SR : Bro, I was browsing iTunes and stumbled upon a ‘City love v/s Village love’ playlist. Yes, that’s what it’s called! It alternates a ‘Mental Manadhil’ ( OK Kanmani ) with an ‘Ayyayayo Aananthamey’ ( Kumki )… isn’t that interesting?
VM : Really? Can you send me the link? So are the ‘city’ songs limited to just Mani Ratnam and GVM? And what about the ‘village’ songs? Are they all Imman-Prabhu Solomon works?
SR : Yeah mostly. There are English words in many city songs in the playlist… there’s ‘Hey Goodbye Nanba’ and ‘Mental Manadhil’. And then, there’s the rap portion in ‘Hosanna’. When you’re showing city love, you have to throw in a bit of English, I suppose, and show the guitar-strapped hero, hands outstretched and just not able to take his eyes off the girl. Sometimes, village songs do that too—portraying how much he likes the feeling of being in love. ‘Ayyayayo Aananthamey’, for instance.
VM : I know you’re a huge fan of both Mani and GVM, but when I watch Tamil films, especially love stories, I look for the subjects set away from the city. They seem more ‘original’ to me. I can always watch Hollywood romances or an Imtiaz Ali love story rather than the stuff we get from urban Tamil films.
SR : So, you’re saying you’d prefer to watch love scenes like the one in Aadukalam, where Dhanush slits his wrist for his love interest?
VM : That’s not what I mean. For the sake of argument, let’s take two romances, both tragedies, that we consider modern classics. Kaadhal , set in Madurai, and Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa, set in Chennai. They’re both stories in which the lovers don’t end up together, but they couldn’t be any different. In Kaadhal , we don’t once question the “purity” of their love. They know their differences, but it doesn’t stop them from falling in love, without any doubts. Their problems are external.
SR : So you mean to say in VTV , the problems are just internal?
VM : Hear me out. Just compare the two issues the couples face… In Kaadhal , it’s the entire society, caste and class they have to fight. In comparison, in VTV , it’s just Jessie’s mood swings and Karthik’s lack of ambition that they have to deal with.
SR : I feel it’s the mood swings that make their love “purer”. Can you even think of Sandhya leaving Bharath in the middle of the bus journey during that ‘Unakena’ song and heading back home? She’s in the relationship because she’s in love, yes, but also because she cannot afford to think beyond it. I’d like to think that today’s couples face what Karthik and Jessie do, rather than what the couple in Kaadhal did.
VM : I have 100 newspaper clippings that prove otherwise. Love stories like Subramaniapuram and Paruthiveeran are as important now as they ever were.
SR : You don’t tend to think of both these films you mentioned as “love stories”, right? I can’t think of a great full-fledged rural romance in the last few years, like the ones Bharathiraja did. Mynaa , maybe. But then, that was a tragedy.
VM : Kumki was decent. So was Mundasupatti . Even Nedunchalai had a nice love story. There might not be as many rural romances like before, but they’re still around. The thing is, not many directors make simple love stories any more. It always has to be a “love track” just like the “comedy track”. Why can’t more films just be plain and simple love stories, without the intermittent fights and action sequences?
SR : You don’t want the audience hooting, right? It’s sort of become important to weave in “all necessary commercial ingredients” to make a film work. Sometimes, love unfortunately ends up being the first-half filler, before he starts making the film he wants in the second. Have you felt so too?
VM : Haven’t we all? I forgot to mention Autograph . That was a beautiful love story (ies). I guess you need more than just one love story to sustain a whole film now. I recently watched the Marathi film Sairat and it was so beautiful. You needn’t have done anything more than just have one solid love story and it still becomes a really great film. That was a Rs. 100-crore film, without any big stars or names. Only love stories have the power to do that.
SR : How come you mentioned Sairat but not Premam ? That film worked so well for me. You even end up rooting for one particular love story more than the other. Malar miss and that particular love angle was so organic that we feel sad when she loses her memory in the film. That’s how you ought to write and shoot love!
VM : See, that film had city love, college love as well as village love, because in Malayalam, you don’t have an A centre, B centre or a C centre. The heart is at the centre… that’s all.
SR : Da, that line should get you the Pulitzer for the mokka-est line ever.
