In 2025, Bharathiraja played the role of Palani Swamy, a veteran stunt master who serves as a mentor to Mohanlal’s character, 'Benz' Shanmugham in the Malayalam movie Thudarum. It was a way for Mohanlal to pay tribute to a maestro and for the maestro to be reunited with his protege.
He was a mentor to many, especially in the Tamil film industry where his debut film 16 Vayathinile launched the careers of two cinema superstars Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth, as well as a new kind of cinema rooted in rural life. The film also featured a 14 year old Sridevi who had acquired fame a year earlier in K Balachandar's Moondru Mudichu, which also starred Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth.
16 Vayathinile injected a new kind of realism in Tamil cinema, till then restricted to big studios. It was mostly shot outdoors and cast Rajinikanth as the village ruffian Parattaiyan who gives Sridevi's Mayil a hard time. He experimented with other genres but became known in the 1980s for rustic realism in movies such as Alaigal Oivathillai (1981) where a Hindu boy falls in love with a Christian girl; Mann Vasanai (1983), about a man who serves in the Army; and Muthal Mariyathai (1985) with Sivaji Ganesan as a middle aged upper caste man in love with a lower caste younger woman.
Gone was the heavy paint on studio walls and on actors. In were contemporary issues of caste, class and gender. He was a big influence on directors looking to tell authentic stories. Director-actors such as Bhagyaraj, Manivannan were all influenced by him. Actors such as Kamal Haasan and Revathi still talk about his way of working.
Bharathiraja was a simple man, with not much by way of formal education but wise in the ways of life, and a powerful social conscience. His name was a portmanteau of his sister Bharati and brother Jayaraj's names and his concerns remained social and cultural, even as he steered clear of politics as a profession. As he once said in an interview: "I came as an artist and I will die an artist."
His dear Tamil people, to paraphrase his greeting at the beginning of every film, will miss him dearly. Not for nothing was he known as Iyakkunar Imayam, the peak of directors.
