Newsmaker: Mani Ratnam

He's the Guru

Film director Mani Ratnam's name spells magic. His name is synonymous with films that are technically brilliant, boast of powerful scripts, have superb music for support and are close to reality.

While his latest fare, Guru, is already getting a fair amount of critical appreciation, his earlier Tamil films like Nayakan (also dubbed in Hindi), Mauna Raagam (1986), Anjali (later dubbed in Hindi in 1990), Roja (1992), Bombay (1995) and Yuva (there was a Tamil version of this one as well!) have been received well too.

For those of you who still have not watched Guru, here is a quick synopsis. It is the typical rags-to-riches story of a young man, Gurukant Desai, who, over the years, builds up a textile empire.

While the film has a hefty dose of the political drama, one needs to watch Iruvar, another fabulous offering by Ratnam, to see that it's not just films with political undercurrents that are treated by Ratnam.

If Yash Chopra is Hindi cinema's answer to onscreen love stories, Mani Ratnam is the only name in Tamil cinema who has crafted and presented relationship stories on the big screen.

Ratnam made his directorial debut with a Kannada film, Pallavi Anu Pallavi (1983) starring Anil Kapoor and Lakshmi. Ratnam's films invariably portray entangled relationships.

Take Pagal Nilavu, a film about a youth who is caught between his loyalty to a mafia don and his love for the cop's sister. Then there was Kannathil Muthamittal, (2002), another brilliant film which revolved around a child.

Having excelled in cinematic grammar right from the beginning, his films never went unnoticed.

However, a majority of his films have not been received too well at the box office. And while the director admits to the poor performance of Dil Se due to a shoddy script, even his last fare Yuva (that got Abhishek Bachchan critical acclaim) sank at the BO without a trace.

Ratnam is known to tread the middle path between artistic and commercial cinema. Critics, of course, have not spared him and blame him for commercialising serious issues in the popular mould.

Most of his films have performance-driven scripts and films like Iruvar, for instance, was a real life reflection of the relationship between M G Ramachandran and M Karunanidhi.

Mani Ratnam also revels in the Bollywood theme of music and dance and usually his songs blend well in the stories that he creates. He switched his music loyalties from Illayaraja to A R Rahman after Thalapathi (1991) but it seems the fatigue is showing, especially as Guru's musical score disappoints.

Despite box office failures, Ratnam's actors swear by him. Surya, a popular south Indian actor, who worked in the Tamil version of Yuva, feels he learnt how to "speak with his eyes after working with Mani sir".

And while his loyal fans are thronging to cinema halls to see the technical brilliance in Guru, Mani is busy crafting his next commercial venture, Lajjo, with Kareena Kapoor and Aamir Khan, in Rajasthan.