Kadal

The story of Good conquering evil is perhaps the easiest and most traditional of the stories to tell. But portraying the depth and intensity of the Devil that arises out of deprivation and desperation is not something that is usually told. In fact the good is glorified only in the hands of a strong evil. It is probably the drama of realization of the good that the good subconsciously unveils the evil and lets it take over, while it fights its way back, but not by killing. Because it is supposed to be the way of the good that it is more forgiving than killing, that even the purest of the evil cannot fight the tiniest ray of light and that the evil begins to vanish and transform by trying to fight the tiny ray of light.

Kadal is a story of a wild swing into the deepest level of the devil and a transformation into good by a simple and significant ray of forgiving light.

The strength of the movie lies in cast and portrayal of the main protagonists. It gets more exciting to watch Arjun play the devil than it is to watch Arvindswamy play the divine. Kadal is the Manirathnam movie in which the characters are in their own strength and at no point it becomes aligned to being the movie of a particular star. This makes Kadal not only top class but keeps your focus on the simple yet dramatically portrayed storyline.

Kadal is a technical treat to the senses with beautifully composed scenes from Rajiv Menon and a sound recording that is absolutely class one. The visuals and the movement of the story board especially the climax, simply shows Manirathnam’s elegance and his thirst to differ from himself from his previous movies. The dialogues give a hint of the possible locality in Tamil Nadu but one keeps wondering how the art was set and where would this location be. It gives a hint that it could be artificially set for the movie and yet it looks normal and natural. Songs fall in place appropriately to remind us that it is a regional tamil movie but when it is AR Rahman, Rajiv Menon and Manirathnam, you enjoy it is a wholesome package.

Kadal. Depth.

 

Shuffling on the iPod

As I woke up at 5AM today with a hot cup of Ginger tea, I was getting ready to go get my dad and in-laws from Bangalore Cantonment railway station. After a half hour drive through partially lit roads, still dark, I reached the station only to find out the train has stopped in Byappanahalli for crossing. The arrival time was moved from 6.10 to 6.35. It gave me sometime to get a copy of Bangalore Mirror and read some interesting bits of news on the last page. It was interesting to read about a small community in a village in UK trying to keep a very old family shop alive, about 350 years old. The small newspaper shop in the station also sold board games and I got Angry birds for my daughter.

Pacing up and down, reading the paper, I finally saw the announcement come through for the arrival by about 6.45. It was unusually 45 minutes late and usually we get out before dawn. But today, I saw the train come through mild bluish sky of the early morning from a distance with the deep running track giving a nice perspective of the arriving train. I wish I had my camera for a perfect wide angle shot.

By the time we got out and into the car it was about 7AM. This is when I connected my iPod shuffle to the Car Aux Audio. This one is a flashy blue clip iPod shuffle from 2007 and it started playing a Tamil classical instrumental. A nice melodious way to start the morning. My dad and in laws were probably wondering why I would listen to this, but they were in for a different surprise. The surprise that a shuffle brings. As we crossed Shivaji Nagar, MG Road and through the old madras road with bumpy roads and erratic signals, the song changed to Anbin vasalile from Kadal, a Christian prayer song from the upcoming Manirathnam Movie – Kadal. Now this was a new song, and I am guessing they were wondering how come I have classical and Christian gospel playing one after the other.

As we approached the KR Puram station crossing the numerous bumpy and potholed roads from Byappanahalli, the song changed to Susanna from The Art Company, a song that was copied by Deva in the movie Vaali as “O Sona” for “Susanna”. Classical to Gospel and now an 80’s pop, they were now probably thinking I am crazy. After we crossed a horrible traffic in  KR Puram junction at around 7.30, we got closer to home and the iPod shuffled to “Vanam Mella” from Nee Thaane en pon vasantham. By now I thought, my aged shuffle has got really wonderful in keeping me surprised.

We reached home at 7.45 and the iPod finally shuffled back to another Tamil classical. I got out of the car and wondered if it was just the iPod that shuffled or the whole of this morning with a delayed train and driving through unexpected traffic and some bumpy bad roads. May be the bumpy road made the iPod to shuffle crazy.

Happy New year to all ! I have also been posting some of my photographs in my Photo blog at Classicframes.

Oh Veera!

Dan dan dan dan dan danakka!

There are five dan’s in Raavanan’s dandanakka chanting. Raavanan is a roller coaster ride of emotions, of the audience who are feverishly trying to find out who is the real Raavanan. Mani is a beautiful essayer of People’s emotions. When it comes to putting it together visually through the actors, the light, set and the music, he is a master. Raavanan is exactly that and much more and some less.

MUCH MORE:

It is a story revolving around 3 powerful characters. Dev the cop, who doesn’t give up and who wants to “encounter” everything related to Veera. Veera, the tribal leader who has 10 screaming heads in him, that of good and bad (and also one head chanting dandanakka). Ragini the ‘classy’cal dancer who becomes the target of Veera and who begins to see the two men from different perspectives.

It moves from what we would normally perceive as a fight between good and evil and associate them to people. Dev being good and Veera being bad. But very soon as the story unfolds in the background of beautiful forest landscape, the perspective of the story gets tilted in favor of Veera. Veera’s life, his people, his family, their sufferings and the justice that he seeks for them against oppression. As the story moves towards the end, the line blurs and you won’t know what is good and what is bad and who is good and who is bad. Everything merges and what you see is just events happening like a chain reaction.

The visuals and art work are stunning. Perhaps Mani’s best picturisation till date. Vikram rocks as Veera. It stopped me from even considering to watch the Hindi version, as I really doubted whether Abi could match his performance. (It seems to be so, as I am seeing bad reviews of the Hindi Raavan) Prithviraj’s Dev was quite a surprise. His portrayal of a cold blooded cop reaches its heights when he smiles as he shoots Veera and his brother. Aish was beautiful as a daring woman with growing softness for Veera and reaches her peak when she fights Veera in a slow background of “Kattusirukki”.

SOME LESS:

Beyond these three characters, Karthik as Hanuman and Prabhu as Kumbakarna seem to have been wasted a little bit, although they did their part well. In my opinion I feel Karthik needed a much more screen time to assert the role of Hanuman. There were some loose ends and abrupt moments in the screenplay when Karthik appears as a surprise where Aish is being Hidden by Veera and when Aish just stops the train and walks out in search of Veera, easily giving away the prize money to Dev. It was difficult to digest them in an otherwise tightly written script.

Raavanan is a treat to Mani’s fans. But I really wished Mani could have made just Raavanan and focused on it alone. We are missing “the Mani” ever since he started putting one foot in Bolly and one foot in Kolly. Perhaps this is the reason for the few minor discrepancies that I had described. I am not an expert to say this though.

Also, for god sakes, please begin putting OST like Hollywood. The background score is just awesome, too bad I can’t have them in my iPod. Is someone listening to this? Do you feel they should do this?

Alright that’s it, let me stop my buk buk buk buk buk!

Why South India has more Actor Politicians?

Rahul made a comment in my previous post over why South India is seeing a lot more actors turning politicians than North India. I thought I had a few points in mind about this and so I devoted a separate post for this.

First, It is not uncommon to have Actor politicians in North India too. Looking at Jaya Bachan, Rajesh Khanna, Govinda, Sunil Dutt and the likes, they were full time actors who turned into Politicians. But the big difference between the folks up North and South with regards to this phenomenon is that we have South India churning out new Political parties from Actors as opposed to North India where the actors merely try to get a ticket in an existing party.

I am not a political analyst, in fact I am terrible when it comes to speaking about politics, so if you find holes as big as Mother earth in my explanation please forgive me. I will try to project what I think as the reason to this is.

Actors turning Politicians did not happen in South India until the veteran actors M.G.Ramachandran and N.T.Rama Rao did it. As we all know, it was mostly Congress and Janata Party throughout India with a majority of favour towards the Congress. With regards to race, South Indians (from the states Karnataka, AP, TN and Kerala) are considered Dravidians while the Northern folks were Aryans. The drive to form an Original fresh new South Indian party was started from this racial division and reservation of the backward class folks. I can speak for the state of Tamil Nadu that this was the case. The backward classes wanted positions in Jobs and Education since they were neglected and most of the high profile educational seats and jobs went to the Upper class Brahmins. In those days, reservation was an absolute necessity and leaders like Kamarajar fought for the rights of the backward classes.

(Picture: Wikipedia, Still from the Tamil Motion picture – Iruvar)

This was the basis for the formation of DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam – The party for Progress of dravidians). It was headed by Arignar Anna and supported by many. One among the supporters was one of the greatest Screenplay writer and Tamil Literary Pandit M.Karunanidhi. In fact he was a journalist/politician to start with who involved himself in the Movies. MGR and Karunanidhi were great friends (this is portrayed beautifully in one of Manirathnam’s epic movie Iruvar). It was pure chance and a lot of persuasion from his beloved friend Karunanidhi that MGR took the role of a Politician as an MLA to serve the people. This was a huge event. In fact this I can call the single most significant event like that of a Big bang for the Actors-to-Politician phenomenon.

(Picture: http://mgrroop.blogspot.com)

MGR’s screen presence was unlike anything. In fact with whatever little technology and publicity that was available in those days MGR was probably 100 times popular than Superstar Rajinikanth of today, even though it is unfair to compare both. MGR became MLA and his real presence was even more mesmerizing to common people than his screen presence. When MGR found discrepancies in the DMK party, he had a fall out with Karunanidhi and that sparked him to form his own party ADMK (Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam). With politically based movies MGR took ADMK to unimaginable heights. MGR is dead, but if MGR’s spirit stands in election today in his constituency, he will win by a huge margin. MGR made history with his party ADMK. Similarly in Andhra N.T.Ramarao did what no other actor/politician did. NTR was as much popular in Andhra as MGR was in Tamil nadu.

Unfortunately after MGR there was no one who could take over his place fully. ADMK became just another party and it broke into pieces and followed into a series of not so good metamorphosis. It was Congress Vs DMK in those days that made MGR bring out the ADMK and win squarely to give people the much needed change. Today it is DMK vs ADMK and we are back to the state we were in those days. The age old parties DMK and ADMK are quickly becoming irrelevant. To make another change in this equation people wish and people think that the crown has to be taken over by another popular actor who can form his own party and win against DMK or ADMK. This is exactly why actors in South India turn to politics. Because it has happened hugely once, they believe that they can make it happen again.

That is the driving force behind actors like Vijaykanth (although people would prefer Rajinikanth to enter politics) and Chiranjeevi forming their own parties, to bring change to the people. These are folks who probably considered MGR as their idol because they were fans of his when they were young. They have the mass appeal, they have huge number of fans and supporters, they have a strong faith in history and hence they are not afraid to try and do that again.

If there are other reasons/motives for actors becoming politicians in South India, I believe it is not as huge as this one.

My fellow South Indian Readers ( or anyone who is knowledgeable in this subject) please feel free to correct me or add your view points in the comments.

P.S: Please take a few minutes to vote on the poll in my previous post on Stars turning politicians.