The article which appears below was originally published in Krishna Tiloks's book, Notes Of A Dream. ©The rights to this material are reserved to the owner. If you have any concerns or comments, please send an email to info@rahmaniac.com.
Mani Ratnam is one of India’s finest and most influential directors; he has been so for over thirty years now.
Born in 1955 into a family that ran one of the biggest motion picture production companies in India, ironically enough, the man never intended to get into films when he was growing up. He was no Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson and didn’t have any moment of revelation when he was a child, seeing a particular film and deciding he wanted to be a director. In fact, in keeping with the traditional 1950s’ Indian upbringing, he was discouraged from even watching too many films when he was young. He finished school and earned his degree in commerce in Chennai, did an MBA in finance at Jamnalal Bajaj, a premier institution in Mumbai, and even got a job at a management consultancy service.
He stuck with it for a few months and then decided to give it all up and make films—after interactions with friends who were about to make, or were in the process of making, their first movies.
‘There was no one moment,’ he says. ‘I accompanied a few friends on shoots, helped them out, and I slowly realized that I wanted to spend my life making films.’
It was a rough road though. Venus Pictures, his family’s production company, was in a slow but steady downward spiral by then, owing to a string of films that underperformed at the box office, poor investments and the failing health of its founder and patriarch, ‘Venus’ Krishnamurthy Subramaniam—Mani’s uncle. The company would soon go bust completely and close down.
Mani’s parents were far from delighted at the prospect of their son throwing away his steady, well-paying corporate job to get into that most risky business of films. His mother would often lament about his ‘sitting around at home, perched on the laundry basket, writing stories’. His uncle Krishnamurthy though would always assure her that her boy was going to ‘be big’. The man was an amateur reader of horoscopes and said that it was clear that Mani was going to be ‘the most successful’ of the family’s next generation.
It was a prediction that came true—and how.
Mani’s first film was a small Kannada movie called Pallavi Anu Pallavi. It was produced by his uncle and was the tale of a young man who is originally in a relationship with a girl, meets an older woman, falls in love with her, jeopardizes his existing relationship and ends up losing both women. The lead actor was a then-unknown young man named Anil Kapoor (who would one day rise to international prominence with his role in Slumdog Millionaire and also as the antagonist in the Tom Cruise–starrer Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol), and the female leads were Lakshmi (then a big name in South Indian cinema) and Kiran Vairale.
The movie was shot in Mercara, in the Coorg region, on a shoestring budget. Mani got some of the top technicians in the South Indian movie business to work on his film for a fraction of their regular rates—a testament to his charisma and ability to get people to buy into his vision.
The film was photographed by Balu Mahendra, one of the top cinematographers of the time, and edited by Bhimsingh Lenin, again, one of the biggest film editors in the 1980s. The music was composed by Ilayaraja.
Pallavi Anu Pallavi was not a big success. It was critically acclaimed and won the Karnataka State Award for Best Screenplay, but it wasn’t a revolution and it certainly did not make truckloads of money.
Mani’s next three films—a Malayalam movie called Unaru and two Tamil projects, Pagal Nilavu and Idhaya Kovil—fared little better. His films were noted for being aesthetically and technically brilliant with offbeat plots, beautiful treatment of scenes and great music, but they were not the best ventures for a production company to invest in.
However, in 1986, he made a Tamil film called Mouna Ragam which would change his life—and Tamil and Indian cinema—forever. The story was about a young girl (played by Revathi) who rebels against an arranged marriage as she is still in love with an old flame (portrayed by Karthik) who died before they could elope, and then finally moves on and develops a strong emotional connect with her husband (Mohan).
Mouna Ragam finally cemented Mani Ratnam’s position as a talented and gutsy director. It wasn’t a blockbuster, but it was a cultural milestone. And the movie’s songs (composed by Ilayaraja) were fabulous. They were immediately popular upon release and still are today. (AR, as it so happened, was playing the keyboard at Raja’s recording sessions and programming for the composer at this time and so did work on the film, after a fashion.)
Soon after Mouna Ragam’s release, all the biggest actors in Tamil cinema were suddenly eager to meet and work with ‘Subbu’, as Mani was commonly called back then.
Slowly, financial success and major critical recognition started coming the director’s way. His Tamil films Nayagan, Anjali and Agni Natchathiram were landmark movies that enthralled audiences across India for their superior craftsmanship, fascinating stories, marvellous performances and terrific music. Nayagan is routinely listed as one of the greatest Indian films ever. Time magazine even included it on its list of All-Time 100 Best Films, and it was India’s official entry for the Oscars that year (it wasn’t nominated).
Mani Ratnam became a household name and a director worthy of respect. Much like A.R. Rahman, the man was a brilliant innovator, pushing the limits of his art and giving audiences something new to wonder about each time he created a piece of work. And the ‘Ilayaraja–Mani Ratnam combo’ had, in the words of film critic Baradwaj Rangan, become ‘something to really look forward to’.
If Raja was making music for a Mani Ratnam movie, you knew that you were about to hear some great songs. Mani had a good ear for music and always managed to get quality work out of his composer.
By the time Mani Ratnam and Ilayaraja came to work together on the Rajinikanth-starrer Thalapathi in 1991, their partnership seemed destined to last forever. Ilayaraja really was the king of the film music scene in southern India. The music of Thalapathi, a mafia film set in a small Tamil town, was sublime. Every song—from ‘Rakkamma Kayya Thattu’ and ‘Sundari’ to ‘Yamunai Aatrile’ and ‘Kaattukuyilu’—was a popular success and, like the movie itself, they remain iconic works to this day.
However, in 1992, things took an unexpected twist.
As the truest wisdom holds, everything that has a beginning must have an end. All things pass, and in the entertainment business, this is all the more true. No star shines on endlessly.
Raja had revolutionized South Indian music when he came in, during the mid-1970s. His songs and his sound, the likes of which had not been heard up until then, were a breath of fresh air. His melodies were gorgeous and his music never seemed below par or outdated. A failure to stay relevant on his part was certainly not the reason for the change about to occur in the Indian music scene in the early 1990s. It just seems that it was time for things to be shaken up a bit—there can be no better explanation for the events of 1992. It was just the law of nature taking its course.
Neither Raja nor his vast body of work faded from public memory even after the advent of Rahman. To date, the occasional concert Raja does agree to give is always sold out and lauded by the public and critics alike. People love his music. And he is still active as a composer—as recently as 2016, in fact. He scored for that year’s Shah Rukh Khan–starrer, the Hindi film Dear Zindagi. And in 2018, he was awarded the Padma Vibushan, the country’s second-highest civilian award.
