February 21, 2007

Sivaji Ganesan - Not Stereotypical

This started as a response to a note from Saneram for my earlier post on Sivaji Ganesan's versatility
perhaps true...abt new age actors. But i wont agree to the fact hat sivaji was stereotypic...he wasnt. Take thiruvilayadal for example. May it be the innocent woodcutter, or the Paramsivan in playful mood, or the fisherman folk...very fine dfferentiation he had shown. You dont get to see the same Sivaji, nor do you get to see the same Sivaji as Lord Paramsivan in a different movie. Thats being emotive.Or, "Thirugnanasambandhar"...he would don Naradhar, old and worn out Thirugnanasambandahr or a royal king...the differentiation is very fine.
In his latter movies like "Muthal Mariyadhai", "Thevar Magan", he resorted to very subdued emotions for the new form of cinema. Think he adopted very well.
Sadly, the media outreach when he was acting wasnt that much, and the North-South divide was very much there, when he was in the prime of his acting career. Sad, the movies did not get much prominence, nor did he as a fine actor. It is but a different fact that many of the movies were remade in Hindi with North Indian actors.

3 comments:

SaneRam said...

Ok. My point was that Sivaji Ganesan was versatile and NOT stereo-typical if you consider the creamy top of his movies .. which would be about 50. Again, he was able to do that because he understood the concept that -- permutating the masquerades and rehashing some of the emotives would amount to brand new emotes. For example -- a thirugnanasambandar's smirk (if he had one) and a kattabomman's smirk would be totally different even if the 'raw smirk'-s under the don were very similar.

But if you are talking about any-of the 300 movies outside those creamy top -- there are stereo-types which are quite predicably sivaji's trademarks. Quintessentiality of acting is compromised , if you choose to also be viable commercially. Because its not humany possible to bring out unique creativity 10 times year for 40 yrs. C'mmon man, just cant do it. I dont care if its Marlon Brando or Lawrence Olivier or Sivaji Ganesan.

Its a well-known fact that Sivaji did'nt do a good job choosing the roles & characters well... Rather, the crass commercialism took the better of him albeit with a few guest appearance of splendour .. In the last 25 yrs of his career -- just a mere handful were delights.

Guruprasad said...

ok i see your point. some of his latter flicks like thirisulam or dr. siva or andaman kadhali would reek of his lack of creativity.

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