It all hap­pened on a fine early morn­ing, when we fin­ished watch­ing my life­time movie on a street. Yes! I watched the movie in a street video screen­ing ses­sion, where we used to screen 3 movies in a night with VCP deck. I still remem­ber telling to my brother that movie was too good and pho­tog­ra­phy was excel­lent. May be because of the effect of the dawn, dust and the mist :). It’s one of the movie which makes me to watch from the first frame [water body with let­ter­ing as Thoothukudi ] till the end title card. There are a lot already talked and ana­lyzed much about this movie except my 2 cents :). It’s not only a mile­stone for the tech­ni­cians and the artists involved in the movie, but also to me. I would call this movie as the best “com­plete” movie and I’ll select this movie  if I am cor­nered to just pick one movie out of the 75+ years of Tamil cinema.

  This is one movie, which I have seen numer­ous times in my life [ the other movie was Naan Sigappu manithan — Thanks to the neigh­bor who owned a video rental shop in Ami­jikarai — Video cas­sette days :) ]. Dur­ing those days, my mother used to locate me in the street with the help of Nayagan’s famous BGM and she was right every­time [ Periya Kudumba paatu ivarukku :) ]. I’m not going to glo­rify any­thing about Mani­rath­nam, Kamal, IR, PCSri­ram etc., but share some thoughts about the movie.

For PCSri­ram, I can just watch the visu­als with sound in mute and for IR I can hear the film with­out video. That’s the great con­tri­bu­tion of PCSri­ram and Ila­yaraja to this great­est bio­graph­i­cal flick. Much told and expe­ri­enced about the music part of IR’s 400th film. The fol­low­ing thoughts would be very ran­dom and effec­tively I’ll try to sum­ma­rize the untold part.

PCSri­ram

 The jour­ney of PCSri­ram started very late from Prathap Bothan [ Meen­dum oru Kad­hal kad­hai ], Fazil [ Poove poochu­dava ]and finally ended in the right hands — Mani rath­nam [ Mouna ragam ]. PC has tried out mostly top lights pat­tern [ light falls from the top — police sta­tion sequence where Kamal is beaten ], shafts of light [ light rays falling through from some open window/door in a shot ] and a brown tone through­out the movie. In an inter­view, he praised Kamal about his abil­ity to observe and per­form accord­ing to the light­ing done. It was one great movie which cap­tured the best looks of Kamal­has­san in my opinion.

Bal­aku­maran

I found that the impres­sive dia­logues were penned by Bal­aku­maran when I watched it after innu­mer­ous times. Before that I was just won­der­ing that the sequence where Kamal vis­its Neela was sim­i­lar to one which I came across in Bal­aku­maran nov­els — vis­it­ing a pros­ti­tute. The other novel which I rec­ol­lect most of the under­world stuffs were from Kan­nadi gop­u­ran­gal [ Sri­ra­mulu char­ac­ter was one such sav­ior like Naya­gan ]. The tough­est sit­u­a­tion was the death scene of Surya and mul­ti­ple dia­logues were tried out. Of course, they com­pen­sated the scene with Kamal’s per­for­mance rather than dialogues.

The national award was jus­ti­fied in the hands of Kamal, PCSri­ram and Thotta dha­rani. Most of the sequences were shot in sets — Campa cola grounds and Indian express build­ings of those days. It was pro­duced by Muk­tha films and later taken over by Sujatha films — GV.

Metic­u­lous detailing

I’ll just use few exam­ples of how things are minutely handled.

After the tor­ture, the police throw Kamal in his area and the wet muddy land in that place because of the pre­vi­ous day’s water can­non attack.

The SP char­ac­ter Ragha­van comes to Kamal for his per­sonal prob­lem in police uni­form and to con­vey about an informer in civil dress. I do not mean that it’s a great thought or I observed it. Rather, I won­der about how scenes are writ­ten with so many aspects in mind.

The mar­riage sequence is one of the sim­plest mar­riages ever shown on screen and the reac­tion of Neela to the mar­riage was bril­liant [ Kaa­tril vizhum kanneer ! ].

Every sin­gle char­ac­ter was given it’s due pres­ence and respect exam­ple : National award win­ning actor — MV Vasudeva rao as Vaappa, Reddy broth­ers [ in real life too ! ], Vijayan [ Mani­rath­nam likes him since Uthiripookall days ], cos­tumes and cars used dur­ing var­i­ous periods.

The nat­ural make-up of Kamal was done by Kamal him­self, where he exper­i­mented a lot with his looks. Nei­ther Mani­rath­nam nor PCSri­ram is fond of heavy make-up.

God­fa­ther

After years, when I saw God­fa­ther I and II, I was shocked to know that it’s the source of Nayakan and dis­ap­pointed for a while. I liked both Naya­gan and God­fa­ther series equally. It was too late to take out Naya­gan from mem­o­ries. Later, I got con­vinced that the pre­sen­ta­tion and the treat­ment to the story mat­ters. It’s a com­bi­na­tion of Vardha bhai’s life start­ing at Thoothukudi, end­ing at Mum­bai, dock thefts, Ganesh fes­ti­vals, and of course, Godfather.

 Hol­ly­wood has so many stars rang­ing from Robert de niro, Al pacino, Brando, Jack Nichol­son, Tom Hanks, Rus­sell Crowe, Mel Gib­son — but we do have one Kamal­has­san to repli­cate or rep­re­sent them here.

I remem­ber see­ing the release adver­tise­ments in the paper dur­ing 1987 Deep­avali till the film reached 175 days. Along with this movie, a sim­ple, low bud­geted and reg­u­lar AVM movie which almost shot in sets ran for the same 175 days — It was ‘Manithan’.

–Toto.

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