Reel Clas­sics — Mul­lum Malarum [ 1978 ].

World cin­ema need not nec­es­sar­ily be an Iran­ian, Span­ish, Chi­nese or a Japan­ese movie. We do have the best in Tamil. For any art, it is more essen­tial to note the time it is shared to pub­lic. If Jayakan­than had writ­ten the story ‘Agnipravesam’ in 2009, it wouldn’t have cre­ated the same shock waves as it did in 1965 [ A mod­ern viewer may write about i-pill to Anandha vikatan ]. Mul­lum Malarum had came and broke all the rules that Tamil cin­ema had till that time. It was the time where in most of the new direc­tors were experimenting..Bharathiraja wtih Kizhakke pogum rayil and Sigappu rojakkal, Rudrayya with Aval appadi thaan, KB with Nizhal nija­m­a­gi­radhu. Rajini was a bud­ding hero with Bairavi, Shankar Saleem simon kind of films. It was a tran­si­tion stage for tamil cin­ema. [அந்த‌ மாற்றத்துல‌ த‌ண்ணி ஊத்தின‌ ப‌ட‌ங்க‌ளும் வ‌ந்த‌து..]

MM starts with Ila­yaraja’ artis­tic stan­dard BGM [ Dolak ] and a beau­ti­ful num­ber with his voice [ Maan­i­name — This song too has the Gan­ji­raa]. Those were days when none of the tech­ni­cian or artists had adjec­tives before their names — it’s nice to see such a great team with a sim­ple title cards. The very first scene depicts the rela­tion between Kali and Valli. The beauty is that the char­ac­ters at young age don’t speak a sin­gle word. It’s shown in just few scenes [த‌ங்க‌ச்சி..ப‌சிக்குதாம்மா kind of dia­logues were avoided — just ‘looks’ .. Have you ever called your sis­ter as Thangachi :) ]. They grow up with­out any tran­si­tion shots like spin­ning wheels or run­ning legs or any object in motion. Young Kali breaks the head­light of an ambas­sador car [ Title card starts here ] — That’s Mahen­dran actu­ally break­ing the Tamil cin­ema cliches.

Kali : He is intro­duced with his char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. I observed his nat­ural way of speak­ing Tamil with includ­ing Kan­nada dialects [ரீய் .. வ‌ங்க‌ளையெல்லாம்.. .., வ‌ள்ளிக்கு மாப்பிளை கேட்டேன்.. க‌ணோ. Kano is used in Kan­nada — Naavu yaavudhu bidalla :) ]. Once the psy­cho­log­i­cal rea­son for lik­ing Rajini was said that his com­mon man looks and com­plex­ion. With­out make-up and see­ing him in his kaakhi uni­form, any­one can eas­ily say that he is a winch mechanic. His furi­ous­ness is well depicted in the fight with the clerk — one of the best fight scenes; watch Kali’s body lan­guage. The first 30 mins take up time to estab­lish the char­ac­ters. As the story flows, his char­ac­ter gets built up very strongly as you slowly get into Kali’s vari­ants of emo­tions. His anger, sar­casm, affec­tion, tem­per, inabil­ity and what not. I like the famous scene where he meets the Engi­neer about los­ing his job. Char­ac­ter biog­ra­phy and the actir Rajinikanth were used at their best.
ர‌ண்டு கையும் ர‌ண்டு காலும் இல்ல‌ன்னா கூட‌ காளிங்க‌ற‌வ‌ன் பொழ‌ச்சிக்கிவான் ஸார்.. கெட்ட்ட ப‌ய்யன் ஸார் அவ‌ன்..

Valli [ Shoba] : The native face, expres­sions, inno­cence, hearty laugh and the char­ac­ter was so pleas­ing. She cries in case of any issues — this has been used in all the impor­tant scenes includ­ing the cli­max. She doesn’t know or have much to talk. She is so poetic and got more shots [ may be because BaluMa­hen­dra han­dled the cam­era :) ]. The way Man­gaa [ Jay­alak­shmi ] and her mother gets in to the life of Kali and Valli was han­dled very flu­idly. The Engi­neer has the soft char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and tough when it comes to work. Every char­ac­ter gets their dia­logues in ration and that helps to under­stand them bet­ter. Valli was inno­cently beau­ti­ful [ Check “adi penne” song ] and Man­gaa was gor­geous [ watch வைக்க‌ற‌ எட‌மா அது ;) ]

The other impor­tant fac­tor is IR.. It starts with Maan­i­name — this is the other song where Gan­jira is used apart from Nith­tam nitham. For any new direc­tor, the role IR played was pro­lific. I never saw the effec­tive usage of Dolak in any other film — that too it’s used in cli­max. The other obser­va­tion is that he used a lot of San­toor music. He uses a bit music even for mov­ing the winch. IR’s effect is also used with silence too.

Above all, it’s a director’s movie. He decides what to come and what not to. The neat depic­tion of even smaller char­ac­ters make the story inter­est­ing [ includ­ing ve.a.murthy, samikannu etc ]. The fight sequence which shows the anger of Kali was the best I have seen with per­sons rolling in the road. The body lan­guage used by Kali was amaz­ing with fold­ing the lungi, but­ton­ing the shirt back.. excel­lent. Every scene show in the first half gets repeated with the same tempo [ Kali doesn’t regret for it — the clerk insult­ing him, uriyadi game, his work etc., ]. The clash between Kali and Engr is well depicted; they are dif­fer­en­ti­ated right from their skin tone, body lan­guage, voice, man­ners, dress, rich vs poor Kali’s house doesn’t even have elec­tric­ity — they both are good but entirely dif­fer­ent in express­ing the same. The beauty is every minute detail is explained in the visu­als mostly and more in sharp dia­logues. The good exam­ple is explained here by Sude­samithran http://www.uyirmmai.com/Uyirosai/ContentDetails.aspx?cid=915

Balu Mahen­dra has worked as cin­em­togr­pa­her.. with 35 mm lim­i­ta­tion, he has worked out the best, it seems. The good thing for that period is that they used min­i­mum make-up [ Check the pow­der coated face of Rad­hika in Kizhake pogum rayil — Saamee ]. Though there were 2 pairs, not even a sin­gle duet was formed forcibly — what a relief ! Good that they didn’t even use the usual Tamil cin­ema word kad­hal [ except when Kali asks the Engr with doubt .. இந்த காத‌ல் அது இதுன்னி சொல்லி வ‌ருமே.. அது.…எதாவ‌து.. ? ] — Even the engi­neer pro­poses to Valli for mar­riage very decently — one of the best pro­pos­als on screen !

IR played his usual role in BGM and songs. Sen­t­hazham poovil, maan­i­name and Adi penne are the good num­bers [ oth­ers are inserted ]. I don’t see the con­nec­tion of tribal peo­ple in Mahen­dran films [ Aasaiyai kaathula in Johny — it’s sim­i­lar to MM ]. He has BGMs for every char­ac­ter and sequence and the best of dolak comes out in the cli­max. The cli­max looks cin­e­matic and the com­pro­mise looks sud­den. I never liked the logic of Vil­lain turn­ing into good. At least, kali says still he didn’t like Engr.

It ends with Kali asking

” இப்ப‌ என்ன‌ங்க‌டா ப‌ண்ணப் போறீங்க‌.. புரிஞ்சிகிட்டீங்க‌ல்ல‌…” [ எப்படி ப‌ட‌ம் எடுக்க‌ற‌துன்னு :) ]. Though it was not intended, I inter­pret that the film asked the tamil cin­ema world in that way.

Trivia :

- The river scene where the char­ac­ters feed the fishes was taken in Sringeri tem­ple [ Tunga badra river ]. Check the above photo — I had been there.

- Dur­ing the shoot­ing Balu Mahen­dra and Venu chet­ti­yar had some con­flict and that was resolved by Kamal !!

–The winch was loacted in Glen­mor­gan neat ooty.

- There are 2 intre­pre­ta­tions for the title.. முள்ளும் ம‌ல‌ரும் [ உம்மைத் தொகை :) ] and the other mean­ing was that முள்ளும் ஒரு நாள் ம‌‌ல‌ரும்.

:)

–Toto

Related Posts B

1. Reel rewind — Clas­sics — Muthal Mariyathai
2. Then­merku Paru­vakaa­tru — Not a review.
3. Ameer Sultan’s Saga — Paruthi Veeran.