Alright, the DSLR-inspired low-budget new generation movies are not a distinctive genre any more in India. There are far too many of them in almost every language and there are a thousand more in short form on Youtube. It’s really impossible to even skim through all of them.
But in Tamil mainstream cinema, they stand out and have created a completely new experience that resonates with the stand-out indies from the rest of the world. It’s a brilliant new idiom, mostly original, and a remarkably unpredictable experience.
It’s a new order of cinema and an industry by itself — concepts, use of the cinematic tools, invention of new grammatical devices, cast and technicians. Equally important, the sounds and music. Tamil films’ pride AR Rahman sounds old, repetitive and jaded in comparison with some of the composers of this really young breed, whose music is really global.
Analysing the “new wave of Tamil cinema” filmmaker-turned academic K Hariharan compares the new breed of filmmakers to Coen brothers who “sniped at the Hollywood system of making and marketing their typical heroic feel-big movies or the way Bosnian Kusturica blasted the mindless Yugoslavian wars in the early 90s through his eccentric comedies”.
He highlights three films that were hugely successful both critically and commercially — Naduvula Konjam Pakkathu Kaanum (NKPK), Sudhu Kavvum (SK), and Pizza. Interestingly, the lead actor in all of them is a new man called Vijay Sethupathy. As noted south Indian film critic Sreedhar Pillai wrote 'he is the most bankable actor in the Tamil industry now. He is brooding, unconventional and extremely convincing in the unusual plots and design of these films'.
Hariharan makes an interesting point that the difference between the stylised works of Coen brothers and the new Tamil directors is the legacy that they inherited from another set of directors that appeared in the scene a few years ago — “their critical concerns surrounding the betrayal of a Tamil Dravidian Utopia by corrupt political leaders.” These films in turn, resonated with the works of Kim Ki Duk, Almodovar and Roberto Rodriguez, he adds.
No wonder, in the underground DVD markets of Chennai, which the likes of Anurag Kashyap swear by, filmmakers like Kim Ki Duk are stars.
The three films that Hariharan highlighted are remarkable pieces of cinema that found incredible fan following and commercial success. They have unusual, but clever storylines, that are not easy to translate into a full feature film. They conceal clinical script work and technical skills that could have been perfected only by sheer practice and mad love for cinema.
NKPK is a funny tale of transient memory loss of a young boy that affects his friends and the life around them. It’s a tricky idea and hard-to-handle without getting repetitive and boring. The standard line in the film and an accompanying behaviour by the lead character might have been repeated more than a hundred times, but by the deft mastery of cinematic devices, the director and his crew make it a delectable story. It makes one marvel and smile.
SK, perhaps the most noted among the new indies, is about kidnapping, breaking stereotypes, poking fun at the establishment and even spoofing at characters the mainstream filmmakers mix and match in their commercial fare. It’s also a satire on the socio-political milieu of the state. Perhaps it’s the most intelligent film among the three. Isn’t there an element of magical realism somewhere?
Pizza, which the director acknowledged as a product of limited budget and shot in highly unconventional ways, attracted audiences with its apparent genre of horror, only to end up cheekily fooling them.
In the 1990s, Mexican gonzo Roberto Rodriguez was perhaps an icon of aspiration for film-crazy youngsters who didn’t have the wherewithal to make movies. The making of his El Mariachi, for which he even participated in a medical trial, is a tale that inspired people the world over. And he went on to wow Hollywood and the rest of the world with his original ideas and unconventional narratives. Those years, he even shot in digital.
Rodriguez’s 1990s is now happening in Tamil, but this time, the DSLRs and cameras like Red make the 20-something college kids fearless (real film is still tricky for them though). These guys are brilliant.
Their music is startlingly new and eclectic. The subaltern “gana songs”, which originated from the ghettos of Chennai, of these films have made Rahman and his clones sound boring. Gana Bala, with his perfect pitch, is an indie-star that is rocking Chennai’s FM channels.
This is the time to watch Tamil movies.
