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KANDUKONDAIN
KANDUKONDAIN
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For Menon,
cinema is not a profession. He doesn't consider film-making a task, just
a labour of love.
 Rajiv
Menon's e-mail id is rajivmenon007@hotmail.com. And that's not the only
thing the Tamil film director shares with the daredevil secret agent.
Menon, 37, is an inveterate risk-taker. In an industry where most men
prefer to play safe, Menon plays for broke. And occasionally he wins.
This is
one of those happy occasions. A few months ago, Menon decided to release
his second feature film Kandukondain Kandukondain (KK) with English
subtitles instead of the traditional dubbed Hindi soundtrack. His well-wishers
warned him that it wouldn't work. But he stuck to his guns.
And he was
right. KK is running to house-full shows in its fifth week in Mumbai.
It got rave reviews and the word-of-mouth is spectacular: "The reports
are consistently good," says columnist Shobha De. In Delhi, it's
a similar success story. Running at the PVR-Anupam-4 multiplex, KK is
drawing full houses. The film will soon be released in Pune, Ahmedabad
and Calcutta. KK has broken new ground.
It is that
kind of a film. KK is a family saga of epic proportions that explores
the lives of a widow and her three daughters whose lives are suddenly
thrown asunder. Menon's inspiration was both his own life and Jane Austen's
Sense and Sensibility. His father died when he was only 15 and
his mother single-handedly raised him and his brother. Menon astutely
weaves in autobiographical experiences but transposes the boys into girls.
Austen provides the rest of the framework.
KK follows
the lives of these women. Their loves, their struggle and their eventual
triumph over adversity. Says Menon: "The story's certainly not a
straight line, not even a triangle, but a pentagon with different corners
and angles to it. Somebody's always surprising somebody else." The
textured story is complemented by first-rate performances, melodious music
and striking images. Writer Honey Irani points out, "For once, everything
else matched the cameraman's work. This was very classically done. Hats
off to the director."
The success
is a vindication of Menon's talent. His debut film Minsara Kanavu
was a success in Tamil but took a beating in Hindi. Trade pundits theorise
that heartland audiences could hardly relate to the heroine's dilemma
of choosing between the man she loves and becoming a nun. But it was more
likely the awful dubbing. Having burned his fingers once, Menon decided
to steer clear.
In KK, Aishwarya
Rai admirably matches histrionics with National Award winners Tabu and
Mammooty. She says the credit goes to Menon. "He is very good at
narrating and he puts a lot of clarity into the character. That made it
easy for me to become Meenakshi." Adds Tabu: "He is a complete
sport on the set. For him, cinema is not a profession. So he doesn't take
it like a task. KK is a labour of love."
For bread
and butter, Menon makes commercials. And he is very successful at it.
Ads like those of Titan, Bru, Nescafe, Dove and Asian Paints have earned
him a national reputation and a sizeable fortune. As his snazzy two-floor,
lime and grey office in Chennai's posh Alwarpet area testifies. But it
wasn't always so. Menon has come up the hard way. When his father, a naval
officer, died Menon helped shoulder family responsibility. After graduating
from the Film Institute, Madras, he joined Prasad Productions as a steadicam
operator and did industrial photography for some time before getting a
break in advertising. He also shot Mani Ratnam's Bombay.
But Menon
hasn't always stayed behind the camera. The modern day Renaissance man
put on the make-up for a cameo in Fazil's Malayalam film Harikrishnans.
KK hero Ajith Kumar says he is constantly telling Menon that he can pass
off as a hero himself. Menon also sings, a gift from his mother Kalyani,
who is a classical singer. And he can converse about anything. But it
is movies that Menon loves best. Between films, he spends evenings with
Mani Ratnam, chatting about films, cricket, music, waiting for that one
word or image that becomes a hook for a movie. Menon wants very much to
make films that are "international standard, not NRI standard".
"We missed our opportunity to the Chinese or to the Iranians,"
he says. "If they can, why can't we?"
Why not
indeed? Kandukondain literally means "I have found it."
Rajiv Menon definitely has.
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