Conversations With Mani Ratnam

[Orestes Hardy]

Conversationswith Mani Ratnam is a 2012 Indian biographical book by the film critic and author Baradwaj Rangan, focusing on the career of the Tamil filmmaker Mani Ratnam. The book contains conversations between Rangan and Ratnam, discussing the latter's career as a director, producer, and screenwriter. It was published on 3 December 2012 by Penguin Books and received critical acclaim.

Conversations with Mani Ratnam got positive reviews from critics. Writing for Mint newspaper, Sanjukta Sharma stated that the book has proved that a book with interview format "work", describing it as an "essential read for film lovers".[1] Sandhya Rao of Business Line wrote, "The book sparkles because we have an insightful film critic who can write, and an introspective film-maker who is articulate ... In a sense, the book even works as a primer for those seriously into films."[5] India Today's Kaveree Bamzai said the book had changed her perception of how a book of "conversations with famous people tend to be straightjacketed by too much respectfulness on the part of the interviewer and barely concealed boredom on the part of the interviewed."[6] K. Hariharan from The Hindu singled out the "Iruvar" chapters, which he thought was the best one from the book.[7]

I had always thought (and maybe even mentioned here before, I dont remember) that between the three usual suspects-Kamal, IR, Mani Rathnam, BR had the best chance to do something like this with MR. Atleast the foreword is not by Suhasini, thats a good start ?

kannathil mutthamittal got 6 national awards.guru was a hit.any one can comment easily about a great film maker.comments r always welcomed.dont know why we as audience speak lot about a film being a commercial hit or not.all we need is great films that mani has always been giving for so many years.only the producer has to worry about commercial success and not audience.moreover will a film maker will do films if its not appealing or earning money.do u want mani to publicize that i have made 40 crores profit through this and that.its a cheap trick..so no need to talk bad about a genius just for showing ur intellect.every director in india has accepted his vision and admire him as a true genius.our so called good directors like g1menon and selvaraghavan has said mani is our god father.so better watch dabaang,wanted and robot if u want to enjoy commercial films.

well ar rahman is also doing films for other directors also.why cant he is able to save saved all of them.does ur posted comments have any sense?times magazine,venice,cannes all gave him their highest honour.why cant they give it to ur ks ravikumar and so called crap director shankar.ur comments shows ur ignorance.its maniratnam who challenged rahman and took him to new areas.mani knows how to make money man.have u seen iruvar,kannathil mutthmaittal and dilse?leave that bloody box office reports he is the greatest filmmaker of our generation.he wont speak even if u post bad comments about his films but his films have life and its inspiring for so many young film makers.thats enough.morevoer even if u have enimity against maniratnam thats not going to bother him anand.better make a film and teach mani how to make films rather than shouting in a closed room.

Alaypayuthe did good business in the city but was the reason they stamped maniratnam an urban director. (earlier films like dalapathi and roja were either hits or flops. A center hit and B & C center flop phenomenon afflicted mani because of alaypayuthe.

sir avar sollikittu thiriyala mani is the first indian director to win Jaeger LeCoultre award in venice and his film nayagan has been included in times magazine all time best 100 movies list.indha over rated under rated yaellam namba timepass kaaga paesara vishayam sir.ar rahman,kamal,maniratnam,ivanga overrated nu paesara kootam yeppavumae iruku.ar rahman is overrated no 10000 articles internet la iruku avar copy adikarar nu solla 10000 articles iruku.so if u r a genius u have to undergo these criticisms.his film raavan is one of the rarest films to be included in austrias museum.what more u can expect a director to achieve mr.rameshram?ivlo paesara neenga rajni,shankar.ajith nu kuppaya films panravangala patthi comment pannuvingala?because they r advertised as box office kings.sir oruthara overrated nu sollra thagudhi lam namaku kidayadhu.inga yaethana paeruku sondha paisa poattu manistream films panra dhairiyam iruku?only kamal and maniratnam.so paatu vaekardhunaal avar ks ravi kumar madhiri na i dont have answer for that.songs r routed to indian cinema so using it as a tool is not a wrong thing.i dont have enimity with u but u cant say bad about a film maker who got great respect from not ony his present contemporaries but also from great film makers in the past

well in my opinion u can be commercially viable only if u have certain elements in ur films apart from songs.there is a common feeling in the minds of our audience is maniratnam films r for intellectual minds and another thing is this we want maniratnam to make a film which we would like to look up on.ive seen many say mani is not giving solutions to issues which he portrayed in his films.if u watch his films closely u can get answers which he deliberately left it to audience to decide.do u think will a film maker will be able to sell his product to a greater price if its not viable.do u think a k.balachandar or bharathiraja can sell a product like mani today.this is just a question to u thats all?how come every film of his do great business even after repeated box office failures?cholan he knows how to make money.even his kadal with new faces known stars is sold to a record price that shows he is still a running horse.will u accept that guru is a smash hit overseas and it made great profit inside india also.he can easily make films with rajni,ajith and vijay to be commercially successfull but he is always trying something new and experimenting to give us a new experience.

rangudu wishes. I see myself more like the mottai patti in Hey ram who warns vasundara das not to play outside her limitations while singing the vaishnava janato song.

makes her appearance at 13 s in this clip.

BARADWAJ RANGAN: Whenever directors take on a star, a mass-hero of Rajinikanth's magnitude, they begin to think along the lines of "these are the things I can do, these are the things I cannot do." Did that figure into your writing? In the end, for instance, the character does not die like Karna in the epic.

In my mind, I kept telling myself that Mullum Malarum was the benchmark in terms of his performance. It is mainstream Tamil cinema, not parallel cinema. But it was very realistic, and performed very, very realistically. The dialogues were real. It probably was his best performance. He was absolutely casual, without any of the "style" traps he fell into, though he did that [the stylistic elements] before Mullum Malarum and even after that.

So I knew that there was something in him that would make a character ring absolutely true, without pulling the star element into it or resorting to other things like a cigarette going up and coming down. He could carry the character by himself, on his shoulders, and still be real and effective.

So I had no issues, no doubts. I wanted something that would give him the chance to go close to his performance in Mullum Malarum. That was all. Other than that, even though he's a star, I knew that the character of Karna was large enough that I didn't have to worry about feeding his fans and things like that. We just went with the script, whatever shape it took.

Even the finish of the film, where our Karna character lives on, was because I've always wished that he lived on. So much has gone wrong. There's so much stacked against him. Maybe there's a bit of hope, a bit of optimism in this, but I felt that his death would look too doomed, too tragic. It was how I saw the character. I didn't even consider the original option, where Karna dies. It was thought of this way from the beginning.

RANGAN: I don't mean masala in a derogatory sense. I love that pitch. It's just that it's a pitch your films aren't often set in, so it's interesting to explore the reasons you opt for this pitch.

RATNAM: Karna was the only one who could match and surpass Arjuna. He was a great warrior. He comes dramatically into the Mahabharata in the sequence where Arjuna is performing with his bow and arrow. So when you come to a modern-day Surya, an action scene is not out of place. We are telling this story of a child that was abandoned at birth and left on a train and found by a bunch of kids and picked up by someone. These seven to eight minutes of build-up lead to this particular moment, which should reveal what everything so far has resulted in.

So it was important that the way the hero comes in has a dramatic impact. It is the culmination of the introductory sequences and the start of his story. It was not a conventional Rajinikanth scene. We plunge right into the middle of the action, without establishing the characters or the reason. It was stylised, in high speed (almost like the rain song in Geetanjali), filmed in slush and muck, and even the way we edited it was very different from what we'd done till then.

RANGAN: With Raavan(an), the title gave away the fact that it was based on an epic. But no one knew what Thalapathy was about while it was being made, and only after the film's release did people start talking about parallels. In hindsight, do you think Raavan(an) would have fared better had you called it, say, Beera [the name of Raavan-equivalent character], and not drawn attention to the epic?

I don't know if it would have fared better as Beera. It's a hypothetical situation. But possibly the prejudices wouldn't have been there. They wouldn't have taken it so personally. They would have seen it as just a story. But I felt confident enough that I could reveal the source and still be able to tell a story.

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