Endrendrum Thalaivar Superstar Rajinikanth - News & Updates

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Rajini Formula

Couple of years back I had a chance to meet one of my favourite actress during a Film Festival. I was amazed to see her explaining how she was thrown into a scene and how she continued to perform for a whole 5 mins, the longest in her carrier. The very first scene of the film was with her and it was not an easy one. She plays a mother of a 8 years old, and the locataion was at the cemetery, the burial of her fictional child. It was on the sets she came to know about the scene, and she peeped over the execution script and found that their were close-up, trolly and a POV from the tomb shots as though her son was looking at her from everywhere. She walked in and became emotional before the tomb trying her best to provide various facial movements. After a whole 5 minutes, she heard 'cut', and it was a one take. She actually brought out a demise in her own family to enact it through the character.

Another actor, (due to the suject being personel I am not giving the name), suffered a loss and saw his own son stuck to the bottom. Recently, he is been doing only father roles, the character saving their kids or bringing back their son who have lost the path or cope up with their seperated child.

Uta Hagen in her work "Respect for Acting" (thanks Arvind), explains about how the Real Thinking affects the Character's thinking (in the chapter 7). Here are few lines that interested me to explore more the character and understand the artist who is performing it :

Sometimes the diligent actor mistakenly goes so far as to write out his character’s thoughts as if they were indeed dialogue. Real thinking precedes, is accompanied by, and follows action. Real thinking is active.

Thoughts spring from the contact with these inner objects (things or people not present in the room only as images in the mind), and bring about an inner action.

I never ask, “What were you thinking?” Instead, I ask, “What were your inner objects?” so that you will get out of the habit of even verbally analyzing your thought process.

The actor’s thinking depends on the subjective process of weighing the course of action by a contact with inner and outer objects.

So, a single thought can elivate or destruct a character that an artist is playing. At the make-up room he disguises himself as a character. And what we see on screen is not the artist but the character itself. Imagine if the real life and the character life collide and in that process discover that they are one and the same. This helps the artist to acheive the demanded through his fictional character, where his inner objects are real and the outer objects fall into place with the desired reality.

There is a difference between creating a comfort zone & establishing a comfort zone. Rajini establishes a huge circle, enveloppes all the co-artists inside, including the camera & called in shots. At post production, he becomes a wonder at the editing table that through his potrayal of the character scripted for motion picture, the laps & lags gets erradicated automatically. When an artist performs and ends his action at the same time the director calls for the cut, this sync is what makes the scene a cult and the film, a classic. Rajini has mastered this art of curiosity, that he is aware of each and any position in the closed room where the scene is filmed. The role he has taken guides him to that point, where even being silent amoung the crowd, the character is still visible as he continues to put it up.

Rajini is a sort of a gem which has the capacity and capability to shine itself, and readily accepts to be polished by film makers. In my recent ongoing work Chaturmukha, the Deva character, the man with the whip, is inspired from Bhairavi. In the film Bhairavi, its very difficult to perform the character's physical and mental agony at the same time, during the whole second half. The limp that Mookaiyah makes is maintained throughout the 2nd half by Rajini without any deviations, and the climax is a class of its own. Recently, another film hit the screen and it looked like 6 different persons playing the same character. The artist (to avoid clash, I am not mentioning) was not concentrating and his mind was blabbering, that inbetween shots he looked so different. His thought process has runined not only the scenes, but the whole viewing experience too. And the make up was annoyingly wrong.

And to add the class effect, Rajini walks & talks like the character would do, but puts up a uniqueness to it. As there is much to tell about it, but here, I will just point out his eye movements. Its not only about looking, its about using it. While delivering a dialogue, you could note that Rajini shrinks his eyes more often, and the sight motion varies according to the uttered words - anger, sympathy, pity, challenge, etc. To give you an immediate exemple, in Lingaa after the Train Fight sequence, Lingaa is enquiring the hitmen in a compartment where the windows were broken during the stunts. Its in a indoor set with all the necessary visual effects. You could note that, only Rajini would be flattering his eyes as though the breeze from the broken window is hitting his face. Thats called presence of mind of an artist. Several such Rajini moments could be found from several footages, in which what is enacted gets reciprocated from the audience. And walking & talking is not a easy task, only proper theatre artists master this format.

Talking about make-up, with powders or just the attire, it should make the artist comfortable. As mentioned few months back, give Rajini a beard, he will thank you for that. He is so comfortable with it (and his fans like myself) that it certainly projects on screen. Plus the costumes, which makes an artist enter into the character while leaving the make-up room. Rajini gets in, gets the job done & gets out, all credits to the makers who have designed something unique called Rajini Formula.