With Guru the new
buzz on the block, filmmaker and Dil Se screenplay writer Tigmanshu
Dhulia talks up what gives Mani Ratnam that
extra edge.
Filmmaking
doesn’t mean audiences, festivals, reviews and interviews. It
means getting up at six o’clock in the morning. It means the cold,
the rain, the mud and having to carry heavy lights. It’s a nerve-
racking business and at a certain point everything has to come second,
including your family, emotions and private life.
KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI
Is filmmaking an
art form or a money-making exercise? Unfortunately, Indian mainstream
cinema can only be said to be about “filmmaking in the time of cholera”.
2006 was a boom year for the industry financially, but as I see it, the
movies released in 2006 were successful but not sensible. The only two
which both scored at the box office and were worth watching were Lage
Raho Munnabhai and Rang De Basanti. The rest were, to put it plainly,
frivolous crap.
Is it just me or
is there actually a problem with our films? Has audience taste sunk?
Or, since the people must visit the temples of modern India once a week
and watch whatever is offered, is it the multiplex formula that’s
responsible for the decline in story-telling? Big questions and not
ones that can easily be answered here; in any case, this piece is not
about the demise of good filmmaking in India but about the only filmmaker
who is still trying to hold high the spirit of cinema: Mani Ratnam.
 |
Mani’s
trademark is attractive realism,
he is real but not boring, he takes a
moral stand but is never preachy |
Mani is an auteur
in the fullest sense of the word. I am not a critic but a filmmaker
and I know what it takes to make a film that is original, personal and
not frivolous. He’s a doer and a workaholic but then so am I and
so are many other directors. What then is it that makes this man so
unique?
I think Mani holds
all the cards there are in cinema because he is someone who knows how
to use the tricks of the trade as well as his own desires. His body
of work today clearly indicates that he has grown beyond hits and flops.
He is India’s Martin Scorsese — some of his films might
fail commercially, but he commands enormous respect from technicians,
actors and those in the field. Anyone who wants to polish his skills
as an artist should work with the man.
Let’s talk
about his craft. Mani’s trademark is attractive realism, his films
stand mid-way between commercial and alternative cinema, he is real
but not boring, he takes a moral stand but is never preachy, whatever
he does is done with great precision, determination and passion. You
will never see shoddy camerawork or slack editing in any of his films
and nobody shoots songs better than he does.
His central protagonists
are generally drawn from the middle class; his heroes and heroines are
usually people displaced from familiar settings, sent out into an alien
atmosphere. This theme and its attendant conflicts dominate most of
his films, from Mauna Ragam and Nayakan to Roja, Bombay, Dil Se and
now Guru.
Mani is also known
for his strong heroines. Never dependent on the hero, they take decisions,
are active and drive the plot forward. But the area which interests
me most is the way he handles romance. Sheer magic! We all do romantic
scenes, but Mani’s are a combination of vulnerability and sexual
undertone and seem utterly free of artificiality. The actors look comfortable
and real because they are able to surrender completely to the director.
It’s a respect Mani’s earned not by being a powerful filmmaker
but a talented one.
I have had the
privilege of working closely with Mani as a dialogue writer in Dil Se,
his first Hindi film. I met him first with my guru Shekhar Kapoor shortly
after the release of Bombay. I did not like Bombay too much and the
first instruction Shekhar gave me before we were about to meet him was:
“Don’t say anything about his films, he hates criticism.”
My enthusiasm crushed, I had to sit quietly and watch the two friends
talk about life. The next time I met Mani professionally was when my
dear friend Shaad Ali introduced me to him and he offered me Dil Se
to write. I jumped at the offer but remembered my guru’s instruction,
and so we discussed world cinema and cricket but never Mani’s
films.
 After
Guru, I want to tell Mani, ‘I know you give enormously to
your work, but push the button, there’s no one else to do
it’ |
Even though I am
well-acquainted with the entire repertoire of his work, and with a bit
of the person as well, I must say, however, that I still do not understand
where Mani stands politically. Till Guru happened, I used to think he
was more Left-leaning; his stand in Dil Se and in Kannathil Muthamittal
shows that he has a fine political sensibility and great compassion
for human feelings. But Guru? A Leftist leaves Aishwarya stranded and
she eventually marries a capitalist? A man is accused of rank corruption
and he gets off with just a speech? As a fan, I wish Mani had handled
this the way The Godfather does, giving us someone who is both a family
man and on the other side of the law.
Mani deals with
real issues and makes fine films out of them. The moments are wonderful
and the performances great, but when dealing with reality, one must
take a stand. Sitting in the audience after Guru one feels like saying,
“Sir, I know you give enormously to your work, but since you’ve
shown us the path, we expect more. We’re waiting for someone like
you to explode so that something inside us gets a push — push
the button, sir, there’s no-one else to do it, the Govind Nihalanis
and the Shyam Benegals have become too complacent. If it comes from
you, we won’t just stand and watch, we’ll be freed to react.”
And, that said,
I’d add, “I know how much you hate criticism. So, let me
wind up this piece and say adieu.”
Apart from being
a profound filmmaker, Mani is a strong human being. He is not afraid
of taking up subjects that would scare any other director — Bombay
is a clear example, as is Iruvar, loosely based on Jayalalithaa, MGR
and Karunanidhi’s lives. Very few people are aware that he was
attacked after he made Bombay. A man threw a bomb at his house one morning
and Mani, who was in his slippers and reading the newspaper, ran after
him and gave him a good chase. After that incident, he was given security,
but he always hated being under guard.
Mani is a very reserved
person and people at his office speak in whispers. He’s a non-smoker,
an occasional beer drinker, an avid sports enthusiast and an eggetarian
(though I remember taking him to Kake da Hotel in Delhi once, where
he had a helping of their glorious butter chicken). It is said that
even after he had suffered a stroke during the making of Yuva, his enthusiasm
was so high that he wanted to have a video assist from the sets cabled
through to his room so he could continue directing the film. That is
the difference between us mortals and him. We love cinema, he is mad
about it.
My salute to the
guru of Indian cinema. Keep up the good work, Mani sir.
