A comedy about a philosophy? Well... that's a cliche... Or is it?

All through my adolescent life and through my youth and ... wait for it ... later on in the age of reckoning, I've grown up with the comical offerings of S. Ve. Sekar and Crazy Mohan, and later Kamal Hassan and Vivek and ... wait for it ... later on, the likes of Seinfeld and George Carlin. Theatre is a crucible in which spontaneity is the spark that kindles chortles. TV and Cinema is the pulpit where that spark becomes a conflagration that captivates masses. And stand up and improvisation is where the hand of god, that is, comedic creation is witnessed and revered first hand. Among the pantheon of intelligent comedy that has defined my defining years walks a new titan today: the United States Inspiring Artists  (USIA) group.

Their latest offering, the sixth installment of (yes... sigh!) six stage plays is called Kanna Thorakkanom Saami (Open Thy Eyes, Ye Gods - Biblical liberty of prose liberally taken ofcourse). This play has put a rather heavy capstone on their altruistic raison-de-etre, to raise money for various charitable causes in India including educating close to a hundred children. They have, with this one time performance (erstwhile Soviet spies, take notes... if you could go back in time and record the play, your use for one time notepads as secret codes would be obviated - TV execs, if you're reading, I have a sci-fi idea for you right here... no charge), raised a cumulative 40,000 Dollars for education. In Indian Rupees, notwithstanding the cool new symbol for our national currency and all, is enough to get about a hundred kids from pre-school through college. As one of my old friends would say, as shit goes, "good shit" indeed. And there in lies the greatness of this drama. The empathy, the purpose, and the comedy.

As one my my greatest living icons - Vivek - once said, "good comedy is a hard business." As another great living icon - Dr. Abdul Kalam said to him, "Good comedy with a message is even harder." And dare I quote another great before you pull me up on charges of plagiarism, the creator of the hit show Frasier, quite possibly the father of the longest running sitcom  - since P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster - once said (paraphrasing as I'm neither Churchill's speechwriter to remember every alcohol induced rambling nor Carl Rove to retro-modify George Bushes' left vs right fiascoes), we intend for our show to be funny when it needs to be and serious when it should be. Comedy should flow naturally.

That is what the writing of Sumitra Ramjee, does in droves here. Her latest play is all about breaking the boundaries between castes. It is about smashing social mores - especially in India - about taboos regarding LBGT and transvestites. It is about the fundamental belief in a higher power, whether you believe in God or not. It is more than anything, about embracing the differences in cultures and making the world a better place to live in for everyone through the fundamental understanding that we were all put on this earth for specific reasons. Those reasons may be hidden to use at first, or worse, be unappealing. But the simple truth is, without embracing our raison-de-etre (yes I'm clever, that's why that term has been used twice, you philistines), our lives are worth naught. Be it the eunuch or the transvestite, be it the non-believing slum dweller or the jaded new age college goer, everyone starts out as caricatures who are forced to explore new dimensions as their characters discover potentials in their co-stars.

And at this point, let me shout out to the director, Mohan, who has taken this potentially chasmic script and molded it into performances worth cosmic rapture. He managed to eke out body language and vocal modulations that made the comical dialogues into living images that make us emote to the plight of the condition the characters suffer. A superb script needs a superb director to get the best qualities of the actors to gel with the pre-natal vision of the writer to make the end product a child worth keeping. Kanna Thorakanom Saami is a marriage of visions that puts us in splits at the same time as it splits the atoms of stigma. And the music by Ramani, which was top notch speaks volumes about having an Ilayaraaja collaborator on your crew. Doesn't hurt, does it?

No matter how good a play may be screen written or directed, it is up to the people in the rouge in front of the bright yellows that good lines, laughter inducing or thought provoking, may be delivered. The cast of USIA equaled or even surpassed the previously mentioned veterans I've grown up with in achieving this. The local dialect of Madras is one of the hardest to master as it includes equal parts of culture, swagger, abandon and just plain **** you. To switch from corporate polity to brass tacks boondocks, which is what these people must have had to do (I've heard them utter both) requires a special talent that I've seldom seem outside the dorm rooms of the shadiest colleges. From Balajee, the cardsharp lead, to Jeeva, the all-too-common beggar at the streetlight, every single person on that stage knew what they were doing, and more importantly, what they were saying. Including the scintillating dance be Arvind, Gaurav and Aswini choreographed by Shilpa (hey, hey, hey, namma ooru naatu thiruvizha paathirukkiya? Tamizh kalacharam without item song? What are you, distended from time or something?). If I've left out any one's name, its only because I forgot.

Oh yeah, four kudos that I felt were worth mentioning... Kala from Florida whose contribution to the play was the amazing makeup of all the artists - brilliant job as only someone sitting in row one could have truly appreciated, Shyamala, who supplied the costumes from India, Meera, who made sure said costumes got the the set, and Jeeva and her family, who provided the premises for the play's rehearsals.

Every single character was pivotal. The Skeptical ragamuffin father who believes a new deal equates to cash to the loving mother who respects ideals, from the vagabond son turned by the power of love to the haughty girlfriend ... err ... also turned by love, to the thugs who portray the worst in the human condition, and to the eunuch (also played by the indefatigable and indefinably - he has "something" - talented Mohan) who represents hope for a finer future, everyone, but simply everyone lived their characters. This, more than anything else made the play for me.

I was lucky to see it. I wish the USIA well in all their forthcoming forays, and wish the kids of India a golden tomorrow. With stalwarts like this, and with the support of the 500 or so who turned up of this play, their futures are secure. Please be on the look out for future offerings of the USIA. Even if you don't believe in the brand of comedy they preach, their message is noble. Support them in any way you can. I know Keith Olbermann is dead to the American public, and he is dead to me as well, but, "Good night and good luck."

         

People I know

Al Pacino is and has been in so many iconic roles that it is difficult to name one and say, yes, this is the character that defined him. Be it Don Corleone's son, or be it Robert DeNiro's nemesis in Heat, or be it a professor in the altogether crappy movie 88 minutes, or the blind man or the political adviser in the moniker of this article, he is, and always will be, a legend of Hollywood.  In staying with this title, there are a few people in everybody's life who have played a significantly large role in shaping your destiny that you cannot detail you like without loss of generality by not stating their contributions.

First off... growing up in India and wanting to chase your passion, you have to have good parents. When I say good parents, I mean the kind of people who will say, "okay champ, do what you want." There are very few who do that for the simple reason that when you grow up, even the India of today is a cutthhroat cruel place that values connections more than creativity. My mom and dad did that for me. Even though their background was decidedly middle class. 

My dad started his life as a lowly engineer in a public transport corporation, and yet let me chase my dream everytime it changed, before settling into its final form as an Environmental Engineer. My mom had an opportunity to be a superstar chef or an ace TV reporter or even a movie superstar. She is beautiful, talented, and even more than that, she is  a gifted individual par excellence. She is an artist and a linguist that would have put other savants to shame. Not as a son, but as an unbiased observer do I say this. And yet she turned down every offer that came her way, because her sense to family was more important. And as I grew up, they made sacrifices that defied common sense and logic as to why they would do this. Turns out, it was for one kid, who they hoped would make it big in his chosen field one day.

MY uncle Balaji, a surrogate father, or his wife Priya, who I adopted as my aunt...  they were as important parents to me as my next best  own. My grandmothers, Jayalakshmi and Saroja... universes apart in the way they expressed love, but lightseconds together in the way it came to me. My friends, Subash, Vasanth, Shankar, Jagadeesan , Sreekanth and Anand, contemporaries who were as close as the planets in the inner solar system as far as how fast light travels to bridge that gap. 

Later, when I had a chance to strike out on my own in the states, it was two other people who supported me in ways that were straight out of fairy-tale fantasy. Have you ever heard of aunts that are as loving as mothers? Even in Indian sitcoms of any language, where extended families are quite simply about usurping you wealth, Indian imagination has never gone past the evil aunt. But in my case, my aunts were lightning rods that did not let even the worst of the worst personal tragedies (mine or theirs), stand in the way of unconditional motherly love. 

Sumitra and Meera, poles apart as human beings were always there for me as no biological mother could be. For, a biological mother would have a physical bond that made it an evolutionary directive to take care of her child. But, here... these two women, with just the non-scientifically-quantifiable love in their hearts and literally no physical rule, love me as their own son to this day... what are they? Angels in human form? Do Angles even exist? If they do, they are not called Ramba, Oorvasi or Menaka... they are called Sumitra and Meera.

And what about my late uncle Ramjee, who bought me my first yoyo, or Santhanam, who told me, "you can call me anytime for anything?" These were guys who were executives and the busy men of the world who had stuff to do 24/7.  What then, of my cousins Venu, Shilpa and Keshav, who amidst their schedules of excruitiation, would have a minute to talk to me about the most inane of things. Venu, who would help me out with the most arduous tasks, or Shilpa, who would make sure that my limited time with family was well spent, or Keshav, who would ensure that my obtuse brain would grasp the truths of reality and fantasy as best as it could?

And Finally, when I met the girl that will make my life for the remainders of my days, I know that good things are about to happen. Here I am, finally in a place where I can comment on somebody else's misfortune with equanimity when they get out for a duck. How could I do that unless there was a family to look after me and a Swetha in my life and unless Sachin had retired? Not possible.

These are all personal stalwarts who have stood by me through the tests of fire. But there is one that stands tall among all of them. That he is not even related to me by the most wishful thinking of metaphors is irrelevant. He is Sachin Tendulkar. There is one simple reason. Whether it be his blitzkrieg 87 vs New Zealand that first got me into One Day Cricket in an age when test matches were dominating, or his Desert Storm knock in Sharjah when the power went out when me and my dad tried to watch the match in my granddad's house and we first first bonded over Cricket, or the 137 against Pakistan in Chennai when I first realised your worth for the Indian Team, or the 2011 World Cup when I first truly understood that Sachin Tendulkar HAS BEEN my adult life, your career was all about the FIRSTS. It taught me about how much I respected the PEOPLE I KNOW. 

The Best Sportsperson of my time... Not really a Tamil Cinema Blog now, is it? No it isn't!

Sportspersons, like film stars, are a different breed than the rest of us. With my recent PhD after seven years of hard toil, sure, I've contributed to the betterment of Science. Well... scientific Engineering. Urm... let's be honest... to practical Engineering. Uhh... well to Engineering practices. Oh, what the hell, to getting a dusty ledge in a dirty library in a defunct wing of  a WORLD RENOWNED (heh... heh.., got you) university. But the point is, I've done something that will most likely end up as a footnote in the annals of human history.

Sportsmen and TV stars, the good ones atleast, do something that people will remember as defining epithets of that field (ha... ha... fancy word there... a pity these are disallowed in rigorous scientific prose). They are remembered as icons. And unless you are a Newton or a Gauss or an Einstein or a Feynman, Science beleaguers you into being one of among a fifty thousand or so who graduate every year. And I bet you that you will be hard pressed to find two other scientists with a vowel appellate. I will name one for you... Abel. Not so with sports and cinema. There are atleast 50 different scientific fields, and I can think of only one name of note that started with an A. But come sports and movies, I can name three: Agassi and  Alain (Prost if you are churlish) and Arnold.

So there. In the final tally of what matters to most men - and women, since Amelia Earhart, she who was blessed with not one but two vowelline names and was the progenitor of modern airfield games - its the sports and movie superstars who take the icing on the cake of superstardom built of others in less fortunate fields. And between the movies and sports, there is one key difference. One is live... the other is not.

So then... as an average human being, albeit with an IQ slightly higher than the average bear and with a degree most of you can only hope, in the best of circumstances to come through the mail for services otherwise rendered,  the best sportsperson I've seen in my lifetime is... Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum... Saurav Ganguly!

He is the man who transformed Indian Cricket from the immensely popular but also ran Minardis to the powerhouse that is a Ferrari. He changed the face of Indian Cricket from an often mercurial, but more often predictable US Davis cup team to the world beating Aussies. He made Indian Cricket into the Lancia Delta Integrali, a car that could be relied upon to win and win consistently, from an Audi TT, that could only do wet hillclimbs magnificently. He changed Indian Cricket from a side that had its Bests and Beckhams and Rooneys, to one that could challenge for the World Cup everytime with a Pele and a Ronaldo an a Ronaldinho. In short, he was to Indian Cricket as Michael Schumacher was to German Formula One. Better yet, he was to India's new millenium National Anthem of Chak De Blue. as was his compatriot to the Jana Gana Mana decades ago.

As a Cricketing legend who transformed into the Dark Side of the Moon, there can be no other than the great Dada. Not even Bradman, with his uparalled might against the short ball (he managed a hundred in the days when a ball to your ribcage was considered unEnglishmanlike - although, given their conduct through the Raj, I use the term very loosely), or Marshall with his blinding pace that scared tailenders into eternal nightmares, or Sobers with his first six home runs off consecutive pitches (yes, yes, but I do have an American audience as well, you know), and the evergreen Sachin, who is only as old as his next announced retirement is, could match the wholesome grandeur he has brought to Indian Cricket, first as a swashbuckling an critically acclaimed Prince of the off side, and later as India's most successful captain.

Dada gave this side a self belief in itself that none other managed before in any form of the game with any country. You could draw parallels to the great Alain Prost who did something similar with the then fledgling McLaren Porsches, or with Schumacher and the positively uncompetitive Ferraris, but those were more about an individual building a team around THEMSELVES. Here was, in my humble opinion the first example of a TEAM built around an individual. An Individual whose record of four hundred and twenty four intentional matches, 38 centuries and 132 wickets speak for themselves, but who also as a captain led the team to 97 victories in 195 matches with way more wins than losses (97 to 78). More importantly, he won us almost twice the number of matches he lost in tests (21 to just 13). Most importantly of all, he won more matches outside India in tests than he lost (11 to 10), and crucially won in Pakistan, England, Australia and South Africa, the perennial final frontiers for Indian Cricket. Feats unheard of till then except for the great Kapil Dev who only managed it in Old Blimey.

Of all the things that Dada has done for betterment of Indian Cricket, he did a few things that stand out as pure genius. Backing Harbhajan Singh when he
was only one among the pack... that speaks for itself. A Matchwinner par excellence for India with his 400 plus wickets. Lobbying for the great, perhaps greatest Indian captain of all time, Mahendra Singh D when he was but a lark of lad with an Imran Khan wanna be haircut, and controversially but wisely relegating Tendulkar to number four in ODIs to make way for the most explosive batsman the Cricketing world has seen for a while, Sehwag. Canny decisions all... and all indicative of a brain that's fed to the gill with fishes (after all, what else would you expect from a Bengali?), bulging as it does end on end.

Most of all, he swirled his blue shirt at lords and got his first hundred at lords, and well, he lords over all over Indian Captains before or since in terms of just plain Attitude. To a fan of a game that is marginally more than a unifying religion in a country that is divided by a lot less high profile stuff, he is, and will remain, the one and only true DADA.

Honorable Mentions:
Michael Schumacher, for taking a car that would not turn into corners to a memorable win in Catalunya and then onto five consecutive world Championships
Andre Agassi. for proving that talent alone is not the only recipe to become a pop culture superstar in the era or the infinitely more talented Sampras
Lance Armstrong,  for quaffing in the face of Cancer? What cancer?
Viswanathan Anand, for showing the world that Chess is not a bohemian pasttime of the idle Russians
Baichung Bhutia, for bringing football to the Cricket crazed billions in a country where that sport has its own holy Trinity
The Black Caps, for showing us that a nation with more sheep than men can actually be good at something
The Giants, for bringing back the faith after the longest interval between superstars and also rans

Viswaroopam - subtle high concepts

Why did he have to do Die Hard in Tamil? When its Kamal Hassan, the expectations are a Magna cum Laude at the very least. Not a solid 2.0 who wants to be an architect (George Costanza puts these things so matter-of-factly sometimes). This was my first take on the movie, and I even wrote a largely negative piece on it. Then I wanted to write a companion piece on the stupid ban of the film in Tamil Nadu. While researching for that, I realized that there are a lot of subtle messages in the film that elevate it from a mere Die Hard, to something much more important for the communally divided world of today.

Concepts
I am going to come at this from the angle of the ban because I think the movie adds a lot of value to a powder-keg issue when viewed from a stand of intolerance.

Viswaroopam is a big film. There's no doubt about it. Its not a Muslim bashing film. There's no doubt about that either. The ban demanded is clearly another attempt by some politically motivated groups at getting their two minutes' fame at the expense of someone who's clearly deservedly more famous than they are.

I ask you: what's there in this movie that showcases Muslims in a negative light? If anything, the story is about a devout Muslim officer who's a true patriot who's fighting against those who would desanctify that faith's true meaning in the name of a bloody Jihad. There is even a scene at the very end when the protagonist performs Namaz before breaking into a sleeper cell's hiding place to diffuse a bomb.

Isn't the fundamental tenet of any religion kindness to your fellow man? Isn't someone who reneges on that teaching an enemy of humanity, no matter what his faith, color or nationality may be? To showcase a fundamental Islamist group that trades in terror, the Al Qaeda is not a derisive commentary on the whole religion. It is infact an effective means of showing that to pigeonhole a people based on the cruel actions of a few is not only stupid at best, but damaging to mankind at worst. To show an indiscriminate military response going so far as to bombarding civilian centers is the essential example of this narrow-minded outlook.

The movie also goes so far as to show that not even people in the same environment of hate and anguish are likely to behave in the same way. There is a young boy who hates the concept of taking to arms like his zealot father, but instead wants to become a doctor. While the Pashtun tribes have been painted with broad strokes by the media as being backward with little women's suffrage, the movie gives us a mother and wife of a terrorist who is trying to fight this oppression in her own small way. She wants her son atleast, to take a different route to everyone else around her. There is a young man who wants to go abroad and become an Engineer, but whose goal is twisted for nefarious purposes by the religious zealots.

And the movie berates the violence of zealotry by showcasing children playing shoot with one another because gun culture has become so entrenched in that society. It is a scene that without any of the conventional norms of violence is heart-wrenchingly so. Where does a society go when AK-47s have become the playthings of toddlers? It re-blooms through the young boy who wants to become doctor. Hats off, Kamal Sir!

Horses for courses
Kamal himself has said on many occasions that he is someone who chooses characters based on his strengths. Sadly, characters such as the protagonist in this film are not for him anymore. He has grown beyond this both in stature and in age and physique.

The RAW/military officer needed to be someone in the prime of physical fitness. Unless you are a Bruce Willis or a Sylvester Stallone whose entire repertoire is tearing open your t-shirt and revealing six pack abs, so that no matter how old they get, they have to stay in peak shape, you are not expected as an actor to be required to fill these kind of uber - action oriented roles.

However, his ability to deliver a character's realistic response to his circumstance remain chanceless. As the infiltrator, he is convincing in his zeal, and even when revealed to be a RAW agent, he is still able to emote both a patriotism toward his nation and a grudging respect for the friendship he forged with the bad guys. After all, what is more telling about a human dilemma than being torn between the right thing to do and loyalty to someone you have broken bread with?

Having said that, this role is not particularly challenging as an actor for Kamal. There is no commanding screen presence required. If I could make a recommendation based purely on the physical attributes required (for I have no doubt about Kamal the director being able to extract the performance he needs from even a dead tree stump), horses for courses. I think someone like Jiiva or Vikram would have been much more apt choices for Wizam. Or, if you wanted to go with a more nominally priced option, why not pick Srikanth? He could use a big break like this.

But if ever there were inspired casting choices - I have to give Kudos to Kamal for casting Rahul Bose as Omar Qureshi and Jaideep Ahlawat as Salim. Both give stellar performances as multifaceted Jihadists. While Rahul Bose plays the more flamboyant zealot (he has to, given that his character is a top echelon player), he still loves his family dearly. But you can see where his cultural background is rooted, and where his priorities clearly lie. He brings out this slanted balance beautifully. Jaideep on the other hand is the more sophisticated, tech savvy front man of the cell. He is the recruiter, the handler. He has to be more pragmatic, more muted in his zealotry. Again, beautifully done. These two guys actually steal the show away from Kamal, and that's not something you might ever get a chance to say again.

Visuals
There is no doubt that the movie is on a par Hollywood standards. What is the benchmark for Hollywood standards? If its a strong story with a gripping screenplay, then your Thevar Magan had proved ages ago that you are beyond any Wood in film - making. If its character development and acting, then your Virumandi stands alone. If its jaw dropping new concepts, then your Apporva Sagodhirargal and Dasavatharam are striking opuses. And if its social commentary, then Hey Ram and Anbe Sivam are far left field than anything else.

So, what is the standard here? Visual presentation. Yes, its very nicely done. The photography is brilliant. Particularly impressive is Varghese's caution not to fall into the trap of portraying desert climes in sepia tones. Rather, he seems to have used the natural lighting to showcase what Afghanistan looks like realistically. I lived in a desert for four years, and let me tell you, it doesn't always look sepia! The action is well choreographed. The gratuitous chase scene is par for the course. All of these aspects have been seen in countless English movies before, but they are new to Tamil Cinema. As someone who is tireless in bringing the latest in cinema to us, I salute Kamal on his industry gold standard effort.

The standout is ofcourse the US attack on the Al Qaeda strongholds. This sequence really captures the futility of a lop-sided war. General Stanley McChrystal said in a recent interview that a 5.6mm round is supposed to penetrate the human body at 3000 metres per second, and the result is not pretty. Its not supposed to be. War never is. Kamal shows that in all its grit here.

Another excellent place in the movie was in the opening, with Kamal's brilliant dancing. The way this scene is shot is interested, because it brings Kamal and his brilliant steps to the fore every time he sings (by focussing on him), and sends everything to the background when Shankar Mahadevan's voice and the song proper takes over (by using area wide shots). The pretty girls, including second lead actress Andrea Jeremiah and part of the backdrop accentuating the beauty of the dance form, but never stealing the limelight. I particularly liked how Andrea is one of the others in the group with no more or less emphasis than anyone else. Score one for the thousands of nameless and faceless group dancers that have carried Tamil songs for generations! Unfortunately, I felt that this was waste of a great opener, as we never see or hear about Kathak or its implications to a maybe softer side of Kamal till the end credits.

Minor Pitfall
I generally hate pointing out loopholes in movies I enjoy, because if there is a strong story, with excellent characterization, you can usually suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride.

My one gripe with the premise is that, if RAW knows about a dirty bomb threat to a major US city, would they not share this intel with them beforehand? In this case, even MI 6 apparently knows about it, and yet the NSA, CIA, FBI and NYPD are all unaware of this threat? Hell, even the Indian government was warned about the 2008 Mumbai blasts by the CIA well before they happened!

But considering that the movie delivers so much on high concept and packed entertainment, I can and will suspend my disbelief.

Final Word: Say no to the BAN!

Zealotry is prevalent in every faith. But calling a spade a spade does not diminish the fact that there are three other suites in the pack. These calls for bans on the premise that the movie would incite communal unrest are mere fabrications of diseased minds, who cannot see beyond their own immediate political gains. If a movie maker wants to be really brave, forget the Al Qaeda, I say. Make a movie about the evils of religious organizations with political goals (after all, there are several across the board in our country).

One final note: while it is important for minorities to work towards protecting their rights, crying wolf too many times may cause that very effort to backfire someday. What if one of these minority groups loses all credibility with the masses through these frivolous claims to fame and becomes a spineless husk when real oppression of our minority brothers and sisters occurs? Who will they turn to for help then?

And more importantly, a democracy is not an institution in which a single group can demand special disposition for their belief systems alone. I have for long been very strongly against the Unified Hindu Law for Hindus and the Shariat system for Muslims. We are a community of Indians. That is how we choose to represent ourselves. Therefore, our laws should reflect that oneness also. And so too should the creative freedom afforded to artists. That this movie hurts the sentiments of this caste, or that belittles that faith are all well and good if they are true. But political sops to community based vote banks through bans on movies that hurt no one are unacceptable in the world's largest democracy.

When a legendary actor, and now a legendary director as well, takes the pains to make a meaningful movie that delivers for everyone from the thrill seeking action movie buff to the thinking critic, enjoy it. Don't go and ban it!

Rajnikanth - Magic

You can be Hindu, you can be Muslim. You can be Tamil and you can be from somewhere else. You can be a cinema connoisseur or you could be a grindhouse goon. You could be straight, and you could be gay. But the one thing you could not be immune to is the magic of Rajnikanth.

Whether you smoke or not, you cannot be but amazed by the cigarette flip to the mouth. No matter how much you might abhor even the idea of smoking, with its malodorous stench or its unhealthy implications, touch your heart and tell me that if a cigarette has been flipped by Rajnikanth, your heart has not fluttered a teeny bit. If it hasn't, then its made of stone. There was a time in India, not 15 years ago, when smoking was considered the domain of the male, a cool and and the same time, disgusting thing, that no girl would even try, because it was "bad." Those days are long gone thanks to globalization. But I am not here to judge the advancement or degeneration of culture. I am merely stating that even then, those girls swooned for Rajni's style. Not so much for the cigarette, you see, but what it meant. The style.

And another thing. This may be a personal opinion or one shared by the masses. I don't know. I am attracted to Rajni. But judging by the whistles and the milk coronations, I would tend to believe that I am not alone in this total gayification whenever Thalaivar (leader - please not in the political sense) comes on screen.  Rajnikanth could be in the hottest song with the most beautiful heroine in the world - why it could be Angelina Jolie morphed with Aishwarya Rai along with the physical attributes of Venus, and all I would still see is Rajnikanth's stilted dance movements appreciating every second, how much our God has mastered the hours of input by a Michael Jacksonesque coreographer. I would little realize that the heroine is wearing the most revealing outfit; and I would like one self respecting male audience member to describe to me even with the most minimal detail, the color of her dress. And by the way, I would like anyone who reads this blog to touch their heart and tell me that i am not voicing their own opinion, my personal public image be damned.

This is not to say that the heroine in a Rajni movie is just eye candy. Far from it. In recent history, every Rajni film has been driven by a strong feminine character, and I am very thankful for that. Unlike other superstars, our REAL superstar has chosen to go in a direction that is new for Tamil cinema. To explore and utilize the power of the female lead. Straight from Muthu, where a love triangle between the always ephemeral Rajni and the ever so dung like Sarath Babu fought for the affections of a clearly Malayali Meena, to Padayappa, where the Neelambari character all but stole the show but for the superlative presence of the rural Churchill (he of the persistent cheroot), and to Endhiran just recently, when the female drove even a robot to distraction, (although, when you are dealing with an international beauty queen, nominal performance tolerances even from nickel bolts must be expected) it has been his way for quite sometime.

If you though I am forgetting Chandramuhkhi on that list, haha, think again. While Jyothika was a very strong female antagonist, P. Vasu is a terrible director. So no matter how good her characterization was in that film, and no matter how central strong female lead was to the development of that story, a flashlight beam played across Rajni's eyes to indicate the brilliance of some unnamed accomplishment is sloppy direction, so that movie is banned... forever! P. Vasu is dead to me!!!


Is it the man's humility then? There are some who are humble because they know they're not good enough. There are yet other, of the worse second kind, who know they make the cut, and yet fish for accolades. Rajni seems to be someone who's got this balance down pat. Why, every time you tell me he's too humble, I can show you Kamal Hassan sitting beside him, and when you have Brahma sitting next to you, you'd be pretty much asking for it if you said that you designed the human genome. And just about when you are about to tell me that he's just showboarding, he comes up with something like this... "Naan yaana illinga, kuthirai" (I am not an elephant, but a horse) stating that he knows exactly where he stands. Also, please name one superstar today with a bald head who's not afraid to show its phrenology to the masses (and if you can't get that reference to the dead science, then you were probably born around the same time he lost his hair). That's more than humility. That's willful abandon, the elder cousin of Mr. H.

He's not a perfect human being. No one is. Everyone knows about his rancid early days, about his addictions and his womanizing and his tantrums amd his traumas. But the thing that sets him apart is that demigods tend to be just that. They obfuscate the demi and promulgate the god. A god hides nothing. The purpose of a demigod is for you to respect him no matter what he may be. That is why Gaddafi had to be a general although he holds no military rank by right. A god on the other hand exists solely to teach you right from wrong. That is whay Gatothgaja is not in the Mahabaratha to just tell you that Bheema had another wife. He is there to tell, albeit metaphorically, to elicit that polygamy isn't a good thing (my sincere view, and if anybody objects, take it up him when your number comes up). God is an open book for us to learn from. Now, I am not claiming that Rajni is a god. But I am saying that to put the qualifier "demi-" in front of it if you are going to worship him as a god is a disservice to him.

One thing he said in his 12-12-12 birthday address was revealing, and truly shocking to me, as someone who's grown up with the somersaulting cigarettes. He said - paraphrased and translated - I am saying from personal painful experience, if you are a true fan, stop smoking. You know, he may be not be god. Hell, he may not even be the most perfect man to have lived. But, hell, he is the Thalaivar. The only one.

Mr. Hammond welcomes us to the Jurassic Park!

To put it quite simply, to my mind, this is the greatest movie ever made. None of the concepts here were new. Everything this movie showcases, from the character backgrounds, the moral issues, the action and the suspense had all been done to death from the earliest rendition of The Lost World in 1925 to the first iteration of King Kong in 1933. But everything about this movie was NEW! it is, to me, the pinnacle of movie making, and nothing before or since has come even a mile close to what this did for movies and for movie audiences. It took the concept of movies to a whole new level.

The book was fantastic for its visualization of a world in which Dinosaurs roam free. It gave us the framework for a new kind of terror. A species so alien to us that it could have existed on another planet, but for the fact that fossils tell us otherwise. It showcased the visceral terror of these majestic beings. But apart from this, much of the ethical dilemmas were merely background filler for the real deal - the action. Characters were pretty much one dimensional and what you would expect. Greedy business tycoons, nerdy kids, skeptical scientists and evil saboteurs; the lot straight out a pulp fiction suspense novel. But it was the seed for something so much better than itself. Like a plant germinating to life from a pod, Steven Spielberg took that basic idea and had Mr. Hammond to Welcome us to Jurassic Park.

When you talk about the greatest movie ever made, you also have to think about the greatest director to have ever lived. For movies of this genre, that list is indeed illustrious. You have James Cameroon with Terminator and Avatar. You have George Lucas with Star Wars. You have Stanley Kubrick with 2001, a Space Odyssey. And you have Stephen Spielberg. See, the thing with James Cameroon is that he is all high concept, but quite condescending in the delivery of the message. George Lucas is about stunning set pieces that drive a story forward. And Stanley Kubrick is the king of style and little substance. Spielberg, in this movie atleast got the mix bang on target.

For an excellent and revealing discussion about the movie, please watch Confused Matthews video reviews. I am just going to focus on two scenes from the movie and the musical score. I think these taken together sum up the movie for me.

When John Hammond, the owner of the them park takes the Scientists out for the first time to see the dinosaurs, the sheer majesty of these beasts is staggering. To think that these giants once roamed the very earth we stand on today is beyond imagination, beggars belief. No matter how many fossils and computer renditions we may have seen, nothing could ever prepare us for the shock of seeing one in the flesh. How can someone hope to bring that awe to us, let alone on a screen? How can  someone transport us to such a magical place as this, the land of the last titans the world ever had walk on her? Well, it is a combination of brilliant animatronics, camerawork, acting or rather reacting by the cast and probably the best rerecording in the history of films. But mere words can do no justice to this, and for the first time ever in these blogs, I am going to stop writing and just ask you to see for yourselves:

In this scene, you see from Richard Attenborough's delight at his guests' reactions that he is not the TV trope evil tycoon. He is truly joyous of his creation, his baby, and wants it to be his gift to the world. You also see the lawyer ready to merchandise the crap out of this. You see the skepticism in Jeff Goldblum's eyes. And you see the culmination of their lives' work and the fear that comes when you confront giants from a dead past in the eyes of Sam Neill and Laura Dern. And you see the the leviathans themselves in their milieu, going about their day, naturally, uncaring of us puny little insect - like beings. This scene conveys so much of what this movie is about. Yes, there are special effects, but they are a backdrop for the fact that nature is so much more superior than man's machinations. No matter what you do otherwise, life doesn't care and it will continue to do what it must to go on, no matter who's watching or what they're manipulating. It is also a very nice teaser, the docility of these creatures now, for what is to come.

"Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun." This scene serves three purposes. One to get the exposition of the far reaching issue of the morality of creating a world that is not supposed to be. To be playing God. Without being condescending or pedantic, it lays bare the issues the movie is trying to address. Two, it gives us a glimpse of the motivations of the central characters. Man seldom manipulates science with disaster as the end goal. But lazy science - by which I mean, science removed from fully understanding its consequences - has, well, consequences not fully fathomable. And these consequences are invariably bad even with the best intentions. Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed us that. What stock do Stem cell and DNA manipulation research have in store for us? And three, it sets up all the carnage to come in an ethical framework. These are the hallmarks of a great sci - fi action movie. The movie begs us to think about what we are seeing. Again, mere words may elucidate the scene, but the mood of people discussing Darwinian concepts in a relaxed setting that diffuses the ferocity of nature's raw savage should be seen. That this kind of a scene even features in a movie like this is an indication that this is much, much more than just a sci - fi thriller. Watch:

A great science fiction tale is one in which moral questions are asked to which we as a society have no clear cut answer. The tale puts these in a context of a situation far removed from personal experiences so that we may objectively try to approach them without being invested in them on an emotional level. And through the answers we find, we might hope to learn something, and maybe apply them to our own lives. And the role of action and special effects are to show us the consequences of choices made in this fantastical setting. They are not the be all and end all of the tale. That is what this movie does so well. Action set pieces and stunning visual effects that changed the face of CGI and VFX forever are found aplenty here, but they are all part of the grander scheme. That's what I meant about the director balancing his tray.

And finally, the music. As far as I'm concerned, the background score of this movie is everything it needed to be. It captures the thrill of seeing impossible beings walking amongst us. It adds to their majesty. It is suspenseful and awe inspiring, but in a soaring, uplifting way. It tells us that no matter what, life will find a way. Be it the dinosaurs, or the humans who erred in making them in the first place. Life will always find a way. And to add to all this, its haunting tune always brings a tear to my eyes. It is quite simply,  to my mind, the best soundtrack ever composed for a movie. But don't take my word for it. Listen:

Even after 20 years, with all the budgets and technologies at out disposal, no one has seemed to have understood the role of visual effects. No one has seemed to be able to balance a truly great sci - fi tale with adventure. No one has seemed to be able to show us the real adventure, that of life itself in a more majestic way than this movie has. To take a dead civilization alien to us in every way and make it come alive again... oh God, what a treat. You may have not seen this in a long time. If so, you must watch it again. Because when you do, you, along with Dr. Grant, and dear Dr. Suttler, will be "Welcome to the Jurassic Park."

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.