30 years, 22 films, 1 book: 'Conversations With Mani Ratnam'

Book: Conversations With Mani Ratnam
Author: Baradwaj Rangan
Publisher: Penguin  India
Pages: 305
Price: Rs799

When Raavan released in 2010, it got panned by critics and was a box-office debacle. Some self-appointed movie experts even prophesied the end of Mani Ratnam’s career. “It was a problematic film, but look at the films we make otherwise. Comparatively, it wasn’t an entirely worthless effort,” says Baradwaj Rangan, one of the few critics who was appreciative of the film.

It was that year that Rangan, a Chennai-based film critic, deputy editor at The Hindu and author of Conversations With Mani Ratnam, was approached by his publishers to write a book on Ratnam. The idea initially was to bring out essays on Ratnam’s films and Rangan agreed. “I thought that since we lived in the same city, I should let him know I’ll be writing about him. When we met, he suggested we talk cinema and see where things go,” Rangan told DNA. And so followed the detailed discussions of Ratnam’s films that make up Conversations....

The first chapter covers Ratnam’s first four films. Ratnam speaks about how he gave up a career in finance (“None of my producers believed me whenever I went over-budget”) to pursue filmmaking, the initial challenges of making films and gradually finding his voice as a storyteller. The later chapters focus on individual films. Rangan says Ratnam described their sessions as a “serve and volley” match.

Reading the two discuss Ratnam’s films is like listening to a director’s commentary that helps you understand why the films were made the way they were. Ratnam describes what went into recreating Bombay in a Chennai studio for Nayakan, how Alaipayuthey came out of a desire to make a film about a relationship before and after marriage (he wanted Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in the lead and eventually cast R Madhavan and Shalini. In the Hindi remake, Saathiya, Khan made a special appearance) and speaks candidly about technical details, like why certain movies were shot the way they were. His collaborations with technicians — art director Thotta Tharani, cinematographers PC Sreeram and Santosh Sivan, maestros Ilaiyaraaja and AR Rahman, among others — are thoroughly explored. Talking about actors, Ratnam describes Kamal Haasan, who starred in Nayakan, as someone who “brings credibility to the lines and makes it so effortless”. It’s fascinating to glimpse Ratnam’s mind at work.

There are many anecdotes in Conversations.... While making Thalapathy, Ratnam’s adaptation of Karna’s story from Mahabharata, he wanted to ensure he wasn’t “just making another Rajinikanth film.” In the chapter on Dil Se, Ratnam’s first Hindi film, the Tamilian filmmaker says he never felt like he wasn’t in control, despite the unfamiliar language. “The only problem was to keep Shah Rukh’s enthusiasm under control,” Ratnam jokes.

If there is a lack in the book, it is that Rangan doesn’t question why Ratnam’s career as a Hindi filmmaker hasn’t been as successful as his Tamilian one. In conversation with DNA, Rangan said one reason could be that Ratnam usually writes his Tamil films himself, which gives a certain zing to the dialogues. This is sometimes lost when translated to Hindi. “He should explore the Dil Chahta Hai-Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara space,” Rangan said when I asked how Ratnam could do things differently. “Before Farhan Akhtar made films that made the youth feel like someone was telling stories about themselves in a language they understood, Ratnam did it regularly in his earlier films. Maybe, he needs to go back to his early Tamil films phase,” he said.

He has a point: Before Ratnam took up serious issues that concerned the whole country — like militancy and communal violence — he told stories about the urban middle-class youth in films like Agni Natchitam well before Hindi popular cinema’s tentative steps towards current affairs.

Conversations…, in a lot of ways, becomes a masterclass in film and who better than Mani Ratnam to take you through the processes of filmmaking? Ratnam has an impressive success rate at the box office. Most of his films have been well-received by critics and quite a few have shown at international film festivals. This is a rare mix of achievements. Rangan compares the excitement for a Mani Ratnam film release in Chennai to a Shah Rukh Khan film opening in Mumbai. “Even those who don’t [usually] watch films in theatres go out to watch a Mani Ratnam film,” he said. Conversations... gives you an indication of why this is so.