Two 'Mani Ratnam vs Rajamouli' tweets that started a war!
Hi there,
Hope you are doing well.
Sorry for disappearing without notice. I just realised that Oct 8, 2021 was the last time I sent out one of my digests. It’s been a year.
I have no valid reason or excuse to give for my absence. Like Allu Arjun once said about gaps: ఇవ్వలె…వచ్చింది! (I didn’t give one…it came).
I am happy that I am back and I hope you are too.
Where do I begin?
Doing a weekly recap is easy but when the gap is a year it’s difficult to figure out where to start and what to include.
I’ll stick to the recent events format while squeezing in some old topics in future digests.
Mani Ratnam vs Rajamouli
Weeks before the release of Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan 1, I felt the buzz for the movie wasn’t matching the stature of the legendary filmmaker. He’s made some of the greatest movies in recent decades and has inspired generations of filmmakers since the 80s.
However, it was Rajamouli who captured the imagination of the public with his pathbreaking work in the recent decade, and rightly so.
I wanted to remind the current generation that there exists someone like Mani Ratnam too, and that we shouldn’t underestimate him, and then this tweet happened…leading to a massive inter-state fan-war.
At the time of writing this digest that tweet has 100 replies and 126 quote tweets - each with their own take on this subject.
Many angry with the fact that I compared them; some agreeing with me, and some pointing out that there were greater filmmakers before him, like K Vishwanath, Balachander, Satyajit Ray - and that Mani Ratnam would agree too :).
Many called me ‘Sambar’ assuming I was a Tamilian. Was surprised that the term is still used in such a manner.
We’ll come back to the topic of who is the bigger filmmaker later; that warrants a proper blog post. It’s a silly comparison, I know, but there’s a lot to discuss there.
Moving on…by the time PS1 released the buzz grew manifold and I was mighty excited to watch the film too. AR Rahman’s score was mesmerising and is the only album I’ve been listening to for the last few weeks. He’s in sublime form after a really long time.
In between I also came to know about this fact.
As expected the film released to a thunderous response at the box office. I watched it too.
I was also very happy that Mani Ratnam once again showed everyone what he’s capable of. A true legend he is.
And then…I also said this.
It’s true that PS1 is difficult to follow for a first-time viewer who isn’t familiar with the story already.
And then I posted this tweet and Twitter blew up.
It’s a fact that some of Mani Ratnam’s movies are loaded with layers of context and need us to connect the dots from outside the film - like in the case of his Raavan which I blogged about too in the past.
My tweet was in no way to say that Mani Ratnam is a lesser filmmaker, but not many were in a mood to listen.
The tables turned, and this time I was accused of being a Golti. A slang term used for Telugu folks. From Sambar to Golti - life came full circle with two tweets.
Among those who did not know what I had been saying about PS1 included the popular YouTube channel ‘Our Stupid Reactions’
They didn’t pay attention to my other tweets :).
Anyways, this was my contribution to Twitter fan wars in recent weeks and none of it was intentional.
There’s a lot more I want to talk about this movie and other stuff in general, but I’ll get to those in future digests.
Signing off for this week
Meet you again soon with a new edition of the Mind u Read Digest.
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Cheers!!!
Kartik Dayanand Boddapati