Stay South, Mani Sir

One of South India’s most talented directors is proving himself an utter waste in trying to appeal to a wider market, his Raavan being a case in point.

There is talent that shines, and talent that succumbs. Mani Ratnam has slid inexorably towards the latter. He has given in to the commercial compulsions of the all-India mass market. He has yielded to an urge to make broadbrush commentary on big picture issues like communalism and Naxalism. He has all but given himself away—his latest flick Raavan being the clinching exhibit—to the drum march of mediocrity, banging away in theatre after theatre. 

For those who’ve followed the director’s films over his three-decade career, all the way from his Kannada and Tamil cinema days, the question that comes to mind 20 minutes into Raavan is how he could let himself make such poor cinema. Surely, he would have seen the rushes. Even if he was seduced momentarily by the visual beauty of V Manikandan and Santosh Sivan’s camera work, there is enough wisdom around him—his brilliant actor wife Suhasini, for instance, now a well-regarded film critic—that could have held up a mirror in good time to save him this embarrassment. 

Doubtless, Mani Ratnam’s modern-context attempt at retelling The Ramayan’s abduction story, with Ram’s archfoe Raavan playing the protagonist, marks the nadir of his career. 

For starters, for some strange reason (maybe because he’s a tribal), Abhishek Bachchan is mud-packed throughout the film, and his acting is limited to making wild, guttural sounds. Govinda, who now weighs close to 20 stones, plays Hanuman (he’s called Sanjivani Kumar), swinging from jeeps to trees while staying loyal to his supposedly Aryan master, the unimaginatively  named Dev Sharma. Mani Ratnam stubbornly refuses to tell us who or what these tribals are fighting. The villagers, by and large, seem happy and well fed. It’s always raining, rivers are swollen, fish and food aplenty, and the landscape seems the most fertile ever captured on Indian celluloid. Beera or Raavan’s general outrage, for the most part, appears manufactured. Apparently, Mani Ratnam was trying to show ten different emotions, depicting Raavan’s ten heads, and during the course of the film each is supposed to fall by the wayside. Amitabh Bachchan has twittered his disappointment with the way his son was handled in the film. Blame it on poor editing, even direction—for once, senior Bachchan’s rants seem justified. 

The kidnapped Aishwarya Rai, who’s ready to fall off a cliff to save her honour and dignity rather than be shot by her captor, begins to enjoy his company to the extent that she almost allows him to fondle her breasts. What gives? How does a beautiful urbane woman who cooks with red wine  get attracted to an uncouth tribal who guns down people for fun? Is it plain Stockholm syndrome or Raavan’s rakshasa passion? 

Mani Ratnam is more interested in showing mist-covered emerald green waterbodies than answering such questions. His contemporary version of Sita’s agnipariksha ends up as the most hilarious moment of the film: her husband asks Aishwarya to take a polygraph test to prove her ‘purity’. It’s a precipitous decline for a director who once made it look cool, virtuous and graceful to marry a prostitute in Nayakan.

Something’s gone horribly wrong with a filmmaker who could have been India’s answer to Martin Scorsese.

Over the last 50 years, four directors have redefined the Tamil film industry at various points of time. Contemporaries K Baalachander and R Sridhar set the benchmark in the 60s and 70s. Then came Bharatiraja, whose portrayal of Tamil Nadu’s villages is unmatched even today. Mani Ratnam, the 54-year-old son of a Tamil film distributor, didn’t exactly storm his way into the film industry when he made his debut Kannada film Pallavi Anupallavi starring Anil Kapoor and Lakshmi (of Julie fame) in his early twenties. Critical acclaim for it arrived years later, when Mani Ratnam became a commercial success. In 1986, he made Mouna Ragam, his first box office hit, a national award winner, and one of his finest films to date. The film was a sweet love story where a young Revathi, yet to come to terms with the death of her dashing lover Karthik, is forced to marry Mohan, a gentle industrial relations manager. Revathi finally lets go of her past and manages to reciprocate her husband’s affections. Shot mostly in Delhi, Mani Ratnam brought in some much needed visual sophistication and elegance in the depiction of urban landscapes in Tamil cinema. Its impact on Tamil cinema is such that directors rehash scenes and dialogues from the film even today. Manohar, Revathi’s lover played by Karthik, remains the template for a carefree, reformed ruffian worth falling in love with.

Next came Nayakan, a runaway hit and one of the best films ever made in India, according to some. All Bollywood directors keen to pay ‘cinematic tribute’ to The Godfather should be made to watch Nayakan thrice a day. 

The film resurrected Kamal Haasan’s flagging career and brought Mani Ratnam national acclaim. Velu Nayakar, modelled on Mumbai underworld gangster Varadaraja Mudaliar, was a Robin Hood who robbed the government and the rich to help the poor. In the film’s final scene, Velu Nayakar’s grandson, outside his trial court room, innocently asks the question that defines his existence. “Neenga nallavara, kettavara?” (Are you good or evil?) 

That dialogue, among several from the film, is now part of Tamil linguistic lore.

But after Nayakan, something happened to Mani Ratnam. Perhaps he’d outgrown the Tamil film industry. Maybe he needed a bigger canvas. Universal acclaim and all the rest of it perhaps. Greater challenges beckoned. And what bigger a challenge than attempting a modern day Mahabharat? He cast south India’s two biggest superstars Rajnikanth and Mammooty in Dalapathy, a film based on the Karna-Arjuna rivalry. The star cast and Ilayaraja’s music made it a superhit, but the oversimplified treatment of a fairly complex slice of the epic was perhaps the earliest indication of ‘Mani Sir’ getting carried away by his own hype. 

Then came the phase when Mani Ratnam felt compelled to tackle big national issues like terrorism (Roja), communal violence (Bombay) and separatism (Dil Se), a sort of trilogy on alienation. Then, there was also his portrayal of the rage of Eelam Tamils (Kannathil Muthamittal), youth disaffection (Yuva), and even a biopic of India’s most successful and polarising businessman Dhirubhai Ambani (Guru). Each, however, was marked by one characteristic: oversimplification. Guru, especially, had all the corporate insight of a trainee journalist.

Now, some of his scenes, like his musical partner AR Rahman’s music, have begun to feel repetitive. For instance, when Guru’s Gurubhai angrily storms into the young reporter Madhavan’s house and finds a mantelpiece picture of his betrothal to Vidya Balan, he mellows down. It’s a scene straight out of Nayakan, when an angry Kamal Haasan finds that his estranged daughter is married to the policeman out to get him.

Mani Ratnam is at his best when he handles urban middle-class Tamil characters, or Tamil heroes. That’s the slice of society he understands best. Not surprisingly, his success rate nosedives whenever he attempts simultaneous Hindi and Tamil versions of a film, as he does with Raavan. When he spreads himself thin in a quest for wider national appeal, he’s at best a great music video maker, that too when there’s camera help from Santosh Sivan or PC Sreeram.  Stay south, Mani Sir. Raavan makes one want to rush out of the hall uttering guttural sounds like poor Abhishek.

About The Author

TR Vivek