Beyond Reels: The Thalapathy Review

A movie not watched in the theatres but at home before the television, one of Mani Ratnams movies with the biggest star cast ever assembled.

Released in late November 1991, the movie had Rajnikanth working with Mani Ratnam for the first time and also had Malayalam superstar Mamooty in it along with other great actors.

I had never been a personal fan of both Rajnikanth and Mani but something made me watch the movie on Monday afternoon, but this is probably the only movie the super star has tried something differently and that too because the script demanded it and it is his best performance unto date. Rajnikanth rules even without all his style and gimmicks and cigarette flicks and punch dialogues, he portrays Surya with amazing ease, some more movies like these would have gotten him a few national awards.

Thalapathy is Manis take on The Mahabharatha which only includes the mother son relationship between Surya (Karna) and his mother Kunti and the friendship between Duryodhana and Karna. But here it different, both Surya and Devaraj (Mamooty) are gangsters, I thought Mani Ratnam could never come out of the gangster stuff starting from his first movie Pagal Nilavu in Tamil to Yuva but only Nayagan could make a marked difference in his career and also in Tamil cinema mainly due to the genius of Kamal Haasan , this time its different and Mani handles it to his best ability but what irritated me were the dialogues one liners you should say, theres a joke about Manis dialogues it is said that you could write all the dialogues from his movie in a postcard! Santosh Sivan handled the camera a slight difference from the usual P.C.Shreeram who being a personal friend and brilliant cinematographer.

Now to the performances, as you all know I dont elaborate the script as it makes the write up all the more boring Srividya portrays the suffering mother to excellence but she had played characters like this before the extra martially affected mother in this case Kunti. Arvind Swamys debut vehicle which made him one of Manis favorite is here the righteous Arjun the collector who takes on these gangsters, a bubbly Shobana and a silent Bhanu Priya chip in with pivotal roles.

The music needless to say the maestro Ilayaraaja one of his best soundtracks ever, he is great no doubt, the only composer for film music in India arguably, Sundari and Raakamma.. which reached the BBC top ten of all time hits are part of this album and simply an astounding soundtrack.

Even though everything was great in the movie something was lacking in the moviewhich I am not able to say. So this time on the reel-o-meter it is 6.5/10 for this Mani movie, watch it on a lazy afternoon

By

Satyeki

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