For years, the imminent release of a new Mani Ratnam movie has been as eagerly anticipated in his home state of Tamil Nadu as well as outside. It's almost as if audiences are waiting for the next chapter of a detective serial.
Would he put a love story against a political backdrop or inject politics into a family setting? Which star’s screen image was he going to reinvent? Which Indian location was he going to reveal to us in a new light? What would AR Rahman’s latest soundtrack be like, especially since it is well know that the composer has always reserved his best work for his mentor's films? Would Ratnam be going back to cinematographer PC Sreeram this time, or would he reunite with Rajiv Menon? And who would his production designer be?
Such has been the level of technical polish in Mani Ratnam projects that the question of who would be shooting and designing his latest film was sometimes more important than its plot.
In any case, give or take a few details, most of Mani Ratnam’s movies have chased only two goals. One is to explore the impact of a political crisis or conflagration (communal riots in Mumbai, sectarian conflict in Sri Lanka, the independence movement in Kashmir and Assam) on the attractive, beautifully dressed and fundamentally decent lead/leads. The other is to follow what happens when two pairs of eyes look into each other and are unable to tear themselves away.
Mani Ratnam’s movies have been as formulaic as the next guy's, but few filmmakers have been able to carry off simplistic stories with as much visual pizzazz as the Chennai director. So it is with his latest offering OK Kanmani, which is being heralded by fans and some critics as a return to form for the director whose recent films, such as the bilingual Raavan/Ravanaan and Kadal, have been critical and commercial disappointments.
Bombay, not Mumbai
OK Kanmani has been released in a dubbed Telugu version and with English subtitles in territories beyond the South – a vast relief for his admirers who live outside Tamil Nadu and have had to suffer unsynchronised lip movements and indifferent Hindi dialogue in the past. Ratnam’s movies have also been accessible in the original language at limited shows in far-off cinemas in cities like Mumbai. In the old days in Mumbai, for instance, Tamil-speaking residents thronged theatres such as Aurora in Matunga, a South Indian-dominated neighbourhood, and matinee shows at Regal in the south of the city before multiplexes came up in their suburban backyards.
For these Tamil-only-in-name diasporics pretending to miss the state their families had left a few generations before, Mani Ratnam’s movies are reminders of the Madras of summer vacations and short visits for weddings and funerals. His films provide memories, part real and part idealised, of a city that has bungalows with gardens, swings and brass lamps in alcoves, traditional beauties in cotton saris, handsome and noble men, and a language edited for its flourishes and colloquialisms. His often identifiably upper-caste characters speak most strongly to the Iyers and Iyengars floating across the planet’s hospitals, software companies, banks and universities.
The specific connection with Mumbai has been furthered by films set in the city in which Ratnam spent a few years for a Master of Business Administration degree at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management. Still, most Mumbaiites might not recognise the metropolis in which Bombay, Guru and OK Kanmani are set. The palatial homes with high ceilings and un-enclosed balconies, uncluttered streets, tourist-free Gateway of India, and manageable traffic are much inventions as the Delhi of Mouna Ragam or the Kolkata of Yuva.
Even when Mani Ratnam shot in a slum, as he did in Nayakan, it seemed less like its inspired setting Dharavi and more like the fabulously realistic set created by art director Thota Tharani that it actually was.
OK Kanmani sidesteps Mumbai’s severe space crunch by playing out in a tastefully done up mansion that has miraculously survived redevelopment into a high-rise. Its owners (played by Prakashraaj and Leela Samson) rare a charming middle-class couple whose geographical orbit revolves around the bank where the man worked to the Carnatic Sabha where the woman used to sing. Are we actually in Chennai? Not for the first time does Ratnam relocate unconventional love to a city that is not his own, but could very well be.
Love follows the first glance between a video game programmer and an architect in OK Kanmani. The laudable Mani Ratnam practice, which is not always shared by his counterparts in Chennai, of casting men who are as easy on the eye as the women, is mercifully on display. OK Kanmani’s leading man, Dulquer Salman, could melt stone. Nithya Menen is also a Ratnam archetype – she is attractive and smart but not in an overt or threatening way, wears pretty handloom clothes, and is perfect girlfriend/wife material.
Salman and Menen, who have previously worked together, have the comfort of a couple from a Hollywood screwball comedy. They cheerfully take public transport (a double-decker BEST bus is always on standby to whisk them around) and exchange banter and more in the mansion that most Mumbaiites would murder for.
Internationalist Tamilian
Tamil movies of all genres and filmmaking styles, whether it is the so-called mass-oriented films of Vijay or the grand spectacles by Shankar, are no longer as inaccessible as they were 20 years ago. Multiplex programming and simultaneous digital transmission of the latest releases, as well as rampant piracy, ensure that the place of origin is a ticket or a Rs 50 bootleg DVD away. Tamil films play for at least a week in Mumbai, with even morning shows packed with nostalgic Tamil Mumbaiites bunking work to watch something that is in their mother tongue and features characters, situations and locations that are not to be found in the commercial capital.
The Mani Ratnam movie used to be the top of this experience until the filmmaker exceeded his limits by tackling subjects far too complex for his storytelling abilities and trying to expand his market by making Hindi films. In OK Kanmani, Ratnam has returned to the kind of movie he was an expert at – the romantic drama – and to the city that continues to exert a strange fascination on him. Though the movie is hardly in the same league as Alaipayuthey, his best realised youthful love story, the ability of the veteran director and regular collaborator PC Sreeram to whip up verve and vim is unmistakable. Ratnam doesn’t even allow AR Rahman’s insipid soundtrack to dampen his enthusiasm at the flowering of young love or interrupt the breezy fun he finally seems to be having.
The Mani Ratnam touch has been blunted over time, perhaps by over-use. His desire to be an internationalist Tamilian seems stubbornly old-fashioned in a film industry that increasingly swears by authenticity, realism and parochial sentiment. OK Kanmanihas apparently been well received at home but it has unsurprisingly also done well in foreign territories. The movie takes the middle-class and affluent sections of the Tamil diaspora back into a world that, for all its modern trappings, hasn’t changed too much. The fathers are strict but not unbendingly so. The mothers are as soft as well-worn Kanjeevarams. The children are a bit on the wild side but they ultimately fall in line. And the living spaces are still capacious and beautifully decorated, just like back home in Madras.
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Would he put a love story against a political backdrop or inject politics into a family setting? Which star’s screen image was he going to reinvent? Which Indian location was he going to reveal to us in a new light? What would AR Rahman’s latest soundtrack be like, especially since it is well know that the composer has always reserved his best work for his mentor's films? Would Ratnam be going back to cinematographer PC Sreeram this time, or would he reunite with Rajiv Menon? And who would his production designer be?
Such has been the level of technical polish in Mani Ratnam projects that the question of who would be shooting and designing his latest film was sometimes more important than its plot.
In any case, give or take a few details, most of Mani Ratnam’s movies have chased only two goals. One is to explore the impact of a political crisis or conflagration (communal riots in Mumbai, sectarian conflict in Sri Lanka, the independence movement in Kashmir and Assam) on the attractive, beautifully dressed and fundamentally decent lead/leads. The other is to follow what happens when two pairs of eyes look into each other and are unable to tear themselves away.
Mani Ratnam’s movies have been as formulaic as the next guy's, but few filmmakers have been able to carry off simplistic stories with as much visual pizzazz as the Chennai director. So it is with his latest offering OK Kanmani, which is being heralded by fans and some critics as a return to form for the director whose recent films, such as the bilingual Raavan/Ravanaan and Kadal, have been critical and commercial disappointments.
Bombay, not Mumbai
OK Kanmani has been released in a dubbed Telugu version and with English subtitles in territories beyond the South – a vast relief for his admirers who live outside Tamil Nadu and have had to suffer unsynchronised lip movements and indifferent Hindi dialogue in the past. Ratnam’s movies have also been accessible in the original language at limited shows in far-off cinemas in cities like Mumbai. In the old days in Mumbai, for instance, Tamil-speaking residents thronged theatres such as Aurora in Matunga, a South Indian-dominated neighbourhood, and matinee shows at Regal in the south of the city before multiplexes came up in their suburban backyards.
For these Tamil-only-in-name diasporics pretending to miss the state their families had left a few generations before, Mani Ratnam’s movies are reminders of the Madras of summer vacations and short visits for weddings and funerals. His films provide memories, part real and part idealised, of a city that has bungalows with gardens, swings and brass lamps in alcoves, traditional beauties in cotton saris, handsome and noble men, and a language edited for its flourishes and colloquialisms. His often identifiably upper-caste characters speak most strongly to the Iyers and Iyengars floating across the planet’s hospitals, software companies, banks and universities.
The specific connection with Mumbai has been furthered by films set in the city in which Ratnam spent a few years for a Master of Business Administration degree at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management. Still, most Mumbaiites might not recognise the metropolis in which Bombay, Guru and OK Kanmani are set. The palatial homes with high ceilings and un-enclosed balconies, uncluttered streets, tourist-free Gateway of India, and manageable traffic are much inventions as the Delhi of Mouna Ragam or the Kolkata of Yuva.
Even when Mani Ratnam shot in a slum, as he did in Nayakan, it seemed less like its inspired setting Dharavi and more like the fabulously realistic set created by art director Thota Tharani that it actually was.
OK Kanmani sidesteps Mumbai’s severe space crunch by playing out in a tastefully done up mansion that has miraculously survived redevelopment into a high-rise. Its owners (played by Prakashraaj and Leela Samson) rare a charming middle-class couple whose geographical orbit revolves around the bank where the man worked to the Carnatic Sabha where the woman used to sing. Are we actually in Chennai? Not for the first time does Ratnam relocate unconventional love to a city that is not his own, but could very well be.
Love follows the first glance between a video game programmer and an architect in OK Kanmani. The laudable Mani Ratnam practice, which is not always shared by his counterparts in Chennai, of casting men who are as easy on the eye as the women, is mercifully on display. OK Kanmani’s leading man, Dulquer Salman, could melt stone. Nithya Menen is also a Ratnam archetype – she is attractive and smart but not in an overt or threatening way, wears pretty handloom clothes, and is perfect girlfriend/wife material.
Salman and Menen, who have previously worked together, have the comfort of a couple from a Hollywood screwball comedy. They cheerfully take public transport (a double-decker BEST bus is always on standby to whisk them around) and exchange banter and more in the mansion that most Mumbaiites would murder for.
Internationalist Tamilian
Tamil movies of all genres and filmmaking styles, whether it is the so-called mass-oriented films of Vijay or the grand spectacles by Shankar, are no longer as inaccessible as they were 20 years ago. Multiplex programming and simultaneous digital transmission of the latest releases, as well as rampant piracy, ensure that the place of origin is a ticket or a Rs 50 bootleg DVD away. Tamil films play for at least a week in Mumbai, with even morning shows packed with nostalgic Tamil Mumbaiites bunking work to watch something that is in their mother tongue and features characters, situations and locations that are not to be found in the commercial capital.
The Mani Ratnam movie used to be the top of this experience until the filmmaker exceeded his limits by tackling subjects far too complex for his storytelling abilities and trying to expand his market by making Hindi films. In OK Kanmani, Ratnam has returned to the kind of movie he was an expert at – the romantic drama – and to the city that continues to exert a strange fascination on him. Though the movie is hardly in the same league as Alaipayuthey, his best realised youthful love story, the ability of the veteran director and regular collaborator PC Sreeram to whip up verve and vim is unmistakable. Ratnam doesn’t even allow AR Rahman’s insipid soundtrack to dampen his enthusiasm at the flowering of young love or interrupt the breezy fun he finally seems to be having.
The Mani Ratnam touch has been blunted over time, perhaps by over-use. His desire to be an internationalist Tamilian seems stubbornly old-fashioned in a film industry that increasingly swears by authenticity, realism and parochial sentiment. OK Kanmanihas apparently been well received at home but it has unsurprisingly also done well in foreign territories. The movie takes the middle-class and affluent sections of the Tamil diaspora back into a world that, for all its modern trappings, hasn’t changed too much. The fathers are strict but not unbendingly so. The mothers are as soft as well-worn Kanjeevarams. The children are a bit on the wild side but they ultimately fall in line. And the living spaces are still capacious and beautifully decorated, just like back home in Madras.
