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Posted in: Cinema: Tamil, Interview
Interview: Hari (‘Rathnam’)
Posted on April 25, 2024
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7 Responses “Interview: Hari (‘Rathnam’)” →
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Baradwaj Rangan 
hari prasad
April 25, 2024
What a surprisingly good interview this turned out to be and it’s nice to see you control all the rage you had towards him when he minced Saamy 1 with its sequel and have a chilled interview.
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madhusudhan194
April 25, 2024
BR finally gets to meet his idol.
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MANK
April 25, 2024
It was a great conversation. I really like his early to mid ’00s masala films. I was watching Arul recently on some channel. It was a film that I didnt like all that much at the time of its release, as it was coming soon after Saamy and I felt it wasn’t as punchy as Saamy. But watching it now I felt it is hundred times better than most of the mass masala stuff made today
we need to hear more from these guys like Dharani ,Saran Balaji Sakthivel’s etc…I hope you do interviews with all of them. They are more interesting to listen to than the so called genre specific directors of today who make Hollywood ripoffs. we also need more of those rooted , emotionally rich thoothukudi-thirunelveli masala films that’s more indigenous than the cool Tarantino-inspired crap that are celebrated today.
Saami >>>>>>>>>Vikram any day for me…
Unfortunately, Hari has completely lost his way in the last decade in his quixotic quest for speed. as blue sattai maran put it perfectly, Hari’s recent films can be defined as – first half speed, second half speedodu speed. Absolutely no emotion registers in this manic drive for a fast pace narrative. his last film Yaanai was much better in this regard. Never thought that he would do a 2 minute uncut single-shot fight scene after singams and saamy squares
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tamil thanos
April 25, 2024
Agree on the Yanai part ,MANK. It was a much better and sensible film from Hari. It’s the same angry hero but his anger is at least well directed in this case. I can now understand it from the interview that he took the feedback more seriously. Yanai also had way less misogyny.
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hari prasad
April 26, 2024
Yes , count me in for the interview with Dharani , now that he is the talking point of Tamil cinema with the re release of Ghilli that brought huge footfalls to the theatres in Tamilnadu this year and who better than the director of Dhill , Dhool and Ghilli to compare and contrast the masala movies of the 2000s with the mass movies of today and learn what has changed now.
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hari prasad
April 26, 2024
Yaanai has a secret cult?!?
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Isai
May 16, 2024
24:30 – Singam, despite its OTT and at times even cartoonish stunts, remains a benchmark because of its high resonance, due to scenes like these:
1) Village police station confrontation scene: My mother abhors violence. I have never seen her appreciate any action sequence EVER, except for this scene.
Both my parents have grown up in villages and came to Chennai only after completing their schooling. I feel when a person who has grown up in a village/small town, where almost everyone whom they saw on a daily basis knew them, comes to a metropolitan city, they feel intimidated and a bit insecure.
I felt the same way when I first went abroad in my mid-20s to work in a company which supposedly had people from more than 50 countries. But one advantage which people growing up in a village have, is their clan unity. Unlike in a city, the village folks unite quickly and quite aggressively against an hostile outsider, due to their shared identity. Hari highlights this aspect very well in this scene. I also liked a woman wielding a sickle in this scene in the hindi remake.
I still remember my father’s wide grin when Suriya says “Sondha oor kaaran’ve..Chithappan, Periyappan, Annan, Thambi ellam Pangaali ve”. Ajay Devgan also did this scene very well in hindi. I feel this has a pan-India resonance among people from villages and small towns.
2) Nizhalgal Ravi/Prakash Raj confrontation scene: Singam, son of a grocery shop owner, aspires to open a departmental store. He wants to decline a police promotion so that he can stay with his family in his hometown. Hari’s dialogues peak in this sequence: Village’na kevalama, AC potha room, 10 trains from his hometown, maligai kadai tharasu’la velai senja kai da, 1.5 ton weight’u da etc. But, my favourite dialogue, which appeals to not just villagers and grocery shop employees but perhaps to all those who find it difficult to suck up, is in this tweet:
https://twitter.com/Gopi000001/status/1783696126404603925?s=19
3) Promotion scene: My father doesn’t know Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Cannes etc. The PEAK of his ambition would have been to do gain recognition across Tamil Nadu. Hence, the scene where Vijayakumar appreciates Suriya saying that he has thrived despite coming from a small village, resonated a lot with him.
Singam, like many Hari heroes, is respectful towards his father, affectionate towards his mother and in general, is a family oriented person (Hari himself is like this: 30:44). His love for the heroine is underpinned not by lust but by mutual respect. He is confident, straightforward and doesn’t like having any shades of grey. He fights only when it is required, either to protect his family or against injustice. Turns out this is how a lot of the ‘mass’ audience want their heroes to be.
I feel the best stories come from one’s pain and ‘vaazhviyal’. Hari tried to become a cop but couldn’t succeed. The romantic and family scenes, set in his hometown(s), in this movie seem to be inspired from his own life. ‘Karkuvel Ayyanar’, shown in the opening theft scene, is a deity whose legend mentions about how he prevents occurrence of theft. Hari, like many people in TN, religiously attends the annual temple festival of his clan deity. So, the pre-climax scene where Suriya’s father asks him to not come even to the annual temple festival, without solving this case, resonates.
When all these ‘click’, with Ayyanar’s blessings, one gets good music and scenes which resonate. This makes people overlook the weaknesses and identify with the star, leading to a high repeat value movie like Singam.
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