Nayagan vs Thalapathi

Life throws up so many curve balls that there isn't necessarily a logical progression from one state to the next.  Like a Markov process, cinema seems to be that bag of jellybeans from which your first pick might be a delectable strawberry while the next could as likely be a raw onion. This is precisely the case with Nayagan and Thalapathi. Mani Ratnam, having reached the high water mark in Indian cinema with a masterpiece of unparalleled storytelling, seemed to have deigned that he has done enough, and gave a squarely middling performance in his next gangster flick.

Everyone, including Time Magazine have heaped lavish praise on Nayagan, and for good reason. It is immense. It is a fantastic movie with a fantastic cast, fantastic music and fantastic camera work. It has mesmerizing dialogues, mesmerizing flow and mesmerizing character development. It has a brilliant story arc, brilliant scenes and brilliant continuity. That is why its on the all time greatest movies ever made list. Not just in Tamil, not just in India, but from around the world. Mani Ratnam the director shined through as India's Francis Ford Coppola, as our very own version of Martin Scorsese.

And then, suddenly, it all hit the fan catastrophically with Thalapathi. While Nayagan was like watching hot caramel sauce melting on vanilla ice cream, Thalapathi felt like being in a boiling sauna, under a UV lamp with an ice cream cone dribbling over your sticky hands. It was a mishmash of ideas, ill-conceived sequences and very very poor acting. It also had a stellar cast, fantastic music and a solid story. But, where everything fell into sonorous unison in Nayagan, this felt discordant, somehow. And the worst part? It was all yellow. Ugly, horrible, mucky yellow! Why, Mr. Ratnam, why did you have to use a filter on every damn scene? Why did you have to go from Coppola to Carrot Top?

Both movies have their ups and down, but for Thalapathi, sadly, it is in a stable equilibrium at the bottom of a deep ravine. Nayagan on the other hand, for all its overt homages to The Godfather, is fighting us every time we watch it and try to pick at it, to stay atop a tall hillock jostling to go back to the apex whenever it is shoved a little this way or that. True, they are both gangster movies. They both chart the lives of people from childhood through a troubling adolescence to their conclusions. They are both set in pretty much the same world of lawlessness and justice for the previlaged. They are both about how the protagonists tackle fire with fire, but are ultimately flawed but righteous individuals. But that is where the similarities end.

Story and characters
Nayagan is a rock solid saga set in changing eras of post independence India and spans nearly three generations. The journey of the hero also mirrors the greater journey that India herself undertook from the thirties to the late eighties. From lifting her people out of poverty to urban agglomeration to the formation of slums to the restrictions on development by a ham fisted government and recalcitrant masses, to the development of parallel regimes and kangaroo courts, this story itemizes all these issues through the eyes of the hero.

It delves deep into how the principle characters become the people they become. It thoroughly threshes out the reasons behind their interacting in certain ways. How Selva forms a lasting friendship with Velu is fluid. Not only that, but this relationship that moves from scorn to friendship to respect to love above life itself is a microcosm of the adoration the people of Dharavi heap on Velu Naicker. So too is the gradual development of resentment by his daughter towards him. Not only are the character interactions so logical, they are also surrogates for the grander scheme of a Don's life. This is where Godfather scored, and no wonder this is the reason why this story also shines.

Secondly, because it spans an entire lifetime, and because it elevates the life of one man to beyond his four walls, its scale is epic. It chronicles the history of a nation, and it teaches us something about right and wrong. It subtly answers questions about Karma, that good deeds cannot bury underfoot the evils that beget them. That is why Velu Naicker has to suffer in his personal life. That is why he has to die in the end. No matter what good the Lord Krishna did for the world, as a human being, he had sinned. He had cheated and he had enacted a protracted brutal war to teach the virtues of good to the world. With millions dead in the Mahabharatha's wake, Lord Krishna had to die a human death, and a painful one to teach the final lesson. Every deed has its comeuppance.

Thalapathi, which also borrows heavily from the Mahabharatha, had none of those things going for it. It is the story of two men set in a tumultuous place. That's all. There are no parallels to be drawn here. Yes both Deva and Surya are doing pretty much the same things that Velu did, but you don't get the sense that it is important. One could argue that the focus of this story is just the two of them. Okay, but I'm sorry, that falls flat too.

Where is the development of the relationship between Deva and Surya? In just one one scene? Is it possible for a man like Deva to shrug off the death of a valued and long serving member of his cabal and just embrace his killer? If he is so amenable to sudden change, then why is that trait of his not reflected in the rest of the movie? Why is he so hell bent on revenge against the collector when all the latter has done is only his job? Why, if he is so concerned about justice that he would even forgive the killer of his associate, is he hell bent on massive carnage over a personal gripe?

And talking about growth, sadly, nothing here. The bond that Deva and Surya form in the beginning remains without progression for the remainder of the story. Yes, its true that the relationship between Karna and Dhuryodhana was also stilted and one dimensional,  but that was not the focal point of that tale. It is here. Surely, for a man forged by cruelty and with so many bitter experiences in life as Surya, more conflict has to be in the offing, even with his best friend. Every character in this movie has only one face. Yes, Deva and Surya are hooligans. Yes, the collector is a virtuous man. Yes Karivaradhan is evil. But there is more to a human being than just what he is perceived to be. There are internal struggles, there are relationships, there are emotions and there are circumstances.

While Nayagan explored all of these in great detail, this movie does not. A white dhothi is a white Dhothi. There are no stitches, hell, even the border is not visible. There is no tapestry here. And therefore, that sense of grandeur is absent. This is one long tirade of violence, and pile driven good vs evil gospel.

Music and songs
In both movies, the music by Ilayaraaja was magical. Both movies had brilliant songs, and just to prove to you that I am not biased, I will openly state that Rakamma is one of my all time favorite songs. Not just mine, it is ranked as one of the top hundred songs of all time from around the world. The BGMs were outstanding and captured the mood of every scene. But the litmus test is this: if you are blind, and could only listen to the audio track, you would still get what Nayagan was on about. With Thalapathi, all you would get is a sequence of phenomenal tunes.

While the BGMs were muted and subtle in Nayagan, enhancing every facial expression and adding weight to the dialogues, in Thalapathi, they were there to substitute the lack of anything on the actors' faces on anything coming out of their mouths. Mind you, this not a crtique of Raaja's excellent work, but in Thalapathi, all you remember from each scene is how good the music was, and nothing else. Its as though the savage rumbling V8 soundtrack of a Formula One car was playing over the wheezing throttle of a Maruti 800. The visuals did not justify the BGMs.

The picturization of every song in Nayagan, even the gratuitous item number Nila Adhu Vaanathu Mele forthered the story. Every song came at the right place and did not distract from the larger picture. In Thalapathi, most songs, though pciturized beautifully, felt out of place. They were roadblocks to an already molasses like trickling pace. Rakamma was fantastic, and yet it was basically a standard hero Intro song. Suitable for Rajnikanth, but not for Thalapathi. Kaatukuyile, while being a brilliant technical achievement, did nothign but add five more minutes to an already bloated flim. Sundari Kannaal Oru Seidhi was again well imagined on a grand scale. But is there any time in the movie before or since that shows Shobana envisioning Rajni as her knight in shining armor? Has their love been developed in that vein? Or for that matter, developed at all?

Acting, Dialogues and Recall
Every single facial expression by every single character was appropriate in Nayagan. More importantly, every body language was captured. While there is no equal to Kamal when it comes to thespian prowess, all the others also did magnificent jobs. Janakaraj, Delhi Ganesh, Nizhalgal Ravi, Nasser, even the villains and the female leads had enough screen time and presence to justify their being in those roles. Every single character, even Velu's lowly minions are memorable. Their dialogues were so natural, and so well elucidated. They had so much power and conveyed the emotions so well. If you were reading a transcript of this film, you'd still be enthralled. If you had to shell out Rs. 1000 and go see this as a play, you'd come out with your money' worth of satisfaction. My close friend Ganesh once told me that his barometer for a good scene is if he can put himself in the actor's shoes, and if he can see himself reacting the same way, and saying the same things as those on screen. By that yardstick, Nayagan was an opus.

Thalapathi, regrettably started that irritating Mani Ratnam trend of qualifying every single line by the principle verb beforehand. What am I on about? Well, sample these gems:
Vittudunga, elaathayum vittudunga (Stop it. Stop everything)
Irukka. Indha oorulethaan irukka (She's here. She's in this very city)
Inge oruthen irundhaan. Uyiroda irundhaan. Ippo Ille (He was here. He was here and alive. Now he's not)
Thooki pututtaa. Yenna goods vandiyile thooki potuttaa (She threw me away. She threw me away onto a goods train)

Oh, here's one dialogue that should go down in the record books for the most stilted echange in film history:

Mamooty: Yeppadi? (How?)
Nagesh: Sandai.(Fight.)
Mamooty: Yethana peru? (How many?)
No name: Or aal. (One man.)
Mamooty: Yaaru? (Who.)
No Name: Surya. (Surya.)
Mamooty: Paakanam. (Must meet.)

Seriously, who talks like this? Seems to me that every one in this movie was high on weed or that it was studio full of attention deficit disorders and remembering long lines was going to be trouble from the start.

Where Nayagan made synergetic utilization of even minor extras, Thalapathi falied to provide any recall for  even its name actors. Nagesh and Charu Hassan were completely wasted in this movie. Bhanupriya was paid for just showing up. What about Amrish Puri? Such a talented veteran, reduced to a stereotypical Dick Dastardly role that they had to bring someone else in to dub his rotten lines for him. Mamooty was probably told to tone down his performance in keeping with the lethargic dialogues and allow more screen space for Rajnikanth to... well, come and stand really.

When I wachted Ayudha Ezuthu, I told my friends that Madhavan had merely shaved his head, and not really done much else. Well, Rajni shelved his style, and pretty much that was it. This was the one chance in a lifetime for a director to extrude Rajni's true potential as an actor. It was the once chance for a rabid audience drunk on style and action to enjoy a truly remarkable performance from a misused actor. And Mani Ratnam blew it by giving him the same pablum he calls lines as everyone else in the movie. Admittedly, Rajni did manage to salvage a few scenes, especially the one with Jaishankar and the one when his mother comes to visit him. But even these scenes are so BGM heavy, out of focus and YELLOW that they sap any performance out of them.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the spotty acting in this movie is evident in the climax. While Nayagan's climax was in perfect keeping with the tone of the rest of the movie, and Kamal's delivery of his last lines were true to the character built through the film, the last fight sequence in thalapathi was a complete anathema to Rajni's  persona in this. Outporing of emotion can be shown in many ways, but having asked your star to cheese every fiber of human emotion for two hours and suddenly requiring it to dial it up to eleven and ham it in the last scene is just plain dumb. I'm sure that the describe-your-friend-punch-villain-in-face rinse and repeat sequence must have seemed like pure inspiration to Mani, but sorry mate, to me it was all constipation. Seriously, how could anyone deliver staccato lines like that unless their bowels were ganging up every few seconds and refusing to come out?

Cinematography

Finally, Nayagan's camera work for scintillating. Every scene had its own hue that kept with the time of day it was, the mood of the moment and the state of affairs in the background. Sunrises and sunsets, pigeons and Gateway of India, nothing was allowed to come in the way of the cast's expressions and body language. It was a textbook display of how to create atmosphere.

The scene when Kamal takes a gang to the house of the factory owner to show him what it means to destroy a dwelling was ominous in the abscene of any life in the building complex. The scene when he meets his future wife near the Marine Drive was set at dusk, encapsulating the end of his bachelor life, but still with enough light left to bode a new radiant future for them. When his daughter weeps on the roof garden and states she is leaving his auspices for good, the lighting and background were sorrowful. And the final scene outside the court was bright and clear, essaying the fact that the verdict is a good one. No ominous grey clouds here to spoil the suspense of the climax.

Thalapathi on the other hand was yellow. Nothing more, nothing less.

So to sum up, Nayagan was the magnum opus of a gifted young director who showed the world that it was possible to take mainstream cinema to unscaled heights. The Mani Ratnam of 1987 gave us a riveting and emotional piece that was art and yet not dull. Every moment in this film flowed from the moment before, and spawned the one next like a harmonious raga. Truly, this was a five star film for the ages. Thalapathi, on the other hand, was yellow.