(I’m resuming some earlier writings on cinema, the serial order of which was in part suspended, owing to what I’d tout to be academic over-enthusiasm.)
Mani Ratnam has for long been the poster boy of an “artsy” Tamil mainstream cinema, with films such as Nayakan(1987),Iruvar (1997) and possibly the laterRaavanan (2010) flirting with techniques one would normally associate with smaller, independent film-makers. If my opinion is anything to go by, these films sashay far too much into winning over the masses with populist sentiments, than having much original stuff to say, on their own.
But Kannathil Muthamittal (“A Peck on the Cheek“) is a different story.
In what follows, I’m going to take a slightly different view from the oft-quoted excesses on the film’s melodramatic nature. For more on this line, I’d strongly recommend watching the film and reading one or the other of the newspaper reviews of the day.
The movie tells the tale of Amudha, an abandoned Sri Lankan girl, who is adopted by the family of a fiery Tamil poet and engineer, Tiruchelvan, who writes under the pen name of Indra – his wife (an obvious nod to the writer Sujatha aka Rangarajan, who crafted the story on one of his magazine works). When the much-loved Amudha turns 9, her parents break the news of her adoption to her, causing little Amudha to undertake far too many exploits to search for her “true” mother. Indra and Tiruchelvan finally cave in to her demands, and set out to Sri Lanka in the middle of the civil war, to look for Amudha’s biological mother.
But all this is quite simply face value.
The real story, I believe, that’s packaged under the sounds of the Sri Lankan strife, runs on two parallel tracks – one, where Amudha is just a symbol of the “adopted people”, who look to other lands for their safety; and two, the enlightenment of Tiruchelvan. To establish the second nuance, Mani Ratnam cleverly puts in a “father-daughter “song set in Sri Lanka, that ends with a robe-clad Amudha mimicking the pose of a Buddha statue behind her:
Much like the Buddha himself, Tiruchelvan is witness to several disturbing events in Sri Lanka, some of which are: a suicide bombing on the streets that throws him off his egoistic footing (literally), a mass exodus of villagers fleeing their homes with rockets close at their heels, and most impactfully, the image of an aged temple priest who takes refuge in his faith, from the misery around. As a final nail in the coffin, Mani Ratnam weaves in a scene where the poet and his Sinhala friend (played by a delightful Prakash Raj) are roughed up by Tamil militants, forcing a reconciliation of Tiruchelvan’s urban bourgeois identity, with his Tamil ethnicity – a fact well brought out by his spontaneous breaking into a poem about “Tamil-ness”.
The pace of these revelations is not too slow that it leaves things overly obvious to the watcher, and not too quick either, that will warrant a second or a third watch. This is crucially where the “Madras Talkies” touch comes into play, for it requires a dash of familiarity to break the aftermath of the disturbing sequences.
As for the first track, it’s difficult to point to one scene precisely that underlines the analogy – but things become clear after the “Vidai Kodu” song, that there’s more to the adoption story, than just Amudha. This idea surfaces several times at the start, when a newly-wed Shyama (Amudha’s real mother), puts in no unclear terms her love for the land over her passionate affection towards her husband.
Simran as Indra, dazzles with her very easily-essayed role of Amudha’s adopted mom, and takes a fair share of the limelight and praise – only second, I believe to Keerthana (Amudha herself), who makes her age seem an asset instead of a liability. And of course, there’s the customary A.R. Rahman music that complements the mouth-watering screenplay.
Overall, the film’s a must-watch, especially for someone who wishes to truly understand Mani Ratnam’s film-making, in the face of his other movies. This motion picture is a romance too, much like Mani’s others, but it’s a romance of a different kind – where one party seems to reluctant to reciprocate.
Published by Arvind Rameshwar
Passionate academic, somewhat decent quizzer, eager writer and an all the more enthusiastic learner.View all posts by Arvind Rameshwar
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