rate is just seven per cent,” as though the patient were a battery. There’s a heroine around somewhere (Shruti Haasan), who gets an awful song that goes, Don’t mess with me. Not that Ganesh plans to. I haven’t seen a hero look less interested in the heroine. Shruti Haasan gets more footage in the Fanta ad during intermission. Then there are the villains, an ill-defined lot. Their scenes are edited with chopper blades, on which the camera is mounted. Maybe there’s a way to look at this. Maybe the hyper-cutting is a manifestation of the evil that churns in these men… Nah! It’s just lousy filmmaking.

And yet, the film makes good on its mission. Fans are left delirious. Others are left… fitfully entertained. Some scenes – the scene where the villains zone in on the hero’s whereabouts, or the one where the hero discovers his kidnapped sister’s whereabouts – are charged with the  enjoyably trashy energy AR Murugadoss brings to his films. The pre-interval block is particularly impressive – at least, for this sort of film. It’s a sustained stretch of action, plus a revelation that sets up the second half. Now we get to the “family sentiment” zone, and I must say these parts aren’t as bad as they sound. I walked out of the film wishing these filmmakers would apply themselves a little more. All mental resources seem directed towards the hero-oriented scenes, and they work. Why not redirect some of those street smarts to the comedy track, the romance, the scenes with the villains? It’s like taking up swimming just to keep afloat.

KEY:

• Vedalam = phantom
• kathi = knife; also this film
• “Unakku car otta theriyuma?” = Can you drive a car?
• Veeram = see here
• Fanta ad = see here

Copyright ©2015 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

A quick trip through the nine moods – nava rasas – of the Indian film song.

Which song would you pick as a depiction of Śṛungāram (Love)? There are hundreds. Abhi na jaao chhod kar, for instance. He’s saying don’t leave me yet, the heart hasn’t had its fill of you. She protests. It’s late. The stars are out. If I don’t leave now, I never will. Tune, lyrics, star charisma – everything fuses together to explain why we, in our movies, love the musical interlude. But Abhi na jaao is still a fairly straightforward love song. Consider, on the other hand, Dhoondho dhoondho re sajana from Gunga Jumna. It’s about love, yes, but also something else. Those days, you couldn’t show sex on screen, so here’s the next best thing – the implication of sex. It’s the morning after the wedding night. The heroine’s earring is caught on the hero’s kurta. She’s looking for it, singing about it, dancing around it. It’s a marvellous example of communication through non-verbal (i.e. non-dialogue) means – between characters, between characters and audience.

That’s what a musical interlude is about, though the American critic Pauline Kael might have disagreed. Her idea of a musical was something like Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, where the numbers are mounted as stage performances, commenting on the action, instead of having people on the streets, say, burst into song. She wrote, “Cabaret violates the wholesome approach of big musicals… It violates the pseudo-naturalistic tradition – the Oklahoma!-South Pacific-West Side Story tradition, which requires that the songs appear to grow organically out of the story.” But we revel in this “pseudo-naturalistic tradition” – when done right, our songs grow organically from the script. Take Yeh dosti (Sholay) and Sar jo tera chakraye (Pyaasa). These songs come about because it’s time – in the script – to establish these characters, who they are, what they do. Yeh dosti even introduces the coin toss, which will go on to become a major narrative device. The mood in these songs? Hāsyam (Laughter).

A few weeks ago, I got a letter saying that the students of Davidson College, North Carolina, USA, were in Chennai for their Semester Abroad program. This included a series of lectures for a course titled Cognition of the Performing Arts, India. (I guess Indian Performing Arts didn’t sound forbidding enough for a college course costing tens of thousands.) The organisers asked me to present something about (their words) “creating mood through music and songs in Indian films.” I decided to take the navarasa route – showing them songs that conformed to the nine dominant emotions of Indian art, especially dance. To my mind, it was as good an accordion approach as any.

Whenever faced with a non-Indian audience, I am in two minds. Should I ease them into Indian cinema, with examples that are somewhat like the films they are used to? Or should I kick them into the deep end, with hardcore mainstream-cinema clips, to impress on them how thoroughly different our cinema, our culture is? I did the latter with a German media delegation, who wanted a whistle-stop tour of Indian cinema. I showed them clips from Benegal, Raj Kapoor, Ray, and also our amman (goddess) movies and snake-worship films (Vellikizhamai Viratham). The latter made them sit up. They’ve seen some form of Benegal/Ray/Kapoor – either the films themselves or the style of filmmaking – but they’ve never seen a cobra performing action-hero moves to save the husband of a snake-worshipper from a glass of poisoned milk. They laughed at first. At some level, it is ridiculous. But then we got talking about traditions and myths and cultural symbols, and it grew into a great discussion.

But songs pose a bigger challenge than kung-fu cobras. The musical is practically extinct in Hollywood, and modern-day viewers find it odd that an orchestra erupts out of nowhere and the singers are perfectly in sync and everyone knows the steps. Audiences find it difficult to wrap their mind around the fact that though this isn’t “natural,” it’s still “real” within the context of the film. Take Tu bin bataye (Rang De Basanti). I picked this as an example of Śāntam (Peace), because it’s a tranquil interlude at this point in the screenplay, before the students begin to wage war. I love the placement of this song. Madhavan has just proposed to Soha Ali Khan. The friends are crazy-happy. This beautiful tune comes on, making us smile with them – and we carry this emotion into the second half, only to have it destroyed, bit by agonising bit. Take this song away, and you have a very different movie.

I had a lot of fun “researching” for this talk, which, in my line of work, means spending hours with YouTube. For Kāruṇyam (Compassion), I picked O duniya ke rakhwale (Baiju Bawra). Bharat Bhushan. Glycerine. Enough said. For Raudram (Fury), I chose Jee karda (Badlapur), which also illustrates the “promotional music video” aspect of our songs. It gives us a glimpse into what the film is about – the mood, the characters, the newspaper headline that gives away a bit of plot. For Bhayānakam (Horror), I picked Jhoom jhoom dhalti raat (Kohraa), a terrific instance of mood-creation through song. Waheeda Rehman’s terror is depicted through the piercing deliberateness of the composition, and through visuals that contrast her smallness with the enormity of the malevolent mansion. It helped that the film is a remake of Rebecca, so you can see how prose like that can be moulded to the Indian format of prose-poetry, with songs doing some of the storytelling.

For Veeram (Heroism), instead of showing songs about valour, I opted for Tattad tattad (Goliyon ki Ras-Leela Ram Leela) and Dil cheez kya hai (Umrao Jaan) – the former a hero-introduction song, the latter a heroine-introduction song. This is, after all, a unique Indian tradition, to have the hero/heroine make their first appearance in a song sequence. Adbhutam (Wonder) was easy. I chose the title song of Chaudhvin Ka Chand, where Guru Dutt gazes in wonderment at (the sleeping) Waheeda Rehman, something that people might find creepy today – as these students did. Another Guru Dutt song – Yeh mehlon (Pyaasa) – raised its hand as an instant candidate for Bībhatsam (Disgust). What is this number if not an expression of disgust for the world we are trapped in? For Bhakti (Devotion), I chose Illaadadondrum illai, the magnificent TR Mahalingam prayer from Thiruvilayadal. You may have noticed that this is the only non-Hindi number in the playlist. With reason. It’s the only one I could find with subtitles – so I’m going to end with one of my favourite rants. Increasing numbers of non-Indians are beginning to look at Indian cinema. Ignore subtitles at your own peril.

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.

Spoilers ahead…

Imagine the irony. Sekar (Sathyaraj) sees his college-going daughter Varsha (Dixitha Kothari) behind a boy on a bike. He grounds her, breaks her phone and decides to marry her off at once. But he’s less severe on himself. He gathers friends and drinks into the night. Worse, he picks up a sex worker (Anumol). The scene is disarmingly frank. Soori (Varun), the driver of the auto in which Sekar sits, goes up to her and asks, “Variya?” She pauses just enough to make you wonder if she isn’t that kind of woman after all – maybe she’s going to slap him. Then she turns and asks, “Yethana peru?” In other words, Oru Naal Iravil, the directorial debut of editor Anthony, is the rare Tamil film for grown-ups. At least, given this premise, you’d think so.

Alas, the film is made with the assumption that the viewers are infants. It’s easy to overlook the fact that everyone’s conveniently connected, or that the film is a tad too reliant on withholding information from the audience, or that Sekar possesses superhuman hearing (he can listen to words being uttered on the other side of an iron shutter) – that is, after all, part of the conceit, the kind of movie this is. But what to make of scenes like the one where crucial information is spilt over the phone as soon as it is picked up, without waiting to ascertain who has picked it up? Everything’s communicated through exasperatingly explicit dialogue that belongs on the stage – from Sekar’s impulsiveness to little messagey asides about the importance of educating young women and the tendency of today’s generation to forget older luminaries. (Yuhi Sethu plays an old-time director who’s down on his luck.)

And for a film made by an editor, the scenes just don’t come together. They look disconnected. The greasing of the parts that makes a film one giant well-oiled machine – that doesn’t happen at all. The characters don’t draw us in either. We should be sweating bullets along with Sekar, whose encounter with the sex worker is increasingly fraught with tension – nothing goes per plan. It’s almost like divine retribution from the goddesses of feminism for the way he treated his daughter. But we feel nothing for this man, whose reputation is at stake. (Sathyaraj’s overwrought performance doesn’t help; it belongs on the stage too.) The background score, loud enough to rouse the dead, does what it can to infuse life into the proceedings. And there’s an amusing bit on a film set – about a particularly tasteless item number being directed by, of all people, Gautham Menon, who typically places his heroines on altars and lights joss sticks around them. But one in-joke does not a film make. From all accounts, the Malayalam original, Shutter, seems a terrific thriller. A lot seems to have gotten lost in translation.

KEY:

• Oru Naal Iravil = One night…
• “Variya?” = Coming?
• “Yethana peru?” = How many of you are there?
• Shutter = see here

An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2015 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.