God is in the details

Unaware of the atmospheric allusions to the impending rapture, I set out to watch Suseendran's Azhagar Saamiyin Kuthirai this past Friday. Having already read Baskar Sakthi's short story I was fully primed for the humor which is one of the constant undercurrents running through the film. No situation is too serious, no communal injustice so grave that a joke may not be made at its expense. And yet we are never aware of sitting on the cusp of a joke, thanks in large part to the constant ebb and flow of the narrative and the absorbing background score. A parallel presence, and one that actually serves to relegate the humor to the undercurrent where it belongs, is the persistent manner in which the film engages with the concept of 'god'.

Consider for a moment the level of control a creator exercises over his/her story; the ability to introduce, govern growth and eventually redeem a cast of characters. The scale of his world is entirely in his hands - what details he furnishes and what he discerns as worth omitting are all purely decisions on his part. And yet the best creations are often the ones where we do not see his hands. After all, visible strings and their movement will immediately reduce the simulated reality to a puppet show and no artist wants to be indicted with the creation of a puppet show (unless that was the original intention). The artistic pride of a creator, however, is constantly egging him to leave his mark behind. "How will this world remember you when you are gone?" it asks. (I think a morbid fascination with death is a cheap commodity among artists. This is a supply driven economy.) So the onus is on the imagineer (credit to Disney) to be memorable without being obtrusive. So much so that Roland Barthes even wrote an essay questioning his existence. In this sense the creator has much in common with his capitalized counterpart - The Creator (God).

Azhagar Saamiyin Kuthirai the film expands on Baskar Sakthi's eponymous short story with a few simple additions and modifiers. When I say expands I do not mean just in canvas alone, which it does by providing the real horse (a curious throwback to the white steeds of the Ashwamedha) and its childlike owner a background, I also imply an expansion in the philosophical implications due to the modifiers. While the story of the horse's owner and his beauteous bride attempt to flesh out what was a pure Macguffin in the story, it does not do what a few simple modifications in the story's ending does to elevate the film. What the conclusion facilitates is the ardent conviction in the fact that each character's internal conversation with God continues through whatever means necessary.

GIVE ME THREE

Since time immemorial man has always required a means of artistic expression to make sense of the conundrum that is life. From paintings to music to the written word to performances, not only has each art form evolved but a number of new mediums have appeared with the passage of time. Cinema is one of the youngest to emerge in this long line of message vehicles. It is a hybrid medium that requires an intricate understanding of technology to deliver your message accurately. Rampant technological advancements move the simulations in our films closer to our realities. But there is little technology can accomplish without the fundamental ability to tell a story or evoke a connection and we could do worse than turn to tradition to learn how. In the Sangam age in Tamil Nadu the classical forms of Tamil were classified into three – Literature (Iyal), Music (Isai) and Nadagam (Theater). Over the years Tamil cinema has borrowed from all three traditions, but some more than others.

Theater, by virtue of being a performance art, has been the greatest contributor. Nearly every yesteryear star that has adorned our screens ascended from the stage. In the early years P.U.Chinappa, MK.Thayagaraja Bhagavathar, S.G.Kittappa and N.S.Krishnan achieved prominence on the stage with their voices and performances even before gracing the screen. Both V.C.Ganesan and M.G.Ramachandran were stage actors first before becoming the hugely popular stars we know them as. In fact, the epithet ‘Sivaji’ was given to Ganesan by Periyar after a particularly inspirational stage performance as the Maratha warrior. The two largest stars in cinema today, Rajnikanth and Kamal Hassan, are no strangers to the stage either. In addition to the stars, theater has given cinema a wide variety of able supporting actors from Manorama to Pasupathi and a wide range of creators. K.Balachander’s Server Sundaram and Ethirneechal were successful plays before their subsequent translation to the screen. The Wodehousian witticisms of Crazy Mohan were honed on the stage before finding their way into cinematic dialogs.

As a film industry that has yet to divorce itself from the tradition of synchronized singing and dancing, music continues to play a significant role even today in our films. While the creative debate of whether or not to include a standard issue song sequence in films does exist, it would be impossible to deny that the film industry has served as an efficient distribution channel for a wide array of deserving musical talent. Listeners with only a cursory understanding of classical music hear diverse and rich compositions primarily because cinema is a popular pastime. As time progressed the visibility, communication and economics of the industry facilitated a melding of our traditions with those from across the world exponentially increasing the creativity and the quality of musical output. The compositions of M.S.Viswanathan and T.K.Ramamurthy, K.V.Mahadevan, Ilaiyaraja and now A.R.Rehman have influences from Jazz to Classical Western hidden away in them for a discerning listener. Film music also allowed the tradition of poetry to thrive bringing to our notice Pattukottai Kalyana Sundaram, Kannadasan, Vaali and Vairamuthu who may have otherwise been the prisoners of ivory tower bookshelves. The result of having such erudite lyricists is that beautiful analogies from Sangam literature live on today in popular song lines and for those who are willing to delve just a little these lines can be the portal to a vast and rich heritage.

The third Tamil tradition, literature, has had, at best, a very tenuous connection with cinema, much to its own detriment. There did not exist within the Tamil industry a consistent tradition of adapting books or short stories into films. I will be the first to admit that an adaptation does not guarantee quality. With popular works of fiction a gross disparity in expectations and output may be unavoidable. But the number of films sourced from books or short stories over the years has been low considering how active the literary circles are within Tamil. The few films that have been adapted from literature like Mahendran’s Udhiri Pookkal (based on Pudhumaipiththan’s Chitrannai) or Jeykanthan’s Sila Nerangalil Sila Manithargal have been of a very high quality. Inspiration from literature combined with an understanding of what stories would translate well in the cinematic medium may trigger a middle of the road renaissance in Tamil cinema. This is why it is gratifying to see films like Bala’s Naan Kadavul and Suseendran’s Azhagar Saamiyin Kuthirai being produced.

Iyal, Isai and Nadagam have all influenced the younger art form cinema positively. But the relationship is not entirely symbiotic. Very little music is composed that is not in the service of films and with our full schedules a majority of us would much rather watch a two hour film than let our imaginations run wild with the pages of a book. The commercial strength of cinema has ensured that it has outstripped its older counterparts as far as consumption is concerned. It is in the interest of good cinema, that these three traditions remain active and healthy. Ideally the future holds a model these four artistic endeavors to feed off each other in a manner that may be mutually beneficial.

P.S: An edited version appears in the Chennai Times today. Link here.