This is something that i had wished to write about for quite a long time, but just didnt have the patience to sit over and do the needful. But today i sum up all my endurance to write this piece of article. Yes you read it right. The first letter is purposefully left so that it can basically take any character (i = A, B, C, ... K ... M ... T ... ). And i must thank Selvaraghavan's epic "Pudupettai" for urging me to write this very article.
PS: All those who dont have the ability in them to swallow bitterness of a Selva's movie are advised not to cross this Lakshman Rekha.
The indian civilisation is one of the oldest and representation of sex is not new to us (infact we are Pitamahah of this art) with temples containing carvings of various sexual positions and over and above all this, we hav a text form exclusively for this sake. (The Kamasutra is probably one in a million texts and the very authority of indigenous texts which links material pleasure to spiritualism and provides pathways to realise spiritual bliss even through ahem .. sex. Well i shall not delve into the aesthetics of sex, but this was just a brief introduction required to set the scene for a much more intriguing and present day discussion.
We have all witnessed the shrugging of shoulders that a K R Vijaya offers to a Sivaji Ganesan's typical grab of the lower left shoulder. ( I would have screamed in pain, but that's ok, after all sex is just manifestation of a pleasure in pain! ) Those were the days when the country was not yet in a position to accept holes in the pants and whatsoever position they me be at. ( I think people missed the point there. Such holes in the pant were probably a typical commercial example of an intereferometer ! or we are talking of hopping mechanisms in solids, where electrons and holes hav to hop from one site to the other and not tunnel through the barriers. Im amazed !! So a typical seduction / molestation neednt have the hand travel all through the underway. One can just hop between sites !! ) I am just curious of the cinematographers then. How would they convey the fact that on screen, his grab of the shoulder looks scary and not sexy. But those were the times and thats how it was.
Then came the times of Kamal and Rajni in their younger days. Kamal started better off with Balachander to guide him. I think if one watches the epic "Manmadha Leelai" theres no more to write . Still for the benefit of the audience, these were times when patting on the back became a fashion. Putting a hand around the hip, allowing the sweat to travel lustfully from the end of the lower lip to just end of the neck (as though people were unaware of where it wud hav gone next) and showing bare backs (that never sounds anywhere close to even a U/A for me). This is also the time when heroes started showing the hair on their chest ( Well acknowledged by the Greatest philospher of all times " Shri Goundamani" in the movie Indian, when Urmila asks for a male partner to practice for a FashP sequence and when His Holiness offers to help, she rejects him saying that the amount of hair on his chest was a bit less. ) There were other typical styles of directors too. To start with is BharathiRaja's style of showing the hip in the most unholy manner. I never got any close to being intimidated. He depiction of a typical vilage girl, sun tanned all throughout, with absolutely no glamorous make ups and in some ironically un-ironed and dirty cloth on the mud floor and someone, who by the virtue of her character, would take bath probably just once a week. This is it. Her hip would matter me lesser than raw flesh in Bai's shop ! But still, it was something that people admired and acknowledged by going to the theatres repeatedly and keeping their jaws wide open, enough to swallow a Tirupati laddoo all at once.
And theres also the S P Muthuraman style which is magnanimously presented in Sakala kala Vallavan where Kamal describes the pleasure of making out in a single cot (as though we dont know that when people get close enough most of the space of a double cot gets vacant). This is no intelligence. Its a mock to the people admiring such foolish statements. Who on the hell will get on a bed ( whether single/double/triple cot) and lay one and half meters away while getting started. And yet people clapped and applauded. Oh yeah, i have to dedicate atleast a couple of lines to the Bhagyaraj era. The 'Murungakkais' (Drumstick) and whatnot flourished during his period. He actually scrypted a style for himself which i can (though not accept) appreciate, since it was different and actually horny. But repeated usage of Radhika is intolerable (and she doesnt look hot). Ahh, now i enter the true stage of comparisons, contradictions and condemnations. Mani Rantam and Co.
This is the contour that surrounds my time. And so it can be talked about in good detail with confidence. Mani Ratnam is a name that resonates with Indian movies, i still dunno why. If you want better movie makers, he himself acknowledges the presence of many others. And if you want commercial movie makers, i cant count. He probably clicked because he represents the typical middle class family who didnt want anything too deep but at the same time wanted everything. Its like i am fine watching my hands go near the navel, but not touch it. Its manipulating the boundary conditions. And Mani's flavour attracted many, it touched me too (but with anger at times) . In many ways Mani is the forerunner of plenty of novelties in the Tamil and Indian Cinema industry. Portraying moods is something he does well, and even his Pisa would have been alarmed when honey drops were poured onto Amala's navel. ( Heyy, this is Shakeela stuff, only Amala is too pretty). How did this go unscathed? Im surprised. I actually wonder at times, for all the respect that we have on such a director. I cant imagine him narrating this part of the scene as he would narrate some other. And i also cant imagine how the heroine would react on first hearing to this. I can surely imagine Selvaraghavan telling his brother " look at her hips like there is a diamond and open let your tongue bow down in shame ". But Mani telling Amala " In this scence, we will have honey poured on your belly " (okay, i cant do it) But Mani is supposedly the best story teller around. And P C Sriram measuring camera angles to present it aesthetically. Common guys, its vulgarity. And trying to depict vulgar lust with a sense of aesthetics is like decorating shit. Shit is shit , whether presented ambiently or not. That way, a shameless depiction of the animalistic instincts by Selva actually gains my appreciation for being bold enough to show that vulgarity is vulgarity and looks dirty for all expect the person behaving so. Btw im curious why so much focus around the navel. Is it some Black hole kind of vanishing into nothing that is so amazing about it? Or is it just that, we dont want to get an extra inch or two further, into the regions of " That which must not be named " ? Even in Roja, there’s this scene where Arvind Sami plays with Madhubala while she is just wearing her top half and pulling that as much as she can to cover her bottom half. This is cheating (as a child would say). He just silently introduced a lot of things, but many others get spanked on for vulgarity on screen and he gets to sit and silently laugh at them.
And yes, I am talking of Shankar and his Boys. It was not so great a movie, but to corner this movie as an insult to womanhood is seriously audacious. Then what of the umpteen tiger bites that our yesteryear heroes awarded their heroines with? What about the lustfull and shameless looks that Kamal and Rajni offered to their heroines and the cameras that switched relentlessly between the heroes’ face/eyes to the heroines wonder curves tens of times? What about those arrogantly audacious Bhagyaraj movies where he was probably just marginally better off than an unholy C Grade movie? And what about the latest sensation S J Suryah (I wont describe anything about his movies, I hav resolved not to). But its not that Shankar is as pure aas 24 Carat Gold. I was quite nervous all throughout this famous movie of his, not knowing how I will convince my parents, when they will come to know that I had watched this movie. In fact its quite interesting how Shankar depicts these things. Leave out Boys (since its storyline required something more than ordinary and he gave quite an overdose) but otherwise, his is more dialogue oriented (refer Anniyan dialogues just after the song 'Kannum Kannum Nokia' or just before ' Randakka'). Madhubala’s navel seems to be everyone’s delight (obvious in Gentleman as in Agni Nakshatram). But im sorry for Aishwarya Rai. I couldn’t just stand that idiot of the first order Prashant kissing her some 15-20 odd times in one song! And imagine the count with the number of retakes. That would easily have been the day of his life. He may even leave his last few breaths thinking of this.
Come year 2000 and we have our Selva with us. He is a brand now and in fact his movies are a cult (I dunno how he managed that). That smile on the heroes’ face in 7G Rainbow colony is seriously a gem of a face expression. Shamelessness to the core. Its like if someone hits you, shouts foul at you, throws nasty things at you, insults your mother, father and the whole family of yours, describes you as some cheap nasty disgusting brat, and you are still there, as ever, in peace, giving that nasty little smile that drives the onlooker crazy to start shouting foul again. I think the Indian Cricket team needs him. He can drive the Aussies crazy as they try to sledge. I can imagine the plight of Andrew symonds tired (like Dushshasana) of shouting foul and staring like (a monkey) himself.
Moving to the heroines themselves, in the present millennia there are people who stand out for some of their achievements. Rambha – for her thighs (this is still something im pondering about, do our men ogle at ‘hippopotamus thighs’?) And next comes Simran- for her hip (this is something I will vouch for any day) She is probably one of finest actress the Tamil industry has seen for quite some time. She has looks, is a trained dancer and acts well. This is a very very rare combo and hats off to all those directors who got the best out of all these three departments of hers. Her dance in Allthotta Bhoopathi is something I admire every time I watch. What a pity in the way she was utilized in ‘New’ (I hate S J Suryah). Trisha- face. Man she is too good. But unfortunately she is utterly bitter an actress to swallow. But amongst all these things, I think that it would be unfair if I don’t talk a bit about Bollywood.
Bollywood in itself is a topic for a blog entry but I shall just acknowledge the advancements in this region of Indian movies. Girls seem to need only two inches wide clothes to cover themselves and THEY DON’T LOOK PRETTY. Worst is the combination of the music that they dance to. ‘Pappu can’t dance sala’ is easily the worst Rahman Song probably only in competition to the Ghajini crap. None of the Bollywood directors have impressed me in terms of their exploitations of heroines in this aspect in recent times. It seems like even well reknowned actors like Nana Patekar need a bed-room scene to kick off their Taxi No. 9211 which I just ‘fast forwarded’. Guys please wake up. Im talking of some really admirable scenes like the one in Desperado by Robert Rodriguez. If you cant think just cut the crap. There are a lot of Shakeela’s doing the job and don’t forget, at a time in the Mallu industry, two new releases of Mohanlal and Mammooty flopped with a Shakeela movie rooling the roost for more than 100 days. Titanic was holy, Irrepresible was holy, for that matter even Malena was holy ( in the same lines as Selva’s Kathal konden and Pudupettai). But showing hip just because its ‘masala’. Showing cleavage arbitrarily just because people need to stay is just intolerable. For that, the script can as well have a complete scene dedicated to some masala stuff which is properly thought of and then presented. That way, S J Suryah’s Valee was really good. The storyline required that. Or a Avvai Shanmughi that had women come and reveal their problems was funny (plus served the masala purpose). But please stop the ‘from nowhere song in which Nayantara dances with kids lesser than the age of 10 revealing her so-so’.
There are situations when moods and sex complement the movie and narration. At such points it’s a treat to watch and appreciate the imagination of the storyteller. But in other cases, its just plain money-marketing. I would like to end this off with an off-beat but ‘something I liked’ quote of Vijay in one of his movies Sivakasi “ Uckle la kaathu vaangaruthu, thoppul la ring podaruthu, thodaila aart varayarathu. Onga odambula ethana macham irukkunu mathavangalukku theriyara maadiri dress pannikitu apram anga pathan inga thottan nu oora koota vendiyathu” (Whether he realizes or not, it is exactly the same when we watch heroines nowadays come on screen. And this is a comment that would suit better the DIRECTORS, noy the audience)
