It is strange how we get emotionally attached to certain personalities for their sheer cinematic creativity. You enter the cinema hall with the same trepidation that you would when your offspring or sibling is performing in front of the public. You don’t want them to falter, let alone fail. It is a bond you develop because of the benchmark they have set with their sheer brilliance. You know Ilayaraja has long overdrawn from his tune bank but a flicker of hope is rekindled every time a new film is announced. You wish Kamal Haasan would simply surrender to a competent director like he did with Gautam Menon in ‘Vetaiyadu Vilayadu’. You miss the infectious adrenaline that Rajinikanth pumped in films like ‘Padayappa’ and you pray that Mani Ratnam remembers the password to his script database, pronto. You have this sneaky feeling that creative maturity is not keeping pace with their respective ages. Or does it all boil to an evolutionary disconnect?
Mani Ratnam, among all the above, I think, has not done justice to his own abilities. It is just that his films, of late, appear creatively drained, save ‘OK Kanmani’. There was a waft of freshness in Mani’s films especially concerning relationships. The courting and romance was endearing in films like ‘Pallavi Anu Pallavi’ and ‘Agni Nakshatram’ though similar. Even arranged marriage was treated with sensitivity and sanctity in ‘Roja’. Mani did not make ‘different’ films. He just made films differently. There was an air of expectancy every time he announced a film and every actor worth his caravan would wait for that elusive call, especially female because the heroine was a strong character not a caricature. When did the slide start? Was it with ‘Ayudha Yezhuthu’? ‘Raavanan’, you thought was the nadir but then came ‘Kadal’. Die hard fans will claim that his worst is still better than the best of some but then Mani is competing only with himself. Some say it is the anxiety to appeal to a pan Indian audience but the core of Mani’s films is emotions which is the only thing that unites people in the darkness of a cinema hall, irrespective of culture or class.
There are directors like Shanker who hire the best technicians available to hide their inept scripts. With Mani, form complemented content, I think till ‘Katru Veliyidai’. The characters in Mani’s latest offering are like none other from his previous films. You don’t relate to them but recognise them. He is temperamental, wears his heart on his sleeve and constantly dons shades. He is a strange mix of Karthik in ‘Agni Nakshatram’ and Madhavan in ‘Ayudha Yezhuthu’. She is independent but vulnerable. She craves for an equal relationship but drawn by some unknown force to this man who humiliates her in front of his colleagues. He treats her like a trophy boasting that she has returned which is worse. His traits are explained when he takes her to meet his parents. He dares his father to as much as touch his mother but treats his girlfriend worse. The constant question during the film is why she tolerates him even when he insults her parents. After a similar scene in ‘Dhalapathi’, when Mammooty manhandles her father, Shobana ends her relationship with Rajini. But then these are different characters. Some women, I guess, do like their men to be edgy, in control with a streak of unpredictability. The basic problem with ‘Katru Veliyidai’ is that you don’t empathise with the heroine simply because you feel she deserves the insults and humiliation. She is in the relationship with her eyes wide open. She is the most emotionally ambiguous female character Mani has ever written. ‘Katru Veliyidai’ is about a suffocating relationship, at least for the female protagonist.
The weakest portions in the film are when the hero is captured by Pakistan forces, the fleeting incarceration and easy escape. It seems like Mani sent his assistants to shoot these portions which appear puerile. The film is narrated in flashback with the hero yearning for his ladylove, seemingly repentant while languishing in the slammer. Distance does make the heart grow fonder and prisons seem to be good for anger management. Even in the end, when the pair reunites you are not moved or convinced even though there is a daughter. The film is set in ’99 and ends about three years later. The lead pair I’m convinced is separated. I wish Mani makes a film about the daughter, Rohini who must be a teenager now.
The film industry celebrates failure more than an individual’s success. The vultures prey and pound those who as much as falter. Even the title is being made fun of, being translated as ‘breaking wind’. Mani, I’m sure has shut the world out ruminating about his next script when not honing. A director’s script always depends on the box-office fate of his previous offering. He needs to introspect too. He has to start making films he’ll enjoy watching. That’s what good filmmaking all about.
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