There’s a scene in Vijay’s 1999 film, Nenjinile, where Isha Koppikar’s character is getting out of her house to get with the day’s proceedings; given that the film is set in Mumbai, it is important that get the flavor, tone, and culture right – because – storytelling is all about the details. Right as she’s leaving, she says “Poitu Varen Ma” (I’m leaving) ‘cause you know, Tamil, and we hear a voice from inside the house, probably squeezed in during dubbing, responding with a thick accent that could’ve only been cultivated in the south: “Theek Hai Beti”, cause you know, Mumbai.
Apart from being a medium about its stories and propaganda, cinema has also been an important tool for documentation. Since its conception as a byproduct of technology, historians have used cinema as an artifact and a document. It’d be dangerous to look at cinema as accurate depictions of the time they were made in; rather, films are a reflection of the time it was made in.
Now, here’s the problem with cinema that is made in Tamil Nadu: it’s not that it isn’t a reflection of its time, but it lacks detail to qualify as a historical document. The films that are set in Chennai, lack detail; the geography is never accurate; the characters don’t speak like they belong here; there’s nothing Chennai or Madras about a film that’s set in Chennai.
A few hundred years from now when Tamil Nadu exists in a microcosm, and historians want a cultural reflection of Chennai from the 21stcentry, they’d look to our films; they’d find places like “Coffee Shop in Anna Nagar”, “Park”, “IT company”, etc often being quoted in films. Except, these places don’t exist. I mean, they do, but they lack detail. The film could’ve been set anywhere, why Madras or Chennai?
Very few filmmakers working today seem to get a grasp of how important detail is as an archival and storytelling tool. Myskkin, however grim his characters and conflicts might be, does make sure his films are geographically accurate. Manikandan picks on the Kafka-esque qualities of life and bureaucracy and sets it in pockets and niches of Chennai that truly do exist in all its glory and detail.
Ranjith does his part for documentation by picking out communities that color the different parts of the city and set them in a narrative riddled with culture. Karthik Subbaraj, Nalan Kumarasaamy, Vetrimaran, Pushkar-Gayatri (sort of) all understand the importance of capturing a city in all its realism without resorting to a reality that’s rooted in absolutely no time or space.
But these filmmakers are few and far between. The ones that still rule the roost are ones that make films about a protagonist who somehow manages to exist as a ‘hero’ while continuing to harass, leech, and creep, not one, but two women; and these films are rooted in no reality even though they are supposedly set in Chennai. Despite films like Ranjith’s Madras existing, filmmakers even today, still resort to tropes of “North Madras”. If this is a reflection of the time we live in, then historians are in for a confusing time.
Bhargav Prasad
Twitter@CFLlightSabers
The writer specializes in first drafts, making observations on what makes Chennai, Madras