Saturday, June 2, 2012

Happy Birtday "Maestro" Ilayaraja and Mani Ratnam


A walk down the memory lane

Geethanjali (1989) - An eternal love story by Mani Ratnam.
The film won the National Film Award (Golden Lotus award) in 1990 for "Best Popular Film providing wholesome Entertainment" and also won Nandi Awards (AP state film awards) for Best Film, Best Cinematography (P C Sriram), Best Story writer (Mani Ratnam), Best Art Direction (Thota Tharani), Best Comedian (Sutti Velu), and Best Choreography (Sundaram master).
The film's music and background score were composed by "Maestro" Ilayaraja. Talking about the greatest combinations Tamil cinema has seen, the Mani Ratnam - Ilayaraja combination will be right on top of the list. They created magic together.
The movie was made with lesser dialogues, thus relying on visuals and music alone. P C Sriram had shown Ooty like a dreamland and he had set the trend of shooting in semi-darkness. At a time when there was no digital intermediate, most of the scenes were captured naturally by P C Sriram. How he used the wide-angle lenses to capture the serenity of Ooty and soft lenses to present lead players like a dream will be a lesson for anyone interested in cinematography. In fact, a book can be written on how fog & mist will enhance a shot so beautifully, based entirely on this film alone.
The movie is replete with so much of love infusing the divine feeling of romance throughout. This movie is second on my Mani Ratnam favorites list, first being Nayagan. Watch it and feel the love. Here's a lovely song from the film.

3 comments:

  1. haven't seen the movie yet. but heard songs.. mesmerizing as usual from Raja sir

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    1. It's one of the finest love stories. Watch it :) :)

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