I wrote this review ages ago...
------------------------------Guru, talk to me…
No, not that way…
Well, ok, its ok- a song, you plan to greet me with a song…a lovelorn girl who runs from home---runs from home, and then a train, blue-rain, rain-earth…
I know the frames- beautiful, but familiar. I can almost see the invisible 100 behind the lens. Maniratnam’s team. Should I be thrilled or turned off at the predictability of quality that comes with the brand…open question.
Guru Bhai, talk to me…
Yes, yes, you open up slightly, you sift through and shift around, and you breathe, you show yourself, a flash of ambition: too-quickly-a-solidifying mercury that it is…
But hello, its now giving in, the history of your sudden love lore, the almost unexplained re-running into the lass (unexplained is good by the way), what with geography being passe and trains going round in circles?
But I pardon, I see- I don’t blink yet, I see life, you coming alive- your own pace, fast and slow…but you live
But you still have not talked to me.
Guru Bhai, talk to me…
So how does it go? I’m “image-blank” now but I remember the discomfort. It set in at the sight of the song, Guru Bhai turned into one of the any 100 avtars of the small Bee’s legs buzzing about with an equal slipped-out-of-her-skin
Ok Guru Bhai, I’ll look at you straight in the eye just as Vishwamitra focused on the truth post temptation…I can’t loose it to the Maya…I can’t yet…TALK MAN!
…they heard me…they heard me! Those men behind the lens…and what did I see? I saw 100 men in panic yelling and running around with one scream, “HALT! We have goods…” His badge read MANI CLAUS and he pulled out goodies—what lovely goodies they were, my god!
Gift 1: Angry man with power and a lion’s heart. Moments of “touch-me-heart-and-I’ll crumble-coz-I’m-soft-inside”- Lovely
Gift 2: Wife and husband love saga post marriage. Moments- he touches and she doesn’t cringe, she hits back. She dries clothes in the terrace and he plays with her body. She wriggles, asks for her due- him on her.
Twin-gifts: the beautiful mystery. Thou hast cleft my egg in twain. Mani’s man. Lovely!
Gifts for Guru Bhai: paunch, spectacles, greying mane, twinkle in the eye, a song in the back. He retorts with a grunt at the girl succumbing to disease, his girl and not his own…
Everyone gets a gift….
Now to check where the gifts were made…don’t check the hind of the package…these ones have their labels proudly displayed in front.
Made in NAYAGAN
Made in BOMBAY
Made in ALAI PAYUTHEY
Made in YUVA
Made in IRUVAR…
Made in a HURRY
Tell me Guru Sir, sorry, Mani sir, blueprints need necessarily not be taken out literally and then, obviously placed…I tell you Mani sir, that those were different bodies, with their own souls…
Remember you were one of the “many-few”, who taught the nation that mainstream Indian cinema could make alternate choices? You choices were brave and honest within their zone; you stopped, you paused, you stumbled, you cast the hand-picked oddballs, and you stunned with a dash of panache…
…and now, well I’ve ejaculated the acerbic already but all I have to ask you is, why has Guru Bhai not talked with you? He says he first needs to speak to you alone, full-talk, full-open, and then perhaps the whisper you heard and the glimmer that I saw would have exploded. Maybe
[It is with strange emotion I lash out. My dose of Indian cinema that was my contemporary was Mani's cinema. The films were in Tamil (mostly), and allowed my convent educated shun-all-regional-identities mindset some relief from embarrassment when faced with all things regional. Tamil was cool because the Tamilian spoke. He spoke in a tone that was true and integrated to an image of legitimacy. I could be Tamil and nothing else and it didn’t matter. I could exist as I pleased.
Watching this filmmaker evolve to certain exalting heights in filmmaking (which to me is during the Dil-Se, Iruvar, Kannathil Muthamittal pinnacles of his career) I craved for his success and a more mainstream understanding of his vision for Indian cinema, all to be dashed to the ground, one after another. Mainstream Tamil audiences and later the infamous “Bullys of the woods” did nothing to really read into the nuances, to glorify and pat his back, his “alternacy”. Mani’s strength however (in my opinion) lay in unique casting, some well-known ones being…
Madhu in Roja, Manisha for Bombay, (and earlier) deglamorised Rajnikanth in Dalapathi, a more recent torn down Simran and Madhavan for Kannathil Muthamittal, the demure and powerful Shalini for Alaipayuthey, “don-Dravidian to the T” Prakash Rai in Iruvar, spunky spitfire of a Revati in Mauna Raagam…
If I start with the supporting cast that is so vital (and powerful because they were handpicked), I could just go on and on and on….
In my opinion, the mainstream-ness started with a shift in psyche, a reflection of what I saw in his recent “high-powered cast-fixes”, and “Bollywoodization”, weaker scripts…
( I don’t think scripts were particularly strong with Mani, he had a flair for screenplay which made up for the lack of a strong story-line. However, he has been terrible with climax scenes and has almost always messed them up except in a few like Iruvar)
…and now an awkwardly crafted, reeking of compromises- Guru had to just nail me (or my hopes and love for the man rather) to the cross. Hence this tone… Guru sunn raha haI naa?]
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