I have lived most of my life in North India watching both Bollywood and Hollywood cinema. The first Tamil movie I saw was Roja (dubbed in Hindi) by director Mani Ratnam. The director's class was apart from any other Indian director. Clearly Ratnam was able to mix two genres of Indian Cinema that are the opposite ends of each other. Roja was both Art and Commercial (some would say neither.) I saw two more Ratnam movies and a lot of other Tamil movies before I saw Ratnam's Nayakan.
Before I saw it, Nayakan was the kind of movie you hear people talk about with a certain air of sophistry. My Tamil friends showed me a lot of Tamil movies and then we would judge them. Mostly they tried to convince me the movie I just saw was good even though according to me it was not by any standard. I was beginning to feel Tamil cinema is about as bad as Hindi cinema. Hindi Cinema at least had a golden period; Tamil movies seemed to get worse as you went back in time. I blamed it on my lack of understanding of both Tamil language and Tamil culture. Ratnam I was starting to believe was a Hindi director.
Nayakan was the first Mani Ratnam movie I saw in Tamil (subtitles.) By the end I was convinced that Nayakan is probably the best Tamil movie I have ever seen. It is impossible not to notice how much this movie is inspired from Godfather. The theme is similar, the movie follows the life of Velunayakan as he rises on to become an influential smuggler and fighter of people's cause in the slums of Dharavi (Bombay.) Nayakan is Indian version of Godfather both in its setting and its message (emphasis on Indianess). Though I am told that it is based on someone's real life. So mostly Ratnam is paying homage to The Godfather. Nayakan suffers from the cheesiness of most Indian movies, it suffers from what is called the item number - the rain dance, featuring a supposedly sexy dancer. How someone does anything but laugh at a dancing obese woman is only for Tamil movie buffs to explain. Since they explained it to me I will explain it here: the context that this mediocrity should be seen in is this - Tamil audience wants everything from a movie action, laughter, morality, and sex - but not really, sex is taboo. So they end up tantalizing themselves with glimpses of it in a dance. But as soon as you fast forward through this one song, Nayakan comes back to showing its strength again - and this time with a vengeance. What I saw of Nayakan in the first half was an average movie, if only you sit through till the end do you realize how strong the movie is. The direction the acting and the story all begin to mature in the second half of the movie.
Nayakan is a very Indian movie and that too very Tamil. If you have never seen a Tamil movie you will not be able to appreciate Nayakan in one viewing. What will stand out will be the differences from the kind of movie you have seen. Those differences will over shadow the qualities that Nayakan has.
I have said a lot of things about Tamil movies that paints a shoddy picture of Tamil cinema. But my views may suffer from a skew introduced by the small sample size. There probably are many good Tamil movies that I have not seen.
**By the way, Nayakan was in Time Magazine's list of 100 best movies. May 2005 Issue I think.**
Before I saw it, Nayakan was the kind of movie you hear people talk about with a certain air of sophistry. My Tamil friends showed me a lot of Tamil movies and then we would judge them. Mostly they tried to convince me the movie I just saw was good even though according to me it was not by any standard. I was beginning to feel Tamil cinema is about as bad as Hindi cinema. Hindi Cinema at least had a golden period; Tamil movies seemed to get worse as you went back in time. I blamed it on my lack of understanding of both Tamil language and Tamil culture. Ratnam I was starting to believe was a Hindi director.
Nayakan was the first Mani Ratnam movie I saw in Tamil (subtitles.) By the end I was convinced that Nayakan is probably the best Tamil movie I have ever seen. It is impossible not to notice how much this movie is inspired from Godfather. The theme is similar, the movie follows the life of Velunayakan as he rises on to become an influential smuggler and fighter of people's cause in the slums of Dharavi (Bombay.) Nayakan is Indian version of Godfather both in its setting and its message (emphasis on Indianess). Though I am told that it is based on someone's real life. So mostly Ratnam is paying homage to The Godfather. Nayakan suffers from the cheesiness of most Indian movies, it suffers from what is called the item number - the rain dance, featuring a supposedly sexy dancer. How someone does anything but laugh at a dancing obese woman is only for Tamil movie buffs to explain. Since they explained it to me I will explain it here: the context that this mediocrity should be seen in is this - Tamil audience wants everything from a movie action, laughter, morality, and sex - but not really, sex is taboo. So they end up tantalizing themselves with glimpses of it in a dance. But as soon as you fast forward through this one song, Nayakan comes back to showing its strength again - and this time with a vengeance. What I saw of Nayakan in the first half was an average movie, if only you sit through till the end do you realize how strong the movie is. The direction the acting and the story all begin to mature in the second half of the movie.
Nayakan is a very Indian movie and that too very Tamil. If you have never seen a Tamil movie you will not be able to appreciate Nayakan in one viewing. What will stand out will be the differences from the kind of movie you have seen. Those differences will over shadow the qualities that Nayakan has.
I have said a lot of things about Tamil movies that paints a shoddy picture of Tamil cinema. But my views may suffer from a skew introduced by the small sample size. There probably are many good Tamil movies that I have not seen.
**By the way, Nayakan was in Time Magazine's list of 100 best movies. May 2005 Issue I think.**