She’s a livewire. There’s never a dull moment when she’s around. But her zest for life could be a facade. It’s her way of making peace with her condition — her days are numbered. A life threatening disease, in cinema, usually makes for a weepy saga. Girija of Geetanjali (1989) is anything but weepy. Her condition is a matter of concern for Prakash (Nagarjuna). He is already brooding, struggling to come to terms with his own health condition. When love creeps up unknowingly, like the mist that glides through the doors in Ooty in the film, there’s a role reversal. Her verve for life rubs off on him but she finds it hard to digest that they’re sailing in similar boats; she laments why they can’t live longer.
It’s been 28 years since Geetanjali . Director Vamshi Paidipally was in class V when he watched the film, too young to grasp nuances of filmmaking or the complexities of being in love. Nevertheless, he was stuck by the change in thought process. “I wondered if this is what love does to you,” Vamshi recalls.
An ardent Mani Ratnam fan boy, Vamshi can discuss his films at length. “Who isn’t his fan?” he laughs.
Mani Ratnam
Over the years, cinephiles have diligently documented moments from Mani Ratnam’s films, analysing character evolutions and storytelling techniques. The frames are poetic. The music is magical. But the romance is never sugar coated.
Ratnam’s body of work in 37 years (his debut film Pallavi Anupallavi released in 1983) has several landmark films, enough to make film lovers look past missteps like Raavan and Kadal .
Director Sudha Kongara, who learnt filmmaking from the master filmmaker, talks about Nirosha in Agni Natchathiram ( Gharshana; 1988), who could be brushed away as a glamorous addition. “She’s a girl from a troubled household, psychologically damaged, and testing someone on the street. Imagine confessing love to a guy you’ve never met before. Then there was Amala, who wanted to try a smoke! This was in the 80s. There are several layers to those characters,” she says.
Sudha was a fan of Ratnam even before she assisted him, “For the longest time I used to wear my plait on the side, like Divya (Revathy) in Mouna Ragam (1986). The romance in his cinema is trippy.”
Karthik and Revathi in ‘Mouna Ragam’
Freezing time
Vamshi relates to Sudha’s statement and adds, “Mani Ratnam, A R Rahman and Ilayaraja freeze time for you. They transport you to the time you first watched Roja, Bombay or Thalapathy .”
T S Suresh has watched some of Mani Ratnam films repeatedly, both as an aficionado and as an a film editor. Some of his favourite episodes are the proposal scene in Kannathil Muthamittal ( Amrutha in Telugu; 2002); Abhishek and Aishwarya walking into their old home where they spent their younger years and travelling back in time in Guru (2007), among several others. “Characters in his films convey a lot without talking much. He believes in brevity. I revisit his films to observe the pauses in dialogues, or the one odd expression that give a scene its gravitas. Take for instance the ‘Chandramouli…’ scene ( Mouna Ragam ) where Revathy splashes water on Karthik’s face. Moments later they are laughing and the mood changes. Again, there’s a scene where she’s waiting for him on the street and a bus passes by. The bus is a tool of transition in time; we learn it’s the next day. For us, these are lessons in editing,” he says.
Actors who worked with him often observe how well he seems to understand women. Celebrating 30 years of Mouna Ragam in 2016, Revathy had pointed out that she was surprised when Mani Ratnam first narrated the part of Divya. Recently, Aditi Rao Hydari made a similar confession that she was blown over by how the filmmaker gets into the mind of female characters.
Recently, at the recent audio launch of Cheliyaa (Telugu version of Kaatru Veliyidai , scheduled to release on April 7), actor Suhasini quipped that Mani Ratnam is a diehard romantic to be making romances at 61. “His romance is ageless and so are his films,” feel Vamshi and Suresh. It isn’t just a glowing tribute from fan boys. Many of Ratnam’s films work till date. The romance remains strong even in films like Nayakan and Thalapathy . “The Saranya - Kamal Haasan bond in Nayakan , the track between Shobhana and Rajinikanth in Thalapathy and later between Rajinikanth and Bhanupriya are all lessons in storytelling and romance. There’s beauty, pain and bitterness,” sums up Vamshi.
A special tribute: Put Chutney, the digital arm of Culture Machine group, came up with a tribute titled ‘Train of Romance’, in which, using train as a recurring motif, shadow play artists recreated memorable moments from Mani Ratnam’s films.
