On Mani Ratnam's birthday, decoding his successful partnership with music maestro Ilaiyaraja

When will Mani Ratnam make another Mouna Ragam or _Nayakan_ ? Or for that matter, even Dil Se, his fluttering foray into Hindi cinema which boasted of many virtues, Chaiyya chaiya being the least of them. In my opinion, the biggest blunder that Mani committed was switching his musical allegiance from Ilaiyaraja to AR Rahman. It is no coincidence that Mani and Ilaiyaraja share the same birthday on 2 June. They were born to bond. With due respects to Rahman, he couldn’t match up to the epic dimensions of Ilaiyaraja’s music and songs in Mani’s cinema. In the ten films that they did together, Ilaiyaraja gave Mani’s vision a unique extra dimension that took the films to level of classics. Mouna Ragam (1986) is Mani Ratnam’s most intense and passionate film to date, a genuine version of the ersatz emotions against Mani Ratnam’s actors displayed in 2017’s Kaatru Veliyidai where Karthi hammed and Aditi Rao hawed. In Mouna Ragam, Revathi played the newly-married stubborn woman who won’t consummate her marriage with the kind patient empathetic husband. The film is a waltz of walled-down emotions hammering against the boundaries to emerge as a strong voice clamouring to break free of conventional emotions. The songs like ‘Nilaave Vaa’ and ‘Panivizhum Iravu’ went a long way in making the film a classic forever, and a day. Thalapathi (1991) was the only film that saw Mani Ratnam get together with the mighty Rajinikanth. A brutal, violent, kinetic take on the Mahabharat. Rajini played the quasi-Karn and Mammootty as the quasi-Duryodhan. The conflict was staged amidst bouts of bloodied vendetta and flamboyant singing and dancing. Larger-than-life is a term that seems to be invented for this. No Mani Ratnam film has achieved the spiralling scale of this paean to mythologised mayhem that even Vyasa would find hard to identify. This is the last film in which Ilaiyaraja composed music for Mani. I wonder why he switched to Rahman! Ilaiyaraja was at his inspired untouchable best with Mani. Songs like ‘Rakkamma Kaiya Thattu’ and Sundari Kannal’ went a long way into giving the soundtrack an epic dimension. Apparently, Ilaiyaraja composed the entire soundtrack of Thalapathi in one day. And yet after Thalaapthi’s grand musical performance by Ilaiyaraja, Mani Ratnam switched to AR Rahman in Bombay. Why? It is my sincere belief that once Mani Ratnam returns to Ilaiyaraja, all will be well with Mani’s world. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.