At a time when typecast roles were yet to plague the film industry, actor Sivaji Ganesan ruled the roost in Tamil cinema. Having played all roles between a king and a pauper, a hero and a villain and a lawyer and a thief, Sivaji possessed a fluidity that could fill any character's mould. On a DVD titled, ‘8 Ulaga Adhisayam Sivaji,' M. Srinivasan, secretary, Tiruchi District Sivaji Mandram, has captured snippets of the actor's iconic performances — a compilation that took a whole year to complete.
“Even before I began collecting the various scenes for the compilation, I named it the 8th wonder,” says Srinivasan, adding that his DVD has been brought out for the love of the actor and not for any commercial reason. He says the title he chose stepped up the pressure on him to cull out the best of the actor's performances from a database of over 300 movies in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi.
Split into two parts, the compilation is seven hours long and includes scenes, songs and stunts classified into over 20 categories. The DVD chronicles the various ways in which Sivaji laughed and cried, the way he portrayed different mannerisms for each of his characters, the way he played musical instruments, his performance in the song and action sequences, as a drunkard, a cop, and much more. Some of the movies featured in this compilation are Thiruvilayadal, Vietnam Veedu, Paasa Malar, Vasantha Maaligai, Tirisulam, Uyarndha Manidhan, Paarthal Pasitheerum, Karnan, Parasakthi, Thillana Mohanambal and Mudhal Mariyadhai .
The DVD also includes pictures of a younger Srinivasan with his idol, his own take on Sivaji's invincibility as an actor, photographs of the actor at various awards ceremonies around the world and a voiceover track by Srinivasan introducing every section. While the choice of scenes is good, the editing is amateurish, often abruptly jumping to the next scene in between a dialogue. Without a chronological sequence to the scenes within each section, the DVD progresses literally like a kaleidoscope — random and constantly changing, yet entertaining.
