Adhisaya Kadhal: How I Learned to Love Good Tamil Cinema

I am a cinema fanboy who grew up in Matunga during the 80s and 90s. For the uninitiated, Matunga is a sleepy suburb in Bombay that was once the western-most bastion for Tamil Brahmins in India; it is still considered by many to be part of the holy triumvirate of Iyer suburbs along with Malleshwaram and Mylapore.

But despite my Tamil pedigree, the Aurora theatre near my house and my mother’s fondness for Balachander, Sivaji and Kamal movies, I made a conscious decision as a child to not like Tamil movies. My one painful memory of Tamil movies growing up was being forced to sit down and watch Samsaram Oru Minsaram and if that wasn’t enough, to be made to sit through the Hindi remake as well. Weirdly, like some variation on the Stockholm Syndrome, I am very fond of both the movies to this day. Oh, another Mother influence, I still play Malarnthum Malaratha to put myself to sleep.

I barely knew the language.  My mother would often ask me to not speak in Tamil when visiting Madras as it was too embarrassing for her and a surefire way for the Autokaaran (of the non-Baasha variety) to cheat us thinking we are outsiders. I had no one to talk to about Tamil films other than my mother; (my father was too much of a Bombaywallah having lived nearly all his life there), Rajiv Gandhi was killed by Tamilians so being a Tamilian wasn’t something you advertised freely (apologies for the sudden political reference, just watched VadaChennai again). But above all, like my father, I was so much in love with the idea of Bombay that I renounced Rajini in favor of Amitabh.

The 90s/00s struck and, in the realm of my tastes, Amitabh gave way to Aamir and his brand of “sensible” cinema and Govinda with his brand of “nonsense” cinema (Shahrukh and Salman typically worked in the kind of cinema that I have never and don’t ever want to watch). But somewhere after graduating I became a snob about my movies; I think mainly arising out of a vain desire to impress girls, I started watching a lot of English movies. It started with the standard Hollywood fare (Die Hard., Home Alone, etc.) to moving on to more “intelligent” English cinema (the kind that won Oscars), somewhere the vanity surpassed actually enjoying the movies. I still remember how proud I was at having watched Terrence Mallick’s The Thin Red Line FDFS when it released in India. I can’t tell you what happens in the movie, which, for all I know, could have been about painting a thin red line (it was that boring) without referring to Wikipedia; but the pride, that I remember very clearly.

A few years later, I came to the US,  my movie snobbery intact, I discovered Netflix and the US public library system in the good old pre-streaming series days and consumed a lot of international and Indian art house cinema – the kind that you don’t see at the Oscars but in more French sounding festivals – quite a bit of which I genuinely loved (Ray, Kurosawa, Kusturica, Fellini, Chan Wook Park), but some that I pretended to love and understand for the sake of appearing cool and serious (Godard, Bergman). I remember the day I endured 90 minutes of Godard’s Breathless to impress a girl who had claimed that movie as her favorite. The premise of a guy murdering a cop and looking to make a getaway made for an interesting plot, but all the movie entailed was a couple (both of whom played by actors named Jean) speaking non-stop in French for 90 minutes and all I can say is that the girl (both in the movie and in real life) wasn’t impressed and I lost 90 minutes of my life which I can never get back.

Eventually I got tired of watching boring movies and consumed a lot of TV shows – again some were really good – The Wire, Breaking Bad, True Detective (Season 1 only just so people don’t question my judgment)) others I just watched because of peer pressure and being able to have informative water cooler conversations e.g. Game of Thrones.

It took me a while to get out of my snobbery, the onset of middle age and having kids reduced my general insecurity and vanity and also more importantly cut down a lot of content I could watch anyway (bills to pay, work and making sure nothing on screen can influence kids badly can reset priorities like nothing else). My wife loved Indian film music and despite not being Tamilian, she introduced me to a lot of good Tamil music which I wasn’t aware of. It was during this course of listening to Tamil film music that I came across 3 individuals who forever changed my view on Tamil Cinema and made it a world exciting enough for me to plunge headlong into.

Santhosh Narayanan:

My wife first introduced me to the music of Santhosh Narayanan. It was a song which got me to watch a Tamil movie first on my own without my mother telling me to – the song being Kaasu-Panam-Thuttu-Money. The catchy beats, the lyrics which even a Tamil illiterate like me could understand, the voice of Ganabala and Anthony Dasan and above all the siren sound on repeat made the song so infectious that it was on a constant loop on my YouTube playlist.  Then when I saw the video, I fell in love with how the song was staged, especially the red sneakers the dancers wore, and I decided to watch the movie – Soodhu Kavvum. Hopefully, for those readers who know Tamil cinema, I don’t need to say anything more, for those who don’t, please watch it ASAP (it’s on Amazon Prime).

I love Santhosh Narayanan unlike any other musician or music director in the country. If you ask me who is my favorite, I will still say AR Rahman. But my love for Santhosh is different.

Typically, with other music composers, I listen to their music independent of their movies. But with Santhosh, the song and the movie are so symbiotically intertwined that I can’t imagine liking one without liking the other. For example, when I listen to Naan Yaar (from Pariyerum Perumal), Kathir’s anguish is imprinted in my head and the movie plays out painfully and beautifully every time I listen to the heart-rending sorrow of the song.

He is probably the only Indian Music Composer who is most committed to putting the movie ahead of his music but then puts all of his soul into helping the director narrate the story better through his music (Besides Pariyerum Perumal, I love Attakathi, Kaala, Madras, Pizza, Jigarthanda, pretty much all of his work and the movies associated with those works).  More importantly, in terms of my journey to being a Tamil cinema Geek, I have Santhosh to thank for enticing me to watch the movies he gave such beautiful music for and for introducing me to some pretty special filmmakers – Nalan Kumaraswamy, Karthik Subbaraj, Mari Selvaraj, Pa Ranjith, etc. that I wouldn’t have sought out if the music hadn’t been so fantastic.

Vijay Sethupathi:

I needed an actor to root for (much like I had rooted for Amitabh all those years back) and as soon as I saw Soodhu Kavvum, I knew I had found the one. My favorite scene from the movie is when Vijay Sethupathi or Das chastises his imaginary girlfriend for dressing in a swimsuit in front of his friends (just for chutzpah alone, I will rate that among my top 3 scenes in cinema). I don’t need to spend a lot of time on Vijay Sethupathi, the actor (lots of more qualified people have written about his talent). For me Vijay Sethupathi features on my post because he has been the hook on which I have watched a lot of interesting content coming out of Tamil cinema.

To me it’s because of Vijay Sethupathi that talented writer / filmmakers are willing to put forth story-oriented films knowing they have a bankable star to market their vehicle to investors and distributors. This makes Tamil cinema exciting today and hopefully for a long time to come in the future. Hopefully, Vijay Sethupathi is the first of many “mass” stars to help promote the cause of story-oriented films. So liking Vijay Sethupathi seemingly ensured my interest in Tamil cinema. Watching his movies made me want to explore what people / critics thought about him as well as explore other content in Tamil cinema that people loved for all the right reasons. This led me to the third individual I credit with my Tamil cinema asai.  

Baradwaj Rangan:

My first exposure to Baradwaj Rangan was his interview of Santhosh Narayanan before the release of VadaChennai and I was a pleasantly puzzled, this wasn’t a traditional celebrity interview, it focused a lot on Santhosh’s craft but yet gave me an insight into Santhosh that I found very consistent with his music. Then I started consuming a lot of Baradwaj Rangan content even if I didn’t agree with his opinion. Reading Baradwaj’s reviews and interviews provided me with an expression of the science behind why I liked or disliked certain movies or certain aspects in certain movies besides expanding my knowledge of not so popular movies that were worth the watch. His book “Conversations with Mani Ratnam” is something I will wholeheartedly recommend to any cinephile, it’s easy to read with great elucidations on the science of filmmaking with conversations on some of the most loved gems in Indian cinema (I especially loved the chapter on Agni Natchatiram). Basically, with Baradwaj Rangan, I learned why particular kinds of movies move me in very objective terms.

I credit the Ask BR series with the discussion on older movies with rekindling my love with Tamil movies I remember from my childhood. His discussion on Thevar Magan and Michael Madana Kama Rajan, have made me reevaluate the genius of Kamal Haasan in a different and more positive light. Although he has recommended Bergman’s Winter Light in FC recco, I will not hold that against him (maybe in my evolution there is still place for Bergman and Godard!).

Thanks to these three individuals I have become the veritable Colonel Kurtz to my north Indian and non-Indian friends when it comes to Tamil cinema. No more Thanos or Rahul or even good old Vijay (from the Amitabh movies, just so you aren’t confused), I only seek Shilpa and Berlin!  

I am so committed to the craft of Tamil cinema watching that I have binge-watched all of Selvaraghavan’s movies and all of Myskkin movies over weekends taking only time out to change my kid’s diapers and feed them and put them to sleep. You might think that I am a loser and that my wife should leave me. Well she won’t, because she is an amazing person and YES, I do feel bad but not because my weekends are wasted, but that I wasted so much time watching Terence Mallick and Godard when I could have been enjoying Mysskin and Selvaraghavan.