Iruvar

Iruvar (1997)

Iruvar (Tamil), from Indian cinema’s one of the most celebrated director Mani Ratnam! His dream project and personal favourite.

          Unlike the usual Mani Ratnam style where he blends the style of Satyajit Ray’s realism along with larger than life scenarios for the mass, here he tips lot towards the realism style. And it proved that Mani Ratnam’s true skills lies on this side!!

          Iruvar with no doubt and with a big margin is Mani Ratnam’s best!! Also one of the best movies of Indian Cinema!

Plot & Direction – Plot of Iruvar revolves around 2 characters Anandan (played by Mohanlal) & Tamizhselvan (played by Prakash Raj) and their journey from being close modest friends to being political rivals. Like most of Mani Ratnam’s movies this also relies on an adapted screenplay, Iruvar reflects the real life journey of Tamil actor, ex-CM Late MGR & ex-CM Karunanidhi. The friendship between the two even with their contrasting ideologies to improve common man’s life was the emotional nucleus of the plot. Their struggle to gain power, shift of ideologies, realities of politics, rivalry and yet maintaining the respect for each other laid the tiles for the screenplay. The pace of the plot, tight but a mellow screenplay and the transformation of the characters over the span of 50yrs were beautifully coloured.

          Clearly the style of the shot and the techniques used seems influenced my Martin Scorsese gangster movies. And Mani Ratnam does an excellent job to recreate the similar magic in this movie. The long established and follow up shot techniques were very well made use of. Mani Ratnam strictly stuck to the huge format of the aspect ratio (rarely used by Indian filmmakers) which gave him so much space to populate the shots which added a great texture to them. The aspect ratio was very well used in follow up scenes which transitions from a close up shot to an expanded shot, the emotions build up due to that added a new layer to the texture. Definitely Iruvar reflects the true extend of Mani Ratnam’s skills as a Director.

Acting – In this dream project of his, Mani Ratnam doesn’t compromise anything over quality. With a pool of talented and more popular actors like Kamal Hassan, Mammootty etc., Mani Ratnam had fixed his eye on the more versatile Mohanlal despite his lack of popularity among Tamil, Hindi audience and his strong Malayalam accent. Mani Ratnam was very convinced that not many actors could pull of a flamboyant character with lot of contrast and dynamics such as naïve but mature simplistic ideologies, egoist but humble approach, mature but playful. Along with the character transformations with such long term jumps in the screenplay. The ease at which Mohanlal pulled off the role added more ink to the playful layer of his character.  Even though it was not anywhere close to Mohanlal’s best performance, the precision of emotions tailored into the scenes were the silver lining of every scene he was present in. (P.S – accolades for the scenes of him pleading for the movie not to be shut, him spitting fire on Prakash Raj & him asking for a minister seat, Mesmerizing!!!).

          For the role of Tamizhselvan Mani Ratnam had eyed actors like Kamal Hassan, Mammootty and Nana Patekar but didn’t work out. And to fill the expectations of their class and quality, Prakash Raj was chosen. Even with such high expectations, he doesn’t disappoint and rather gives a performance of his life. The seriousness & depth of his beliefs were convincingly portrayed by the subtle emotions. The gradually shift of his character from a proud energetic egoistic youngster to an envious old man in despair was gracefully executed by Prakash Raj earning him his 1^st National award for acting.

          Even though for a short time, the powerful commanding show set by Nassar as Ayya Veluthambi definitely deserve a special mention. In each scene he was present he commanded the scene with his presence.

Cinematography – The key element that added an artistic touch to the movie. The way the scenes were shot with a classic aspect ratio gave Mani Ratnam lot of room for adding layers. The feel of each scene clearly had a visceral effect and reflected the timeline of the story. You didn’t need a subtitle to inform the jump in time; rather the cinematography & blend of the colour itself conveyed that message. Thanks to Santosh Sivan the fluidity of each scene helped Mani Ratnam to come close to the standards set by Martin Scorsese.

Overall even though not a commercial success (due to lack of popular actors & political controversies), Iruvar is a cinematic achievement with a large spectrum of talent. Iruvar is a rare Indian movie with great dynamics, realism and entertainment in a single plate. Highly recommended for cinema lovers.