Posted on May 27, 2022
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Aravind Sethuraman
May 27, 2022
what an interview. this is a masterclass of an artist talking about his art!
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Anand Raghavan
May 28, 2022
Thanks for this BR. Amazed to see him recollect minute details of the process after so many years. Though read many of it in your conversations book, it is nice to hear the live “conversation”.
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H. Prasanna
May 28, 2022
Wow! Mani Ratnam talks about how Kamal brought the sugar glass in for making the fight realistic just the way Lokesh Kanagaraj talks about the same thing Kamal did for Vikram.
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KP
May 29, 2022
Nayakkan time la ok don’t tell me stunt masters are still dumb to not know about sugar glass. Kamal problem is not understanding art and commerce. He good have scaled better heights if he had done movies based on collection percentage.
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Madan
May 29, 2022
“There will be comic book films that do well” – Mani’s theme park jab? 😛
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therag
May 29, 2022
Blockbuster films which are also very high-quality films which will be remembered in the long run are rare. By that, I mean the likes of The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, Sholay, It is hard enough to make a big hit, much harder to make one that will be remembered for years to come.
Over the years, the likes of MR and Kamal Haasan must have gotten used to busting their ass and giving a superior product only to lose out to Rajni’s bag of tricks. They probably feel lucky to still be going after 35 years and lose out to the likes of VJ and Ajith.
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MANK
May 30, 2022
A good attempt, but no new information emerged from the discussion. Everything relating to Nayagan has been revealed by this now, especially during its 25th & 30th anniversaries.
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shaviswa
May 30, 2022
I understand celebrating the 10th year anniversary. I also understand how the 25th is momentous.
Ideally the next landmark should be the 50th.
Why the 30th, 35th etc?
What next? Every year?
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Madan
May 30, 2022
shaviswa /MANK: The answer is simply that Nayakan has become the Godfather of Tamil cinema. There are videos being posted (with plenty of views to boot) till date about Godfather and not just by YouTubers but mainstream outlets like CBS. In both cases, I don’t completely agree with this apotheosis of FFC/MR business while still loving the respective films but it seems that making artistic and yet engaging movies about the underworld is particularly fascinating, to the audience as well as the critics.
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Madan
May 30, 2022
Not sure where to post this and have forgotten the original thread.
But pre pandemic, maybe 2017-18, when people were going gaga on Netflix in a thread, I said subscription revenue would not be enough for it to fight once the big daddies with their own (larger) warchest of content got into the act. And that seems to be exactly how it’s playing.
I guess the price point didn’t help either when it came to capturing marketshare in India. And they were pretty late coming to markets like ours for reasons unknown.
I think it’s also entirely possible that cable bouquets become attractive again as streaming not only consolidates but there is too much mutual exclusivity of content (forcing people to pay too many subscriptions to get everything they need).
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madhusudhan194
May 30, 2022
This was a pleasant watch but I am kind of growing tired of the endless celebration of this film year after year. As MR himself points out, there are some very obvious issues with the writing in this film and amongst his films, this one hasn’t aged that well. MR has since grown leaps and made much better films that we seldom celebrate – Thalapathy, Dil Se, Kannathil Muthamittal (which i think is his best work) and Kaatru Veliyidai (I’d probably be the only person including KV in this list. Deeply flawed as it was, some of the things he achieved in that film deserve celebration).
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shaviswa
May 30, 2022
@madan
You should define your need to what OTT platforms you have subscribed to. Do your research and check which 2-3 platforms cover 80% of your likes and stick to that. You should not want to see every show or film out there
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Madan
May 30, 2022
shaviswa : Eh? I wasn’t asking for help for how to navigate streaming. I just made a comment about Netflix’s recent travails which could have been and were foretold but I guess Valeant white knight Bill Ackman hardsold it and people actually included it in FAANG. I mean, Netflix never had, even at peak, the power of FB, Apple, Amazon or Google.
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shaviswa
May 30, 2022
@madan
By you I did not mean specifically you. It was in general anyone that wanted to subscribe to OTT platforms.
I guess people over a period of time will come to terms with which OTT platforms they want to go for. And cost would be a major factor there. Netflix is too expensive compared to other platforms and the value that one gets from their content does not make up for the price.
When every Tom Dick and Harry started a satellite channel in the 90s and early 2000s, selecting a pack that had all channels was too expensive. And Tata Sky and others were forced to offer packs that matched people’s interest. Nobody subscribes to every channel out there any more. OTT will also follow suit and people will start to pick and choose which ones they want.
Currently, I subscribe to Prime, Hotstar, Zee5 and SonyLiv. And I barely watch SonyLiv so most likely would get dropped when it comes up for renewal later this year.
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Madan
May 31, 2022
shaviswa: That will work up to the point that consolidation isn’t over in the streaming industry. Netflix’s downfall and CNN+ being dead on arrival is a signal that consolidation has begun. Once consolidation is over, Disney and Sony are going to jack up prices. Amazon might hold out but Amazon is also beginning to pull back in sports. Sport telecast is the wildcard here. It costs lots of money to bid for the rights but virtually guarantees high viewership. So it’s a very easy way for Disney (Hotstar in India) and Sony to acquire customers. I wouldn’t hold on to my Sony subscription for a minute longer if that wasn’t the only way (other than a d2h package) to watch tennis. And with govt compelling d2h providers to let customers select their channels, a d2h package costs less than it used to, especially if you don’t want HD. Interesting times ahead, inflation is going to change the pre-pandemic dynamics even more.
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vijay
May 31, 2022
After 35 years Mani is pretty much giving the same answer, especially to that final question. You have to at least admire his consistency 🙂
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therag
May 31, 2022
@madhusudhan19, going by the reception of the video, I think there is still a segment out there that has just discovered Nayakan and are learning the folklore.
I agree that MR’s other great films don’t get nearly as much attention. I think Kannathil Muthamittal deals with a very sensitive topic that is still off bounds to certain sections. Most people don’t seem to “get” Dil Se and overcome its stalker afflictions.
Nayakan is a very straightforward gangster film with a much beloved star’s marquee performance. So I am not surprised we get a 35 years of Nayakan and not a 20 years of Kannathil Muthamittal.
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Caesium
June 1, 2022
(Kinda off topic, but serious question)
@BR: I have heard you say that screenplay writing is the most important & difficult part of a film. In that sense, would you consider the writer as the captain of the ship? Should their name appear last in opening credits? Should they be compensated more than the director?
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Akhilan
June 1, 2022
Totally with you Madhusadhan. I don’t get the hype with a few of MR’s earlier works (Mouna Ragam, Agni Natchathiram, and Nayakan spring to mind first). Find them quite overrated to be honest. With regards to Nayakan, it did not work for me at all albeit I saw it over 30 years after its release. It has definitely not aged well, and Kannathil Muthamittal, Dil Se, and Thalapathy, are my top 3 movies of MR (in that order). Have a soft spot for OK Kanmani and its soundtrack as well. Kannathil Muthamittal especially is close to my heart because I watched it in the theater whilst living in Colombo, and I connected with it deeply at an emotional level then (even though I was only around 9 at that time), and feel the same today. Simran’s performance in particular stayed with me. She was so restrained and it had a haunting quality about it. And what a song Vellai Pookal is. Don’t make ’em like that now a days.
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brangan
June 1, 2022
Akhilan: Films are made by two people: the director (and his/her team), and then by the viewer, whose conscious/unconscious experiences shape his/her view of the film. So I understand that NAYAKAN doers not work for you, but I would not use the word “overrated”. Firstly, I don’t know how you can collectively “rate” a film — for all the praise heaped on it, my students just cannot bring themselves to watch GODFATHER (“too slow”, “no female characters”, other such things). And twenty years from now, people will be saying Nolan and Fincher are overrated, because movies would have become much faster, much more generic.
The point about NAYAKAN is that it is to Tamil movies what G Ramanathan is to Tamil music. The latter basically (in whatever primitive form) nudged Tamil film music out of its Carnatic roots and into folk music (Mattu vandi pottikittu), western classical music and rock (Yaaradi nee Mohini), kummi paatu (Kanni thamizhagam), and so on. So Tamil film music will always have two eras: the pre-G Ramanathan era and the post G Ramanathan era.
Similarly, when it comes to directors, Tamail cinema always will be pre-NAYAKAN and post-NAYAKAN. Some might argue about certain scenes in MOUNA RAAGAM as well, but that is largely an interior drama, so I am probably cheating and leaving it out. No filmmaker before Mani Ratnam had so commandingly used the visual language of cinema (with PC Sreeram), and you have to take the time into consideration: we are looking at an era of Visu’s stage dramas, T Rajendhar films and so on.
By the same token, I would say I do not see what the big fuss about Sridhar is. There are inventive shots in his films, for sure, but if you ask me why KALYANA PARISU is supposed to have “broken the mould” of Tamil cinema, I will have no clear answer. Maybe it’s the songs?
But I would not call it “overrrated”. It is a product of its time, and maybe it had a casualness in the Gemini-Saroja Devi portions that was missing in the rhetoric-line-laden films of the time. We are not good documenters of our culture (let alone pop culture).
NAYAKAN basically changed the notion of what a director does. Unlike Madan, I do not think it is to tell a “crisp” story (a film is not a potato chip). It is to transform the screenplay (which ALREADY has the story, crisp or soggy) into a visual language — for example, in the use of shafts of blinding light in ANJALI (with Madhu Ambat) to render the girl as a “mysterious alien-like object” until the family gets to know her better. It’s only when the other two children accept Anjali that we begin to see her in natural light. All this was unseen/unheard of in the 1980s, where “the Balachander touch”) was the maximum extent you saw the director’s “signature”. (To be fair, though, K Balachander came from the stage tradition, many of his early films were smash-hit stage plays. Mani grew up on cinema.)
So that is the reason Mani’s early films are so celebrated, and that one of today’s hottest directors like Vetri Maaran says he has seen NAYAKAN 49 times, and that is why Adoor Gopalakrishnan said that Tamil “cinema” truly began with the arrival of Mani Ratnam.
And the final reason those early films are so highly regarded is because they exist squarely in the mainstream tradition. Here was a filmmaker (unlike Ray or Adoor) who wanted to make movies for a large audience, using songs and dances and all the “mainstream things” — and yet do it in a way that presented and preserved his “directorial vision”.
Just like no one listens to G Ramanathan today, it is entirely possible that Mani Ratnam will be sidelined — say — three generations hence. They may find those blinding shafts of light too “artificial”, just like many people find the camera angles of CITIZEN KANE very showy and artificial.
But I just wanted to say why those early films are so important in the context of mainstream Tamil cinema.
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Madan
June 1, 2022
BR: Just to clarify, I didn’t say Nayagan’s contribution is only to tell a crisp story. I said both Godfather and Nayagan narrate the story of the mafia in a way that is artistic and yet engaging. I was contrasting this with the beautifully made but ponderous Once Upon A Time In America. There are very arresting scenes in Godfather in particular that people still talk about. In Nayagan, those moments are more melodramatic which is also my slight problem with the film but regardless, it achieved a similar position within Tamil cinema because nobody had thought (within Tamil cinema, again) to take a gangster and tell his story in such a personal way.
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Madan
June 1, 2022
“Just like no one listens to G Ramanathan today, it is entirely possible that Mani Ratnam will be sidelined — say — three generations hence. They may find those blinding shafts of light too “artificial”, just like many people find the camera angles of CITIZEN KANE very showy and artificial.” – I somehow don’t see this happening WITHOUT there being another secular shift in society again. What I mean by that is since ’90s we are in an ideological and cultural freeze. I am not going to discuss this too much in detail here but we are in a loop now where the ideas that were ‘new’ in the 90s still sound new today (especially in music) and when artists reach for a change, they ‘go back’. That’s why going back to/MAGA etc is so popular today. A futuristic outlook of art at least at the pop culture level is almost gone now, except maybe in spurts. Even when someone like Nolan does something radically different, it no longer becomes a ‘wave’ or a trend that others want to ride the coattails of. And this is how it’s going to be until something triggers a major wave of change across society (and whether that will be global anymore or restricted to national or even regional cultures is hard to tell). So, Rahman will never go out of fashion and likely that will be the case for Raja and Mani Ratnam also because Mani’s films were already closer to the 90s ethos (even before the 90s happened) than the typical noisy, talky, tear-jerky melodramas that dominated the 80s. THOSE films feel much more dated than Mani’s films from Mouna Raagam onwards (with perhaps the exception of Idhayathai Thirudadhe).
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brangan
June 1, 2022
Caesium: @BR: I have heard you say that screenplay writing is the most important & difficult part of a film. In that sense, would you consider the writer as the captain of the ship? Should their name appear last in opening credits? Should they be compensated more than the director?
No, the director is always the “captain of the ship”. He/She will have the final say in every department of filmmaking, from costumes to lighting to art direction to acting to editing to the script.
David Fincher: “There are two things I’m responsible for. One is whether or not I’m presenting believable behaviour, which is totally subjective. The other thing I have is camera position: from where am I going to see this person? People think of directing as The Big Circus: Yes, 90 per cent of directing is getting the money and getting the right equipment there and the right people and departments to create the right feeling out of the right context. In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light. Audiences only get to see what we show them and in that moment, I control everything they hear and see. I’m hoping that these elements will translate into feeling. It was Louis B Mayer who said, “The genius of the movie business is that the only thing the purchaser gets is a memory.” That’s what directing is.”
Note that Fincher says “sculpt time, sculpt behaviour, sculpt light”. He does not say “sculpt story”. Because that is the screenplay department (with the director’s involvement). No screenwriter just submits a whole bound script for the director to make. Mani’s films may be — credit wise — “written by” Sujatha or Jeyamohan or whoever, but Mani will always be there, ditching what he doesn’t like, adding his own touches and so on (or asking the writer to do so). For instance, the way Mani Ratnam worked with Sujatha was by asking him to write short stories about the characters and then taking what he wanted from those short stories and co-writing the screenplay/dialogues. Everyone does it differently.
So yes, the director always comes first, because it is his/her vision that is shaping what we see on screen THROUGH the various collaborators, of whom the screenwriter is one.
But yes, the most important job of a film is the script-writing. Without it, no one can do anything. The script gives you the characters, the motivations, the themes, the foundation for the film that others can build on. For example, Mani-Sujatha at the script stage write Madhavan (AAYDHA EZHUTHU) as an angry, impulsive, blood-letting rowdy. At the pre-production stage, Mani and Ravi K Chandran and the art director decide that Madhavan’s portions will be coded in red.
(I am not saying this is what happened, as Mani might have got the idea even while looking at Sujatha’s drafts. I am just saying how the writing stage LEADS to these other decisions.)
So yes, the writer is definitely the No.2 (vice-captain of the ship?). Because he/she is creating something out of thin air, or a blank page, while every other contributor has the script as a reference. And it is bloody back-breaking work: to keep the length of the film in mind and yet fit everything you (and the director) want to. (There is another aspect not spoken about much: to see some of your favourite lines be dropped because the director has found a visual way to communicate the same thing.)
In all Hollywood productions, you will find the writer’s name(s) right after the directors, in the closing credits. But here, writers are not valued, the writing process is limited to the director and his assistants throwing around a bunch of ideas and “making up” a script (with the writing credit finally going to the director).
So yes, they should be compensated second only to the director, among the behind-the-scenes crew. The actors will always be paid the most because they are the ones who actually put butts on seats for most people.
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Rahini David
June 1, 2022
BR, regarding the “movies would have become much faster, much more generic.”
I can see why movies will become progressively faster over time. But why would they become more generic? Am I misunderstanding what you are saying?
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karzzexped
June 1, 2022
<<< But here, writers are not valued, the writing process is limited to the director and his assistants throwing around a bunch of ideas and “making up” a script (with the writing credit finally going to the director) >>>
@BR As far as providing credits to the scriptwriters or writers in general, the issue is two-fold.
Firstly once the credit goes to the writer, he/she/they own part of the intellectual property to the story alongside the producer. This is seen as a problem by the producer, since the name of the writer gets attached while selling the copyrights/remake rights associated with the film. This is a strict industry no-no in Kollywood as producers generally want to retain full control over IPs.
The second reason is a much more common and pervasive one, the insecurity of the director. It’s no secret and we all know that the so called ‘script discussion’ involves various types of writers – ADs as writers, script doctors, dialog writers, heck even writers who tamilify the tanglish scripts. However while presenting the script (bound/narration), the director presents it as theirs since they don’t want the producer thinking that they aren’t capable enough to write the whole movie by themselves.
That being said, there’s an emerging trend with directors like Sudha Kongra, Lokesh (Rathna), etc secure enough to provide writing/dialog writing credits to actual writers notwithstanding the fact that the likes of MR, even Shankar (Sujatha) in the past.
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vijay
June 1, 2022
Its insecurity, nothing else. These guys will talk all about team work and team effort and all that in interviews, but as the credits roll it will always be ” a Mani Rathnam film” or “a Venkat prabhu quickie” or something like that. As if they sat alone in a room and put it all together. Interestingly they dont do this early in their careers when they are still establishing themselves. Its after they become a brand or when they sense they have become a brand they start this.
As an aside, I wonder how many budding ADs/script writers have been taken for a ride in Kodambakkam, where they hop from one director/producer’s office to another narrating their story and they get told off. A few months later they are surprised to find that their story has been altered slightly and made into a film by somebody else. Its just another day in the office in Kodambakkam or Mumbai.
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Akhilan
June 2, 2022
BR thank you so much for that master-class. 🙂 This is why you are who you are, and why I’m just a casual nobody (and a huge fan of yours). I guess I was simply questioning or simply finding it hard to understand why Nayakan is considered “path-breaking” or perhaps “path-altering” in the first place and its importance to mainstream Tamil cinema. You answered that for me. In my head, I suppose I just automatically associate a “path-breaking/path altering” piece of art with transcending time, transcending generations, and to essentially be ‘timeless’ despite it being a product of its time (purely in terms of my viewing experience that is). For me personally, The Sound of Music, Vertigo, Rear Window or Dil Chahta Hai, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam are few such examples. Hence, maybe I am just conflating and/or wrongly? equating “path-breaking/path-altering” with being “timeless”…
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Anu Warrier
June 2, 2022
@Akhilan – HDDCS – path-breaking? 🙂
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brangan
June 2, 2022
Rahini David: I did not use “generic” as a bad word. What I meant is that the movies are going to become less about individuals and their specific socio-political circumstances (eg. KADAISI VIVASAYI, WRITER) and more about templatised narratives like KAITHI or MAANADU or Marvel-like tentpole films and franchises that will have big stars or dinosaurs or AVATAR-like effects. Now, these can be written and made well too. (SARPATTAI is a great example of a spectacularly made genre film with a deeply personal directorial signature.) But they cannot escape a certain “broadness” / “generic”-ness simply because they belong to a genre. (A lot of SARPATTAI still comes under “boxing drama”.) And genre means there are some inbuilt rules.
This is what I think, unless people start coming to theatres for all kinds of films, including ones that “break the mould”. And I don’t see OTT as coming to the rescue of auteurs — at least, not yet. Right now, they are still building their subscription base and that means “big star movies”.
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Madan
June 2, 2022
Agreed BR. This is the reverse Godfather in progress. An interesting set of characters is not enough (though Arjun Reddy is a very interesting counter example to that and makes me wonder how much of it is audience and how much is filmmakers hedging their bets). Gehraaiyan was well received on OTT and though the way it was made may have been generic in some respects, it wasn’t using genre as a hook. But by and large it is true that now a genre or a novel concept works as the hook and the promise of, simply, a good entertaining film is not enough.
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Akhilan
June 2, 2022
Hey Anu, aaarghhh!! Haha. Um like I said, maybe in my head I’m just conflating and/or (wrongly?) equating “path-breaking” with being “timeless”. Perhaps they can be and indeed are mutually-exclusive to one another (something that I guess I have to learn). So how about I say, that for me, HDDCS is “timeless” then… 🙂
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Akhilan
June 2, 2022
Oh and apologies *Madhusudhan. Accidentally spelt your name wrong!! My bad. 🙂
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Akhilan
June 2, 2022
Ooh um sorry, but upon further reflection, I was wondering, the reason I tend to conflate/associate/equate (whatever you might want to call it) “path-breaking” with/to “timeless” is because I find the said movie to be “timeless” in the first place… I don’t want to speak for all of us of course, but most of us would have our own individual lists of movies that we would consider to be “timeless”, that we would refer to as say a “timeless classic” for instance. This particular list would perhaps (again don’t want to generalize here) include a handful of movies. Therefore, the fact that only a select few “qualified” in our individual “timeless” movie lists, makes each one of those movies “path-breaking” in a way. So “path-breaking” not necessarily in terms of craft, language, or story-telling, but more in terms of your movie-watching experience; because the said movie was one of the handful of movies that made it into your “timeless” movie list. Not sure if that makes sense, but well… Oh and I can’t believe I forgot to mention The Devil Wears Prada!! It is definitely in my “timeless” (and so “path-breaking”) movies list (even if Madan might end of up killing me for it :).
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ch1nmay
June 11, 2022
It sounds like it was a great interview, but I wish there had been subtitles for non-Tamil speakers
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