Being Mani: The man behind Guru
In 1992, the nation discovered Mani Ratnam after the release of Roja. And then from 1993 to 2004, Ratnam made a mark through his hits and misses that include Bomaby, Yuva and Dil Se.
But the man with 'beautiful cinema' is back in 2007 with his magnum opus, Guru that stars Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai in the lead role.
CNN-IBN's Anuradha SenGupta caught up with the director to ask him about Guru, cinema and his future plans.
Anuradha SenGupta: If I were to ask you is Guru’s story inspired by the life story of Dhirubhai Ambani, would you say no or yes?
Mani Ratnam: I would say it’s not a biography. It’s not a real man’s life. It could be the spirit of several people. And that’s what we have tried to capture.
Anuradha SenGupta: We know about Hamish MacDonald who wrote the Polyester Prince (The rise of Dhirubhai Ambani) and the book wasn’t released in India because it wasn’t flattering. So how do you go ahead as an artist with wanting to tell a story when there is so much of interest and pressure that might bear upon the project?
Mani Ratnam: When you make a film, there is something inside the character that you can identify with. You go ahead with that spirit. It’s novelisaiton.
Anuradha SenGupta: So there is no credence to the rumours that the Ambanis wanted to see the film?
Mani Ratnam: No. Nothing like that.
Anuradha SenGupta: In Guru, like your other films, while there is human drama, does the love story form the nucleus of the film? Because in most of your films, it is love story that everything else is centred around.
Mani Ratnam: I don’t think you should start of by saying that. In certain films, it becomes a tool in which you can narrate something else. But it’s not the same tool we use every time. For example I did a film Kannathil Muthamittal which deals with an adopted child. The story is about the child and the mother.
Anuradha SenGupta: I’m not trying to pigeon-hole you by saying that you make love stories. But I’m that even in Kannathil Muthamittal, there was a love story between the child and the mother. And even in Dalpathi it is the mother-son love story that forms the nucleus.
Mani Ratnam: Then what we are talking about is relationships whichever form it may be in. by human drama I mean human relationships.
Anuradha SenGupta: In Roshamon, the bandit says “If it wasn’t for the breeze, I wouldn’t have killed him.” And I think you love stories are brought the breeze. In Bombay quite literally, her veil flies off and he sees her. But in all your other movies, I sense a love at first sight kind of a romance. Why is that?
Mani Ratnam: It’s really not so because I don’t believe in it. If you talk about Saathiya, it’s about what happens post-marriage. To me that’s when a love story starts.
Anuradha SenGupta: Even in Roja, Bombay, the real love story comes actually later.
Mani Ratnam: Yes. So it’s not love at first sight. The relationship grows when it is faced with reality. But this could be a way how I get there. But I do understand that people fall in love at the first sight.
Anuradha SenGupta: But in most of your movies it is like that. It’s like romanticising romance in a sense.
Mani Ratnam: No. It’s just beautiful to shoot and I try to make it up by saying that the real thing comes later. Unless I think the story is a little classical in which case you resort to that otherwise it is conversation. It is intelligence, sharpness, wavelength that really makes the connection.
Anuradha SenGupta: Another thing that I keep seeing in your films is the train. What fascinates you about the train?
Mani Ratnam: A professor in one if the American Universities, who teaches cinema had once come down to meet me and said what is with cars and you? And she went on to quote that a car plays a significant role in my film. And I had no clue what she was talking about. I didn’t even know that it mattered. Till last year when she sent me a mail saying your last film didn’t have a car.
Anuradha SenGupta: So you have demolished my theory?
Mani Ratnam: No. I think it’s more of a train than a car for me. Because it’s more of the time that you have grown up in. It’s more of a journey. And your first adventure outside has always been on trains. It is like a start of a narrative, the opening of a relationship. So it’s just my way of telling it.
Anuradha SenGupta: Does an artist have to be selfish? In Kannathil Muthamittal, your protagonist Surya or Thiru is a writer. And I couldn’t help but think why he is emotionally involved in helping his adopted daughter Amuda come to a closure with her birth mother. He has an academic interest in the proceeding, which his wife doesn’t at all. Hers is a purely emotional reaction to what’s happening. Are all artists like that?
Mani Ratnam: I wouldn’t say the other way around, I don’t say that as life is happening, you are looking at it as an input. But after something has happened, you don’t hesitate in scavenging. Which is a very heartless and a cold side of you, which is able to convert something, that just happened into a possible scene in you mind. And there is also another voice inside you which keeps saying – look at you.
Anuradha SenGupta: I remember telling A R Rahman that between the music of Lagaan and Taal, I preferred Lagaan, which he said means ‘you preferred the film in which the music followed the movie rather than perhaps the movie where the movie was on its own.’ Music is so integral to your films. What is your philosophy if we were to go back to what Rahman said?
Mani Ratnam: The theme that you choose for your film defines a lot of things. Not just the film, but a lot of things get decided by the soul of the film. And Rahman is open to those kinds of things. And Rahman loves to do things that pushes him constantly. As an equation with Rahman, it has been really nice so far. We have been able to compliment and trust each other. I can ask him for the wildest of thing and he won’t brush it aside.
Anuradha SenGupta: What’s the wildest thing that you may have asked him?
Mani Ratnam: It could a classical number and I could ask him to do a little Spanish in it. That’s the biggest advantage of being a director. You don’t have to know everything like cinematography, editing, music. But you should be able to ask for them. You can ask for the wildest things. It liberates you to ask them which otherwise would shut you out.
Anuradha SenGupta: How did it feel when you saw Spike Lee’s Inside Man and heard Chaiya Chaiya. Did you feel flattered or felt this is the soft power of the Indian brand?
Mani Ratnam: I felt happy because they paid for the music. And for Saathiya in Tamil, we checked because for the opening sequence we wanted music and I had shot it with Backstreet Boys so we checked for their rights and they quoted astronomical figure. So we left it and we made the music and it turned out to be the best song of the film.
So when they asked us for Chaiya Chaiya, and they were quoting us some ridiculous price. But we didn’t bat our eyelids. We quoted them the price they had quoted us and said take it or leave it. And they took it. So you have to take the stand as much as the West does to you.
Anuradha SenGupta: Is this where the MBA degree came in handy?
Mani Ratnam: This was just simple plain revenge. Nothing to do with management.
Anuradha SenGupta: Where have you used that degree. Does it come in handy when you are producing your film or I am just being simplistic by making that connection?
Mani Ratnam: There is a sequence in Yuva where Ajay Devgan is in the lock up and he is still talking physics. And when we were doing it, there was an elaborate equation on the wall and he had to learn physics for that scene.
So I was telling him about my econometrics professor, Dr Nachane who would write an equation right across the board and then look back and say ‘so beautiful’. So that’s what I made Ajay do and that’s the amount of econometrics I have used in my life.
But any education just gets you a way of thinking. It’s not a direct one-to-one application. But you must have an analytical way of approaching a problem.
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you feel the movies that out IT engineers have done across the world, are they spreading an insidious power of India?
Mani Ratnam: The fact that India is doing economically well, that it is got a lot of eyeballs to India. And once we get the attention on to India, it becomes attention to Indian food, languages, cinema, everything.
Anuradha SenGupta: Inevitably it’s about following the money.
Mani Ratnam: I think that is what is happening. In terms of cinema, we are not yet there. I think we should be doing much much more.
Anuradha SenGupta: What do you mean?
Mani Ratnam: What will happen is what is right now happening to Indian English writing. The attention and recognition that that has got, Indian cinema has not yet reached there. We should aim at that.
Anuradha SenGupta: What’s the block?
Mani Ratnam: It’s just the quality.
Anuradha SenGupta: It’s just a theory. When we got to Cannes for the advertising film festival, not the film festival, we notice a lot of very good Indian commercial advertisements, in terms of idea or script, just don’t connect with the jury out there. Is that also something that is a stumbling block?
For instance in your films, it is so rooted that if I am not familiar with the culture, is it style that is holding you back?
Mani Ratnam: No. I think the language and culture doesn’t matter. A Satyajit Ray, who was so beautifully rooted to Bengal, could go across the globe, Roashamon can work.
Anuradha SenGupta: But those are niche films and niche genre and their universal appeal is also limited. But your space is going to find it difficult because you are competing with mainstream Hollywood.
Mani Ratnam: But if that can be done at that level, it should be possible for you to do it at this level.
Anuradha SenGupta: In the mid-90s you, Shekhar Kapoor and Ram Gopal Varma game to form India Talkies and that was supposed to do this. But what happened?
Mani Ratnam: We made Dil Se.But then Shekhar went to UK to make English films, Ramu went onto make a whole lot of films. But it’s still there. So may be we get back some day.
Anuradha SenGupta: When I dropped one of theories how the love story is very critical to your films, you explained how it works for you. Do you see yourself as a political filmmaker?
Mani Ratnam: No. But a filmmaker is no different from what a journalist is or a lawyer is. He reacts to things that are happening around him. And some of them are political, social as well as personal.
Anuradha SenGupta: How do you react to the criticism that Mani Ratnam’s films, the emotions, the human drama is most effective. But it’s the political story or the message that seems rather naïve?
Mani Ratnam: If I wanted to write an essay or do a thesis, I would do it on paper. I’m trying to tell a story, to reach across human beings with an issue that is there. If I am able to make the people slightly aware, think about it, then I have achieved what is set myself to do. I am not trying to make an analysis, thesis or come with a solution.
Anuradha SenGupta: Iruvar is perhaps the first and the last word about the connection that Tamil cinema has with its politics. And this amazing larger than life impact that film stars and movies have on Tamil Nadu. What is it about the Tamil psyche that has made cinema and politics two people.?
Mani Ratnam: No I don’t think it’s two people. It’s the Dravidian movement. This movement is possibly the only movement that I have known created by all set of artists. They came with something that is very idealistic, revolutionary and rational. And they used all the mediums to get the message across.
Cinema was just exploding then. And the two helped each other to grow and that is where the marriage really took place. I have often been asked that why bare film stars becoming politicians, as though it is a sin. A cine star is also a human being and he has every right to become what he is and convert his popularity into something that is socially beneficial.
Anuradha SenGupta: What about filmmakers becoming politicians? How do you stay so away from politics?
Mani Ratnam: Because I am still too caught up in filmmaking.
Anuradha SenGupta: But does it interest you at all? Not as an observer, but as a participant? Perhaps when you get tired of making films.
Mani Ratnam: No I don’t I get tired of making films. But I really don’t think that’s where I am headed.
Anuradha SenGupta: We hope you never get tired of making films. And you let us meet you a little more regularly. Thank you very much.
Mani Ratnam: My pleasure.
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