Screen-Turners II.3: The Moondraam Pirai Supremacy (Naaz)
The Screen-Turners: Chapter II - Part 3: The Moondraam Pirai Supremacy
-Naaz
ROMANCING THE MEMORY
When my friend told me that Innale was best remembered for its ending, I asked him what was so striking for it to stand out so? The amnesiac girl does not recognize her husband! He exclaimed, aghast that such a horror should pass me by so unemotionally. After all, I had read Jananam, the book on which it was based.
For weeks I’ve walked around seeing “The Amnesiac Girl Does Not Recognize Her Husband!” in headline, subhead and whole paragraphs, as though it were some code Da Vinci had overlooked. You know those posters behind glassed frames that people have in their living rooms, right above the Devi bronze they picked up fifteen years ago in Bhutan or Bhubaneswar? It’s like when you are caught between those papery hallucinogens and your new age friend in the same room, and you can hear the instruction turn the corner on his tongue: If you stare at it, it will form an image? Well, that’s what happened with the phrase. And funny thing is, I did not have to look at it too hard for a pattern to emerge. It was there to see, all so beautifully angled and lighted, with just one studied glance.
Before Yaaro Ezhuthiya Kavithai crossed the border to become Innale, there was this other film, one that also featured an amnesiac girl, and guess what? Everybody just kept talking about the ending the ending never endingly. And even before that there was this other film with an amnesiac guy, and that too had an ending that was all the chatter. Or almost.
But we’ll get to that soon, right after this nifty little montage of my own memory of loss of memory as portrayed on the screen at a theatre near me. A bit of a maze that, I admit, but it also happens to be the most accurate way to put it. The trick is to catch it before it goes, becomes an engirindho vandha phrase.
Somewhere in the seventies, my dad packed my mother, brother and I in the car, and drove us to Mount Road to see a film. It was a tamil film, and my tamil was not good those days (my mother’s still is to this day) so I don’t think I could have been really too involved in the proceedings. But from what I could follow, I knew that Sivaji’s girlfriend burned herself and he went crazy and forgot who he was. There was this song Naan Unnai that went on and on, and after that I don’t know what happened. I woke up when the film was nearing its end and saw that another woman had her sari in flames. But she didn’t die. And for some strange reason the Sivaji guy did not recognize the woman, but she still kept begging him to stop the others from throwing her out of the house. On the drive back home, while my parents chatted about Sivaji’s “acting” (my father a bit effusively, for he fancied a resemblance to the star,) all I could think of that night and for a long time after, was, looking back now, the reverse of my friend’s incredulity: Another Girl Had To Burn For The Crazy Man To Be Not Crazy.
A bleeding heart, if there was one.
So you see, if at all there was a person who in later life should have grown up to be the sap for Memory Romances, it should have been me. However, that was not to be the case. The more I saw people losing it on screen at a theatre near me, the more I felt manipulated and frustrated. And, not so surprisingly, I was the only one I knew that felt that way. My friends didn’t care that we knew all about amiable amnesiacs and nothing about amnesia, the serious medical condition. The equivalent of “Oh, the players wear white” if you worship at the altar of Cricket. But Jananam’s introduction changed all that. Remember that quote about “unburdening” heaviness? It’s a scam.
INSIDE MEMORY
A recent conversation with a Psychiatrist friend:
Me: “Can trauma from an auto accident lead to memory loss?”
Dr: “Sometimes. It depends on the injury.”
Me: “Can it make you crazy?”
Dr: “You mean like go ballistic?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Dr. “Unlikely. Amnesiacs tend to be internal, unusually quiet sometimes.”
Me: “Why?”
Dr: “Their fear is about not forgetting the immediate past. Their concentration tends to be on remembering things day to day, the short term.”
Me: “So they can’t remember or become who they were when they were five? Or just be five?”
Dr: “That’s a symptom of schizophrenia, not amnesia.”
Me: “You’re sure there can’t be adult auto accident amnesiacs that regress to the behavior of kids? Even temporarily?”
Dr: “I haven’t heard of such a thing.”
Me: “No kidding.”
Dr: “No.”
Me: “But there can be amnesiac pianists?”
Dr: “You referring to the Paris case? He did not regress or progress to being a pianist overnight.”
Me: “Can amnesiacs be cured? Like, fully?”
Dr: “ Trauma can only be treated, but Memory is tricky business.”
Me: “What about herbal potions that can calm and rearrange things like they were before the accident?”
Dr: “Oh, from ballistic to holistic?”
Me: “Ok, Memento or Bourne Identity?”
Dr: “Memento.”
Me: “Why?”
Dr: “The guy is paranoid about not being able to remember. That’s classic amnesiac behavior.”
Me: “And Jason?”
Dr: “Pure romance.”
MEMORY TRICKS
A hard look at the poster, eyes fixed and unblinking, and I see the words Moondraam Pirai. The opus sealed it for Memory Romances, once and for all. There’s nothing quite in its league, before or after. Well, that wouldn’t be true, given the book turned film at hand. And the more you look at them, the films, side by side, like say, Padmini and Shobana, you see the similarities. Oh, yes, unmistakable. In how many ways shall I compare thee?
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They begin with an auto accident. The victim is a young, fair girl in her twenties. The rescue team: A doctor and a teacher, both with deity names - Anantaramakrishnan and Srinivasan. How to describe the professions? Noble. The Samaritan status is immediately conferred, and that immunizes them from nary a sexual thought even though they are older male custodians of two mature women. Do-gooders, nothing less.
Moondraam Pirai even goes a step further and employs the charms of Silk Smitha to desexualize the Teacher (Kamal Haasan). Her domineering physicality (vamp) is used self-consciously to set up a fake binary between mature desire and child (woman) love (Sri Devi). But that is merely a fairy-tale construct as basic as the innocent and the wild. And that bit is entirely true of both films; they’re committed to Christian Andersen right through.
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Srinivasan takes (abducts, if you want to get legal) Viji/Bhagyalakshmi from a brothel to his staff quarters in the hills, and Anantaramakrishnan dreams in duets with Lavanya. Both the films follow the previously detailed stations of predictability: Chokalingam plots to take Lavanya to the Pannai, and Viji is stalked and nearly molested by the man in the woods. The red riding hood and the bad wolf moment out of the way, both films prepare for their denouement. Anantaramakrishnan expects the arrival of Lavanya’s husband, and Srinivasan hides behind bushes awaiting the outcome of Viji’s total kashaayam recall.
All the “romantic” tenets are in play: A tragic accident and a beautiful victim. Two men of grace and goodness. Silky Baddies. But in the end love - love has to conquer all. So, if it can cancer, why not amnesia? Because that’s not how it goes with people who lose it. You might want to read the conversation transcript above (again) before moving to the next paragraph.
It is Moondraam Pirai that goes the full distance. Here’s how it wins the Christian Andersen Hall of Fame:
AromaHerbalApplication works like AHA for Viji, and she’s back to being B. Lakshmi of her grown-up, pre-subbramani /accident days. While she’s sitting in her cabin, waiting for the train to take her to another beach party maybe (she’s been missed,) Srinivasan shows up at the platform. The antics of a local politico’s entourage obstruct Viji’s view of Srinivasan, and amid the melee, the train begins to pull out of the station. Srinivasan performs segments from the duo’s recent childhood detour, but Viji doesn’t blink – actually, that’s all she does. Blink. Of course her name is not Viji.
Srinivasan bumps into a lamppost, and now blood borders his bloodshot eyes. He grins and jumps about like a monkey fetching a bucket of water, another scene from their “recent past” routine. Insane is not the word. And—you ready for this -- just as the last carriage leaves the platform’s edge, Viji throws a packet of food at Srinivasan from the cabin window, flinging it with the words, “Paavam…”
The audience lets out the drawn in breath. Adi Paavi.
Now you see the manipulation, the emotional scam of the “load” shedding? It’s Mawk.
Everything has been working its way to the HOW COULD SHE NOT RECOGNIZE moment. It is only a question of decibel after this. Had the proceedings prior to the climax adhered even remotely to a shred of reality, or the memory conundrum been presented with the rudimentary medical gloss, then the exasperation would not only be neutralized, it would be moot. But when such a possibility is romanticized for tear-duct bonanza (bullets for Bourne) you always have to bear in mind that it’s not about memory or amnesia or the reality of amnesiacs and their caregivers. It is always and only about an imagination that has tragically forgotten to be reasonable.
Author (C) 2006
