Interesting it is in life,art and elsewhere,when the stage is set for a show between equals. The perception, the imagery,experience and just about everything is more appealing in this than the more mediocre ones. The principle of duality is strongly enforced, the experience is enriching and beautiful. In our world, it might explain why a Federer-Nadal match is so big, for instance. As humans, we tend to be driven to be similar to one another, to be like for like. We are in an endless quest to always pit ourselves against an equal. Or with an equal. When competing,we derive more pleasure when the rival is as good as us, if not better. When not, we wish to associate ourselves with someone like us, as good as us, if not better. In love and in war, everything is more beautiful when it is between equals. Like for like, the comparison draws more interest. No matter how you look at it! An intelligent conversation with a like-minded individual, a musical duet, an intense argument, an action sequence in a movie, these are but a few examples of the kind am talking about.
Strangely enough, in art as in life,although one associates artistes to be solitary creatures confined in their strange and quirky minds, the best and beautiful expressions have been between two artistes who are masters and equals.Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir or KVN and Palaghat Raghu among the musicians I listen to. In the same context, film actors and costars who share a chemistry have been much talked about in the Indian film industry. We have seen movies where the actors' chemistry has taken the movie to an altogether different level. It is a very cliched subject, yes, but sometimes, certain artistes are more equal than the others!
I have seen an Amitabh Bachchan-Rekha, a Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol, a Rajkumar-Kalpana or a Vishnuvardhan-Arathi and admired at depth the intensity of their togetherness onscreen. I have enjoyed many a dialogue, an argument, an expression, a dance duet and a playful romance as many of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s did. We were the lucky generation in the sense of what Indian cinema today has become. The movies we watched had drama ,music and dance all woven together so aesthetically that it invoked in us, a deep desire to appreciate the finer things in life. The movies we grew up on had all the elements of the 'Navarasas' as they are referred to - the nine essential expressions of life and existence. None of today's fake tan as I call it. We were Indian and we showcased it. We celebrated, cried, shouted, sang and danced and emoted through life and art. And broke rules too!
Sorry, I digress. This is not a post on Indian movies in the last millenium. It hardly is. But in a way it is. No discussion on Indian cinema can be complete without a reference to regional language cinema. Unfortunately, Bollywood mesmerised the entire world into thinking that India is like what is shown in a Hindi movie.That is hardly indicative of Indian culture as a whole. Bollywood captures the life and culture of North India for most part. That is it. Today, it hardly captures even that, but I shall not digress again!
For years, south Indian cinema dominated entertainment in India. Some of the finest intellectuals and artistes churned out movies incomparable to any like their own generation elsewhere in India and sometimes across the seas too. Cross-over and parallel cinema is a buzzword today, but some of these movies and actors were already doing that. Method acting was more or less the norm.And music. And Tamil cinema. One did not have to go to a carnatic music kutchery to know what a mohanam or a shankarabharanam was. The common man in South India was an elite music lover and had access to some very fine music. Tamil cinema has been and shall be the most experimental of them all. Tamil cinema had the luxury of carnatic music at its disposal, something that was explored to its fullest potential by the likes of Illayaraja, K Balachander, etc.
Again I digress, probably for the last time in this blog post. As some of my readers might know, I have blogged a lot in the past, about this and that but a lot about music and movies. It has been a while and sometimes the motivation to write needs to come through a laborious process of trying to find the right creative mood. I found one such yesterday. I chanced upon a youtube video of a very old song from the Tamil movie 'Varumayin Niram Sivappu' meaning the 'The colour of poverty is red'. I used to know the song years ago and somehow amidst the mass pile of music we produce, had got lost in my mind. The movie as its name suggests, has a strong social flavour to it and is probably now on my list of "To watch old classics", one which is growing by the day. But, it was the song that captured my attention and brought about the creative mood that has prompted me to write one long blog post. For the song is no ordinary one. It is picturised on perhaps, Indian (tamil specifically) cinema's most under rated yet immensely powerful on screen couple - Kamal Hassan and Sridevi. They were, in my very humble opinion, more equals than anyone else. And this song, this very song is perhaps the most accurate depiction of their equal-ness.( No word like this in English but I take liberties! )
Kamal Hassan and Sridevi, on their own, achieved stardom unlike any others. Both of them came from Tamil Nadu, struggled initially and made a huge mark in Bollywood and other regional cinema, a feat that remains unsurpassed even today. They are artistes that need no talking about. Sridevi was perhaps the last of the quintessential Bollywood poster girl of the 90s. She is known as a superstar, a mega stylish diva, blah blah blah, (what with her comeback in English-Vinglish in October 2012!) but she was a big name much before that. She was a star in the 80s in Tamil movies, years before she had her first botox injection to dance to the tunes of Hindi cinema ( literally!) Not to mention her nose job!Kamal on the other hand was always a method actor. Always broke the rules, he did. Even today.One can hate him or like him but one cannot ignore him. He is perhaps the finest of natural actors we have today. And they came together in Moondram Pirai in 1982 and am still trying to make up my mind as to who deserved the national award there!
This song am talking about here "Sippi Irukkadu" is a classic showpiece of the finesse that this pair produced in the 80s. It is almost as if the song was composed as a tribute to their double act. I post the video of this song at the end of this post and encourage you to watch both their expressions at the same time.(you can with a little practice). It is mindblowing. It is a simple song, ordinary a composition compared to so many masterpieces that Tamil cinema has produced. But, it is elevated to perfection by these two. The fact that two actors can complement their facial expressions to be in perfect harmony while playing their individual parts is amazing. Most actors fail here. Most actors are shown together yet do not appear to be in harmony while sharing screen space.
Cut to this song on youtube, someone has added subtitles to it and I have my own issues with subtitles. No matter how hard you try, translating the exact emotion from a vernacular language to the all purpose English simply does not work! It always falls short. The song itself is a simple romantic duet of which we have millions in our movie industry. But this one is a duel as well. She being a singer, challenges him to compose lyrics to her tunes impromptu! (Tough one that!) And this song is all about how they express their admiration and mutual attraction for each other through the medium of art. It is a match between equals. As actors, these two have always challenged each other when playing opposite each other and in this reel piece too, they seem to challenge each other. And it is superbly natural. His gestures wonderfully mimic carnatic musicians when they have got some sangati or musical expression right! Expressions like 'Appadiya' and 'Beautiful eh' are so aptly executed not to forget the wonderful playback singing that sets it in. Sridevi has matched that up word for word literally and figuratively. Her amazing grace and poise, the manner in which she covers her ears to get the right tune in her head (something musicians do) and her playfulness while trying to outwit him all the time,yet appreciative of his quick responses, every one of these gestures show that Kamal Hassan and Sridevi are equals of the first order. It seems almost as if they played out their respective parts in reel life as they did in real. The lyrics of the song, again, seem to do exactly that. There have been several romantic duets full of highly poetic structure and sentimentalism but in my opinion, this one does the job neat. Strikes the right chord. It is simple, subtle and yet elegant. Kamal Hassan has always had looks that has appealed to the opposite gender ( myself included) but in this, his casual attire matched with his part as an intellectual makes it endearing. Sridevi looks like Sridevi minus botox. Not anything like what she did in Chandni but she is a traditional South Indian girl who sings carnatic music.She looks and plays the part. It appeals to the senses,evokes emotions of the right kind and brings back nostalgic memories of the days bygone. And most importantly, it brings to light the beauty of a match made in heaven transposed onto a few tens of millimetres of reel of which dreams are made of.
And for those of us who understand Tamil, I quote from the most touching line in the song itself...
Mayakkam thandada yaar, Tamilo ? Amudho ? Kaviyo ?
Trying to get back to blogging....
-Saaveri
Strangely enough, in art as in life,although one associates artistes to be solitary creatures confined in their strange and quirky minds, the best and beautiful expressions have been between two artistes who are masters and equals.Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir or KVN and Palaghat Raghu among the musicians I listen to. In the same context, film actors and costars who share a chemistry have been much talked about in the Indian film industry. We have seen movies where the actors' chemistry has taken the movie to an altogether different level. It is a very cliched subject, yes, but sometimes, certain artistes are more equal than the others!
I have seen an Amitabh Bachchan-Rekha, a Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol, a Rajkumar-Kalpana or a Vishnuvardhan-Arathi and admired at depth the intensity of their togetherness onscreen. I have enjoyed many a dialogue, an argument, an expression, a dance duet and a playful romance as many of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s did. We were the lucky generation in the sense of what Indian cinema today has become. The movies we watched had drama ,music and dance all woven together so aesthetically that it invoked in us, a deep desire to appreciate the finer things in life. The movies we grew up on had all the elements of the 'Navarasas' as they are referred to - the nine essential expressions of life and existence. None of today's fake tan as I call it. We were Indian and we showcased it. We celebrated, cried, shouted, sang and danced and emoted through life and art. And broke rules too!
Sorry, I digress. This is not a post on Indian movies in the last millenium. It hardly is. But in a way it is. No discussion on Indian cinema can be complete without a reference to regional language cinema. Unfortunately, Bollywood mesmerised the entire world into thinking that India is like what is shown in a Hindi movie.That is hardly indicative of Indian culture as a whole. Bollywood captures the life and culture of North India for most part. That is it. Today, it hardly captures even that, but I shall not digress again!
For years, south Indian cinema dominated entertainment in India. Some of the finest intellectuals and artistes churned out movies incomparable to any like their own generation elsewhere in India and sometimes across the seas too. Cross-over and parallel cinema is a buzzword today, but some of these movies and actors were already doing that. Method acting was more or less the norm.And music. And Tamil cinema. One did not have to go to a carnatic music kutchery to know what a mohanam or a shankarabharanam was. The common man in South India was an elite music lover and had access to some very fine music. Tamil cinema has been and shall be the most experimental of them all. Tamil cinema had the luxury of carnatic music at its disposal, something that was explored to its fullest potential by the likes of Illayaraja, K Balachander, etc.
Again I digress, probably for the last time in this blog post. As some of my readers might know, I have blogged a lot in the past, about this and that but a lot about music and movies. It has been a while and sometimes the motivation to write needs to come through a laborious process of trying to find the right creative mood. I found one such yesterday. I chanced upon a youtube video of a very old song from the Tamil movie 'Varumayin Niram Sivappu' meaning the 'The colour of poverty is red'. I used to know the song years ago and somehow amidst the mass pile of music we produce, had got lost in my mind. The movie as its name suggests, has a strong social flavour to it and is probably now on my list of "To watch old classics", one which is growing by the day. But, it was the song that captured my attention and brought about the creative mood that has prompted me to write one long blog post. For the song is no ordinary one. It is picturised on perhaps, Indian (tamil specifically) cinema's most under rated yet immensely powerful on screen couple - Kamal Hassan and Sridevi. They were, in my very humble opinion, more equals than anyone else. And this song, this very song is perhaps the most accurate depiction of their equal-ness.( No word like this in English but I take liberties! )
Kamal Hassan and Sridevi, on their own, achieved stardom unlike any others. Both of them came from Tamil Nadu, struggled initially and made a huge mark in Bollywood and other regional cinema, a feat that remains unsurpassed even today. They are artistes that need no talking about. Sridevi was perhaps the last of the quintessential Bollywood poster girl of the 90s. She is known as a superstar, a mega stylish diva, blah blah blah, (what with her comeback in English-Vinglish in October 2012!) but she was a big name much before that. She was a star in the 80s in Tamil movies, years before she had her first botox injection to dance to the tunes of Hindi cinema ( literally!) Not to mention her nose job!Kamal on the other hand was always a method actor. Always broke the rules, he did. Even today.One can hate him or like him but one cannot ignore him. He is perhaps the finest of natural actors we have today. And they came together in Moondram Pirai in 1982 and am still trying to make up my mind as to who deserved the national award there!
This song am talking about here "Sippi Irukkadu" is a classic showpiece of the finesse that this pair produced in the 80s. It is almost as if the song was composed as a tribute to their double act. I post the video of this song at the end of this post and encourage you to watch both their expressions at the same time.(you can with a little practice). It is mindblowing. It is a simple song, ordinary a composition compared to so many masterpieces that Tamil cinema has produced. But, it is elevated to perfection by these two. The fact that two actors can complement their facial expressions to be in perfect harmony while playing their individual parts is amazing. Most actors fail here. Most actors are shown together yet do not appear to be in harmony while sharing screen space.
Cut to this song on youtube, someone has added subtitles to it and I have my own issues with subtitles. No matter how hard you try, translating the exact emotion from a vernacular language to the all purpose English simply does not work! It always falls short. The song itself is a simple romantic duet of which we have millions in our movie industry. But this one is a duel as well. She being a singer, challenges him to compose lyrics to her tunes impromptu! (Tough one that!) And this song is all about how they express their admiration and mutual attraction for each other through the medium of art. It is a match between equals. As actors, these two have always challenged each other when playing opposite each other and in this reel piece too, they seem to challenge each other. And it is superbly natural. His gestures wonderfully mimic carnatic musicians when they have got some sangati or musical expression right! Expressions like 'Appadiya' and 'Beautiful eh' are so aptly executed not to forget the wonderful playback singing that sets it in. Sridevi has matched that up word for word literally and figuratively. Her amazing grace and poise, the manner in which she covers her ears to get the right tune in her head (something musicians do) and her playfulness while trying to outwit him all the time,yet appreciative of his quick responses, every one of these gestures show that Kamal Hassan and Sridevi are equals of the first order. It seems almost as if they played out their respective parts in reel life as they did in real. The lyrics of the song, again, seem to do exactly that. There have been several romantic duets full of highly poetic structure and sentimentalism but in my opinion, this one does the job neat. Strikes the right chord. It is simple, subtle and yet elegant. Kamal Hassan has always had looks that has appealed to the opposite gender ( myself included) but in this, his casual attire matched with his part as an intellectual makes it endearing. Sridevi looks like Sridevi minus botox. Not anything like what she did in Chandni but she is a traditional South Indian girl who sings carnatic music.She looks and plays the part. It appeals to the senses,evokes emotions of the right kind and brings back nostalgic memories of the days bygone. And most importantly, it brings to light the beauty of a match made in heaven transposed onto a few tens of millimetres of reel of which dreams are made of.
And for those of us who understand Tamil, I quote from the most touching line in the song itself...
Mayakkam thandada yaar, Tamilo ? Amudho ? Kaviyo ?
Trying to get back to blogging....
-Saaveri
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