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interesting choice of words. A generic one is the proper Hindi film, is it? You are right, ofcourse. And that's V_S's lament, too. I hope Kamal never makes the proper, authentic, generic Hindi film of the Manirathnam type.Quote:
Mani Ratnam when he sets out to make a Hindi film strives to make a proper, generic enough one
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Originally Posted by Plum
Plum, I was commenting on (what I perceived as) a comparison between Kamal and Mani with regard to their Hindi film ventures, not just Hey! Ram vs. Mani's Hindi films. Hey! Ram is a strange beast and, as I said, a truly pan-Indian film in a way that not many films are, leave alone Mani Ratnam's ventures. But I stand by my point about Mani Ratnam striving to make generic enough Hindi films that are meant for audiences spread across the subcontinent. Hey! Ram is of course an very unusually ambitious film in terms of striving for authenticity and I don't think it'd be wrong to say that its very plurality alienated it from most sections of its target audience. Here I'm principally in agreement with P_R's argument here (though I may differ in specific aspects/nuances).Quote:
Originally Posted by Plum
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Originally Posted by P_R
But what is your complaint? That Kamal creates a Jaiprakash Paswan without doing justice to the Paswan part of it. That's why I asked when Mani created Apisekbhai, did he craete a gujarati biz man? No, right. He was as authentic as Paswan. In that sense, Paswan is your generic all-india appealing Hindi film feller. Box office validates the claim. In other words, Chachi 420 is the generic hindi film(although pretending to create rooted paswans and marathi middle class ammas) that a Mani could have made.
So, you taking Hey am and then comparing to Mani and saying Mani makes a proper generic movie si a very inappropriate comparison.
In other words, Apisek in Guru is Mani's Paswan - generic as you claimed to appeal to all India audience but awkward like Paswan if you consider authenticity. So, why do you compare Paswan infavourably with Mani's generic movies/characters/results?
And Hey Ram is a proper indian film. If there is ONE, SINGLE, SOLITARY movie in Indian film history that can claim to be "Indian", this is it.
Oh, simply because Kamal's Hindi wasn't nowhere as natural and unobtrusive as Abhishek's. I'm of course not saying Abhishek's portrayal is more authentic but it's basically unobtrusive and not out of place in a Hindi film, that's all. That, in an ideal world, even a South Indian's strained Hindi should be fine in a Hindi film is something I'd also agree with, but that's hardly the case. And I don't know if Chachi 420 was a box office hit. I made this point in the context of Kamal's Hindi films not reaching out to the Hindi film audiences whereas all Mani Ratnam's films seemed to have a fair chance. If they do or did, I'm glad.
And like speaking five languages in Telugu, Mani has started making Hindi films (or generic) in Tamil. Isn't it his natural state? If he has to strive for something, it is to make a Tamil film
Mani is not authentic, glosses over-nu ellAm sollunga, there's a certain degree of validity in these criticisms. But Tamil-ukku relevance-E illAma edukkuRAr-ngRadhu konjam migaiyAna kuRRachchAttu. Even in Raavanan (which was initially conceived as just a Hindi film and even stuff like "bak bak bak" found its way to the Tamil version!), he set out to establish some semblance of authenticity of milieu for the Tamil version. Choice of locations isn't the only thing, you see. For a bilingual, konjam mix paNNi dhAn eduththAgaNum.
And he makes bilinguals only if the subject resonates in both Hindi and Tamil. Which is true for Kamal too, but again something like Hey! Ram is an odd beast.
My primary point is about his striving hard to make a film that reaches out to the audience. This is not just about the rootedness of the subject and treatment as I've been clarifying (in saying that my point is not about authenticity), but about crafting a mainstream film. He has made two proper bilinguals, of which one is with (more or less) two different set of actors so that the films could be released as proper mainstream ventures with enough buzz on both worlds.
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he set out to establish some semblance of authenticity of milieu for the Tamil version
Explain.
Lazy theory.Quote:
And I don't know if Chachi 420 was a box office hit. I made this point in the context of Kamal's Hindi films not reaching out to the Hindi film audiences whereas all Mani Ratnam's films seemed to have a fair chance. If they do or did, I'm glad.
Dil Se - widely panned by your "all india generic" folks
Roja - tamil primarily but with enough all India masala to succeed generically. But you'd agree that was one movie which even Mani wouldnt have made witht he Hindi market in mind. It was the accident that started many incidents in Mani's career
Bombay - a perfect example of your theory. Agreed.
Yuva - Om Puri's Calcutta politician is in no man's land and certainly worse than Paswan by the standards you set for Kamal. Certainly no all India generic appeal in this movie's characters. Compare Bharathiraja in tamil, and in general, how comfy in the skins the tamil actors/characterw were, and how much it made the movie
palatable in tamil
Guru - succesful, yes but Apisek is a Gujaratai business man. He had no business being the typical generic indhi feller, save for the occasional "bijnej".
Ravan - he he you talk about this one
Your claim is really tenuous and weak. It is hard to generalise the way you have.