I finally got a chance to completely watch the movie Iruvar today. As far as Maniratnam's direction goes, I could cite only enthralling moments. It is one of the movies which demands respect when watched.
The story line is a very familiar one depicting the life of two people. One, Anandan, the Actor who enters politics. Two, TamizhSelvan, a poet, writer, follower of DMK and more importantly a politician by plan. The Anandan and TamizhSelvan story flows almost like the real time story between M. G. Ramachandran (famously known as MGR, actor turned politician of TamilNadu, India) and M. Karunanidhi (the writer turned politician of TamilNadu).
Keeping the politics aside, it can be said that the meticulous details shown in the movie is good. The particular scene of liking is the one where Anandan is shot(with real gun) in his throat by a co-actor. After Anandan is wounded, the camera replaces his eyes. The camera infact falls down in slow motion and the vision shown is that of Anandan seing all the cry among his co-workers as he falls unconsious. Simply brilliant direction.
Prakash Raj has done a wonderful performance as usual. It is great and astounding to see him speak in pure tamil.
Some links to the related political information are given below. A particular point to note is that the movie was released in the year 1997. The year 1997 was the time when M. Karunanidhi was in power as CM of Tamil Nadu (1996 - 2001). It is not surprising the movie was not a great hit given the fact that it tries to tell the real story of not just the two powerful personas in TamilNadu politics and Tamil Cinema. A point to be noted along with the release year is, it was during the same time that J Jayalalitha was be pounded with various offences and court trials.
One of the reason for the movie being directed and choreographed this good may be fact that there was no pressure on Maniratham (or who ever the producer is) to make it a commercial hit. This movie generally lacks the commercial hit nature of any movie generally made by Maniratnam.
LINKS:
1. The IMDB record on this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119385/
2. The real story in a couple of paragraphs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_Ramachandran
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Jayalalithaa
4. Interview of Jayalalitha on BBC HARDTalk India. Very interesting.
Off to sleep now...
Monday, February 20, 2006
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