There was something about her face that made the audience look past the otherwise out of shape physicality, the one prerequisite that heroines continue to be judged by, and remained glued to her eyes. It didn’t have the raw magnetism of a Jamuna, nor the pure attraction of B. Saroja, it didn’t command the respect like the First Lady of telugu cinema, Bhanumathi, nor did it have the many endearing traits of many of her other contemporaries. Yet when Savitri moved into the frame, the audience’s eyes were locked on to hers and refused to move past them. Her face had the serenity and innocence of a child, which probably allowed her to move between the two emotions often associated with kids - hearty laughter and soulful tears - with equal ease and with great authenticity. Her silence deserved attention, her action earned participation, her laugh unearthed joy, her tears welled up sorrow - she was a maker’s dream and the audience’s delight. A consummate actress, who also let her humanity shine through her personality. ‘mahaa naTi’ was not merely a title conferred upon her, it was a term of endearment that was bestowed on her. And that was just her acting side. The many stories around her legendary acts of benevolence cemented her place not just in the minds of the public but in their hearts as well. That a great actress can be a great human being too, was an irresistible combination that helped her myth grow over time. And the eventual tragedy in her life made her story timeless. As the Gemini Ganesan’s character says in the movie “daevadAsu Parvati katha sukhaanatamaitae vaaru ilaa gurtunDipOyaevaaraa?”. For an actress that resolutely remained natural on the screen, her life turned into a melodrama that swung wildly between too many highs and lows. And it is this metadata that made her more human than the hundreds of roles that she breathed life into on the screen. The life of Savitri was more cinematic than all of her cinematic life put together. It is a story that deserved to be told and told well.
..and ‘mahaa naTi’ was indeed told very well. The tall question that stands before the maker of any biography remains, what the ‘in’ is into one’s life that he can build the story around, whether it is the myth, or the mystery, or the common knowledge. While myth adds to the aura of the character, a la Satakarni, and mystery deepens the gravitas of it, biographies woven around recent and common public knowledge add the extra stroke of humanity that remains otherwise hidden from the public view. It is very interesting that Nag Ashwin chooses the route of mystery to peel away the different layers of Savitri’s life, an open personality who lived much of her life in the public gaze, and calls upon the certified master of this (quasi-)biography trade, Orson Welles, to borrow the narrative structure from arguably the greatest movie ever made, Citizen Kane. The format that Welles uses to crack the mystery of a media baron’s life is employed here to slowly unfold Savitri’s life through different times, through different eyes. What is more impressive however is the tone of entire movie, which is deliberately dialed low key, where the laughs are tempered, sorrows are muted and all the melodrama in her life played out without any emphasis. This is a big trap that Ashwin skillfully avoids however much there is an opportunity in the material to take the bait. Aiding him every step of the way are Sai Madhav Burra’s words which remain just as balanced and detached to bring out the naturality out of the characters that are simply larger than life. No where are his words more impressive than in the sequence when an already twice married Gemini tries to convince Savitri as to why they should enter into the social contract yet again in a conversation that pits human nature against social convention. Equally important is the choice of making the then most hated person on this side of the Tamil-Telugu border, Gemini Ganesan, a hopeless, helpless and a hapless romantic, whose idea of love transcended (and thereby transgressed) social conventions. This choice made the events that eventually led to the tragic fall of Savitri, from the social graces into the warm embrace of alcohol, less as a deliberate act of malice on Gemini’s part and more a fateful occurrence of being caught in the path of the storm. Very brave choice this, that Ashwin and Sai Madhav were able to pull off, according the much deserved sympathy to not just Savitri, but sparing a little to Gemini too, in the process.
As is the wont to go overboard with the lighting, when it comes to the period pieces, the photography is also taken down a notch, in line with the subtle mood the script was aiming for. Apart from the sepia toned stunning visuals of Santosh Sivan from “Iruvar” which captured similar era of the 50s and the 60s, there was barely another movie in recent memory that could portray the toned down look of the yesterday years until ‘mahAnaTi’. And it certainly helped having an outsider (Spaniard) to truly bring out the earthy look of that era (much like how Danny Boyle brought out the true Indian-ness of the land much more than an Indian maker in his ‘Slumdog Millionnaire’).
Casting was near perfect with Dulquer Salman breathing all the charm into the Gemini Ganesan character with his matinee idol looks, a boyish verve with an impish smile. He strides the cause and consequences of his actions with equal grace, never apologizing for the character, rather fully embracing it. Though it appears that it is her looks (and resemblances) that seem to have gotten her the role, Keerthy Suresh vindicates the casting choice by holding up her end admirably well. The cameos by the vanguard directors and the stalwart actors all absolving themselves nicely in their illustrious roles, ‘mahAnaTi’ rises to be a paean to not just of the person, but to the era, that fittingly has little greys and simply remains black and white.
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