Spoilers ahead…
A few thoughts before heading to a screening of Shaad Ali’s OK Jaanu – mainly about Hindi remakes of Mani Ratnam’s films and what they miss. The first thing is the sense of place. There is an air of alienation when a Tamilian moves to a “north Indian” city – when Mouna Raagam’s Divya moves to Delhi, when Nayakan’s Velu flees to Mumbai, or even when Guru’s protagonist moves to Mumbai. The latter may not be Tamilian. He’s Gujarati. But in other senses, he’s cut from the same cloth as Divya and Velu. He’s an outsider. And this outsider-ness – this non-Bombay-ness – adds a layer of subtext to the drama. Velu has to not just survive, he has to survive in a city where the Establishment speaks a different language. Divya has to not just battle a marriage she’s been forced into, the battleground is filled with sardar-s who speak no Tamil. So when you make Divya a Hindi speaker in Kasak, when you make Velu a Hindi speaker in Dayavan, this subtext is lost. It’s now just a straight story.
This was playing on my mind when OK Jaanu was announced. The enjoyable film was one of Ratnam’s lightest, but it carried a subversive charge: two Tamilians were living together “in sin.” The premise is notable for a couple of reasons. One, couples just don’t have casual sex all that easily in mainstream Tamil cinema. Two, they wouldn’t have been able to do this in “conservative” Madras. They needed Bombay’s open and unjudging arms. It’s like how one sneaks away from home for a smoke – only, with condoms. But when it’s no longer Tamilians (I don’t know yet the background of the couple in OK Jaanu, though I assume both are “north Indian”), when living together has been a part of the mainstream Hindi-film landscape since at least Salaam Namaste, made over a decade ago, where’s the subversion? The story is now just about career vs. love. Hopefully, the film does something about this. After the screening, then.
* * *
Nope! The film does nothing about this aspect. It’s going to be fun to see how audiences who haven’t seen the original respond to this remake, but for the rest of us, this isn’t an inspiration – it’s mostly an imitation, right down to the colours of the hero’s bedroom walls. OK Jaanu is about a commitment-phobic, career-minded boy and girl who meet cute, decide to live in till they go their separate ways, then find themselves confused by their feelings. In O Kadhal Kanmani, this wafer-thin plot was elevated by its Mani Ratnam-ness – the aesthetics, the cute/snappy banter, the direction of performances, the orchestration of on-screen chemistry, the staging, the detailing. When the Leela Samson character instructs her husband (Prakash Raj) to clean a vessel, she says, “Kadhai-ya nalla thechu kazhuvanum… adi pidichirukku.” She’s made roasted potatoes. It’s natural that the bottom of the vessel is charred. It’s natural that she’d ask him to pay particular attention to that aspect. This wonderfully specific middle-class-ness of Mani Ratnam’s cinema gets lost when the words become as generic as “Bartan dho lo.” Wash the vessel! The changes Shaad Ali makes aren’t for the better.
The worst change is the use of Humma humma instead of a song created for the film. The situation is that of a boy and girl who are really attracted to each other, flirting and seeing just how far they can go during their first night together – and all this is expressed through song. They sing Parandhu sellava… (Shall I fly away) with improvised music, improvised steps, seemingly making things up as they go along. Here, it’s staged with full-on choreography, like an MTV music video. The original gave us the sense of two people exploring a whole new world. Here, it’s two people looking back at 1990s Bollywood, like in a million other movies.
Aditya Roy Kapur and Shraddha Kapoor just don’t have it. They look too… sculpted, perfect. Dulquer Salman brought to the part a self-deprecating impishness. He was saying, “What? Me? Good-looking?” Kapur says, “Check me out!” The character is from Kanpur, but Kapur looks like he stepped out of a Bandra gym. This duo just cannot hold close-ups the way Dulquer and Nithya Menen did – and this film is all about close-ups, those flickering changes that help us fill in the gaps in the dialogues, the story. I feel for Shaad Ali. Ever since his best film, the criminally underrated Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, bombed, he’s been at sea. Remaking his mentor’s works may be a way to keep himself visible, but someone should tell him an echo is not a voice.
KEY:
- O Kadhal Kanmani = see here
Copyright ©2017 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Jyothsna
January 13, 2017
(y)
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
January 13, 2017
BR : Great teaser for the review. Cant wait !
You had dealt with this sense of alienation in ‘Conversations…’ also and then you’d dealt with the ‘betrayal’ of Mani Ratnam moving to mainstream Hindi cinema
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Tambi Dude
January 14, 2017
“though I assume both are “north Indian”)”
No, they were naarth Indian 🙂
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நவீன்
January 14, 2017
It’s always nice to read reviews after watching the movie than to take the opinion to watch the movie. Now it’s great to see an review on catching an official remake.
Any plans the other remake in south Kaidi No 150?
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Ravi K
January 14, 2017
Surely the Hindi-dubbed versions of Roja and Bombay also experienced this loss of outsider subtext. How did those versions handle it?
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Dracarys
January 14, 2017
Reading your observations, I feel that Mani Ratnam should just release the movie with subtitles pan India.
This way neither he and we have to suffer watching the imitations nor he has to suffer cardiac arrest by filming simultaneously in more than one language.
Recent Kannada films are the excellent examples…
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blurb
January 14, 2017
Loved the OKK descriptions! I ended up watching OKK again recently. I originally hadn’t liked it at all due to the hypocrisy of having to justifying Taras choices (and not Adis). But, in the second the little things that are real joy with MR movies just grew on me. I’m just in a mood to talk about okk, bear with me.
“kalluli mangan madhri”, Bombay Sisters, Kumbakonam, Coimbatore, KK Nagar, PSBB, Loyola, thennanthoppu, Tamizh la Nalla vartha, seettu hero, perima peripa giving some idli molaga podi. And I totally ROTFL-ed when the brother says “make my trip dot com la poi Mumbai to chennai cheapest ticket book pannu” 😀
Usually MR is spot on with casting. But I though Taras mother was a huge misfit! Everything about her was just… too motherly and nice. She just didn’t have it in her to come across as overbearing.
I also began wondering why MR chose Adi’s character to be under the brothers care… wonder why he killed off the parents. (I’m assuming his mum and dad are no more).
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praneshp
January 14, 2017
Ha, thanks to this one I found https://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/2007/06/16/review-jhoom-barabar-jhoom/. You are the only other person I know that liked this movie.
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blurb
January 14, 2017
How nice it would be for you to intreview MR before the next release! He was all over the place promoting OKK before it’s release!
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MANK
January 14, 2017
Manirathnam films work because they are Manirathnam films. Not because of the story or screenplay or any such elements that another director can translate from his work. they have the master’s imprint from first frame to the last.
Shaad Ali has been assisting Manirathnam for so many years and still ,he can’t see what we viewers see so clearly.
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MANK
January 14, 2017
Regarding jhoom barabar jhoom, I like the film very much and it was his best work, all that Pomo stuff and nods to 70s masala movies. But he makes very similar mistakes as he does here regards to casting and location I guess.the cast was all wrong for that film and Instead of London it should have been set in a small town in India. The film would have worked much better IMO
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Rakesh
January 14, 2017
What was the Hindi equivalent of dub-step Bhavumulona ?
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brangan
January 14, 2017
Rakesh: It was the same thing. But with Hindi lyrics 😂😂
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brangan
January 14, 2017
Ravi K: I didn’t want this to make this a listing exercise, but yes, this outsider/alienation thing is a constant subtext in MR’s films, and Roja was especially damaged by the Hindi-fication. Because now Roja speaks Hindi and Wasim Khan speaks Hindi. The conflict is only about the husband, not the “girl from Kanyakumari” (not literally, but deep-south enough) finding herself in Kashmir.
Dracarys: I feel that Mani Ratnam should just release the movie with subtitles pan India.
I still don’t think this would work entirely. There’s a Tamil-ness to the writing that isn’t easily captured by subtitles. Like Anjali. When the little girl asks her father to say “Sari dhaan poda, sotta thalayaa.” It’s just not the same when you read “Get lost, baldy.”
blurb: Also things like “aambalaya kenja vekkaadhey” 😀
I was surprised at how bland some of the remade scenes were. The highlight of the bit where Adi’s sister-in-law has a showdown with tara is when Tara looks her in the eye and says, “You could have asked Adi all this, right?” That’s gives great colour to the character. In this version, Tara meekly listens to a well-meaning, docilely delivered lecture and end of scene.
I mean, why take away the things that work?
praneshp: Oh, there’s a small JBJ cult out there 🙂
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Rohit Sathish Nair
January 14, 2017
Mani Ratnam isn’t that good either with the Hindi versions. Aaytha Ezhuthu wasn’t all that rooted in Tamil politics, yet it made the ‘young-men-bring-down-Establishment’ and ‘power-makes-good-guy-evil’ cliches work to some extent. Obviously why that denim-in-the-House sequence is still a knockout at some level.
Yuva, co-written by none less than Anurag Kashyap, makes the opposite mistake interestingly. MR and AK set this Hindi film in a non-Hindi city(which again has a unique political milieu), makes Inba a Bihari in Kolkata, and then they play it straight. It was stranded between generic and detailed, and got the sturdiness of neither. Not to mention the cracks that appeared in characterization and casting from then on.
As you mentioned, Dulquer, despite having handsomeness as part of his on-screen persona, does very less preening or self-awareness. It is a refreshing mini-quality for this kind of star, and more heartening for a starkid(again, s/o 65-year-young Mammootty, who was hardly ‘model-handsome’ in his prime, and now half-rides on his ‘fountain-of-youth’ quality). Name five other starkid-turned-stars who don’t even talk about their abs/fitness/beauty/ and my point still stands.
Your take on ‘Parandhu Sellavaa’ pretty much sums up what the essence of Kanmani was, that is lost here. The ‘all we need is a no-frills fling, yet there could be something else’ quality, this vagueness adding to the ethereal feeling the music and visuals gave us in the earlier film. The film hardly qualifies as Art, yet this is a fine case of transcending what’s on paper.
Should he have done this downplaying is another question
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brangan
January 14, 2017
Rohit Sathish Nair: Mani Ratnam isn’t that good either with the Hindi versions..
The one Hindi film of his film that works wonderfully for me is Dil Se. (Tigmanshu Dhulia is credited as writer.)
BTW, that was a superbly written comment 🙂
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Honest Raj (formerly 'V'enkatesh)
January 14, 2017
I have had this in mind for a very long time: In Dil Se, Sujatha was credited as a co-writer (alongside Tigmanshu Dhulia). Did he ever write in Hindi?
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Rohit Sathish Nair
January 14, 2017
Thank you Sir. I don’t know why, but writing about Aaytha Ezhuthu always gets me a thumbs-up from you!
Yet to watch Dil Se. Even Guru works pretty well for me. It doesn’t suffer from LHHT like Yuva (and allegedly Raavan), the Ratnamspeak is intact and more than alive. Maybe not having that BGM in the courtroom sequence and that framing device which bookends the movie, would have made it something else.
I suspect Sudha Kongara, another Ratnam protege, of this syndrome too. Couldn’t stand Saala Khadoos when I first watched it. Yet to watch Irudhi Suttru
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MANK
January 14, 2017
The conflict is only about the husband, not the “girl from Kanyakumari” (not literally, but deep-south enough) finding herself in Kashmir
Yes, the scene where this is most felt is the one right after Arvind swamy gets kidnapped and she runs for help to the cops . in the hindi version , she is just a hysterical women running around and needlessly arguing with the cops after her husband’s kidnapping as opposed to the tamil version where the hysteria is heightened by the fact that she cannot communicate her husband’s fate properly as she dont know the language..
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Akhilan
January 14, 2017
Totally agree BR…
Parandhu Sella Vaa and Aye Sinamika created so many magical little moments between Adi and Tara in OKK… Not to mention, they were both such awesome tracks in themselves… The Humma Humma song on the other hand just doesn’t work me; sonically nor visually… Everything seems so staged like you said… Perhaps a microcosm for the entire movie…
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Raj Balakrishnan
January 14, 2017
BR, Mani Ratnam is one of the producers. Not sure how he agreed to this. With respect to Mani Ratnam’s hindi films, Guru was very well received, wasn’t it.
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Raj Balakrishnan
January 14, 2017
Honest Raj, Sujatha wrote the movie in Tamil. It was translated into English by Mani Ratnam and further into Hindi by Dhulia. Remember reading this in an interview.
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Kavitha
January 14, 2017
“…an echo is not a voice.”
BR: Shokka sonna ya. Dhool ya. Idhellaam appadiye varadhudaan illa! 🙂
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Jyoti S Kumar
January 14, 2017
That idli mulaga podi scene was something that caught my attention as jarring… Because Tara did not have a middle class upbringing (being the daughter of a millionaire), even though she is living the life of a middle class working woman… In that case is idli mulaga podi that uncles and aunts bring for their niece. I would have thought some Lindt chocolates or cookies or something…
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Anu Warrier
January 15, 2017
I must confess to liking Jhoom Barabar Jhoom very much, and I thought it was criminally panned. I caught the trailer of OK Jaanu, and decided right then that I was not going to watch it. Dulquer and Nitya seemed real; as you mentioned, neither Aditya Roy nor Shraddha come across as people next door.
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astha
January 15, 2017
Rangan Sir, your thoughts on haraamkor please 🙂
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Brinda
January 15, 2017
Hi BR, i am a long-time passive reader of your blog, and the first thing i do after watching any movie is to see if you have reviewed it :).
Just finished seeing OK Jaanu, couldn’t help compare it with OKK frame by frame; mostly the tamil dialogues were running in my head in every scene. shradha kapoor is no nithya menen and in my opinion the weakest part of the movie. Aditya roy kapur as the cool guy who has absolutely no reason to be commitment-phobic was quite effective – except that he is just too loud in most scenes.
I thought some bits were definitely better than OK Kanmani, for example the mental manadhil song – these guys had something else to do – small bits like painting on his t-shirt etc. dulquer/nithya just roam on the bike keep shouting yay yay!, no?
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Prasun
January 15, 2017
Double clicking is a wonderful thing … from this review of OK Jaanu ( found it ok) … i reached the review of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom ( ho hum ) … and from there , I landed on the review of Jaanemann … that was a movie i loved … absolutely loved …
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venkatesh
January 15, 2017
Shaad Ali is criminally overrated , JBJ fan club not withstanding.
I saw the remake of Alai Payuthey and it was similar.
A large part of this i suspect is because Shaad Ali gets the technique of his mentor but loses out on the flavour.
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vagabonder
January 15, 2017
I think Shaad is generally at his best when he’s going completely OTT. I have a feeling post-Kill Dil and its spectacular critical and commercial failure, he’s been asked to rein himself in. He’s not a filmmaker who seems to function very well when “playing it safe”. It’s his fearless stylistic exuberance in Bunty Aur Bubli, JBJ and even parts of Kill Dil that sets him apart from the pack. I hope this film isn’t the end of him because, like you said in your review, there’s some genuine talent there. And no, despite the evidence in Saathiya and OK Jaanu, he’s not just a MR imitator. In fact, he has frequently gone out of his way to prove otherwise.
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Filistine
January 16, 2017
Regarding your comment on Dil Se, when I first saw the film, I felt that everything was happening too fast – the romance, the interviews with the “revolutionaries”, the heart break, the bounce back… On rewatching, the film has definitely grown on me. The final ‘blow-up’ shot still feels very uninvolving, for some reason…
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blurb
January 18, 2017
This might be of interest to fellow Alai Payuthey fans.
I am a miga miga miga sirandha fan of Alai Paayuthey. 😀 To the point where I cannot bring myself to read that chapter in CWMR. After a recent viewing of Alai Payuthey, I discovered a cute trivia that I am proud to present here — it came as a total surprise to me.
Madhavan’s sister-in-law is pregnant. Is it her second or third pregnancy?
I always thought it was her second because it’s clear she has a girl child already (the kid who helps Madhavan with the phone call etc) and we never see another kid. But now, after a recent viewing of the movie on youtube (which seemed to have bits of audio I never heard before) I have reasonable doubt to believe that it’s actually the third pregnancy.
Watch just 15 seconds of the video below: from the 30th second mark to the 45th second mark. And pay attention to the audio.
You are welcome.
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Ganesh
January 18, 2017
Wow blurb 🙂 I did listen, and of course, you are right… minor glitch or the assistant director forgot to change the dialogues in this scene!
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Vishakha
January 18, 2017
Regarding roja and bombay, both were huge hits since we had nothing to compare them to. May be the originals were better, but both brought a freshness to hindi movies , a different way of cinema compared to what wr had gotten used to seeing.
For a long time i thought this was because of arvind swami, though A R rahmans music also played a very important part.
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sravishanker1401gmailcom
January 19, 2017
Vishakha : Great observation on the freshness brought to Hindi movies.
More important it provided a lot of succour to “alienated” tamils like myself who worked for years in the North.
It gave us an opportunity to preen as hell. Like Becker’s Wimbledon win to the Germans
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blurb
January 26, 2017
Kaatru Veliyida glimpse 🙂
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MANK
January 26, 2017
Hey this looks good. this seems to be on a much bigger scale than OK kanmani. reminded me more of Roja and dil se
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blurb
January 26, 2017
MANK: Yes – the visuals are stunning!
Who is the female playback? Shweta Mohan?
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Aadhy
January 27, 2017
“Kadhai-ya nalla thechu kazhuvanum… adi pidichirukku.” She’s made roasted potatoes. It’s natural that the bottom of the vessel is charred. It’s natural that she’d ask him to pay particular attention to that aspect.
Not only that, after the Prakash Raj and Dulquer characters have the conversation about love and care, the scene ends with Prakash Raj telling Dulquer ” adhu nalla tanni la oorattum, nalaiku kalaila pathukalan” . Take any middleclass household and you would’ve heard this being said to someone who’s doing the dishes at the end of a long day.
Also, the restraint. After the dialogue Ganapathiiii nu neeti kooptumbodu elan seri ayidum Mani Ratnam lets us play her voice in our minds, letting Dulquer’s reaction echo our thoughts. Whereas the Hindi version has the Leela Samson character actually calling out to Naseeruddin Shah immediately after the dialogue, imbuing a kind of staged fake-ness to the mood. Shah’s acting instincts somewhat saves the scene, he whips the drying cloth in the air, as if he’s been smitten by her voice for the first time.
blurb : Sounds like Sashaa Tirupati, no ?
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