BEHINDWOODS COLUMN

To a Rajini fan like me, Thalaivar will always be immortal. Like most people who are reading this, I too am someone who grew up watching Rajini’s films. Initial days of my life were filled with some of the popular signature styles of Rajinikanth which I keep reduplicating over and over again. Then he got choosy with the script that he acted and then you literally happened to see a RAJINI film, once in 4 years like how a world cup is. More than the limitation to the number of films that he acted, you could also find a severe drop in his signature styles. You could still find a handful number of style scenes in his recent films but only very few have got viral like how it used to do in the 90s or even the 80s.

Why is that so? Is it because the directors don’t care too much about the style quotient anymore? Or is it because we don’t see Rajini doing styles in simple ways that we as a common man could do, as his styles are CGI supported these days? Or is it because they are not convincing enough and worth imitating like the one he does with his hair in Lingaa?

While comparing some of his earlier styles in the 90s, the ones that he did post 2000 are far more complicated and not easy to repeat. Sometimes even a simplest salute could become a path breaking style quotient. Are the directors getting pressurized on looking for the ideal style pattern for Superstar? If yes, then they should probably keep it simple.

Perhaps, to set a trend you need to provide something that is easily accessible for the audience to replicate, for example even the elementary Kaththam Kaththam style in Baba was a huge raging success compared to the coin flipping style or the one that he does with the gum in Sivaji.

May be my writing here is one sided, totally fan perspective and may be the directors of Rajini’s recent films did give it their best shot to invent some amusing signature styles for the style samrat. I could in fact recall director Shankar’s speech in one interview when he talked about how he and his team used to work hard to zero in on with a style scene for Rajini. The effort has always been there, probably just probably, they could get simpler with their approach. Simple words like ‘Cool’ and ‘Chumma Adirudhula’, when being echoed in Rajini’s voice go viral, that’s the power of Superstar. He is someone who could turn ashes into gold, try giving him gold and see what he can make out of it!

It’s been forty years now, one incredible journey, inspiring millions through his films which are cobbled with meaningful social messages and spirituality. He is all gunned up to start his 5th decade of cinema in style with his 159th film, for which he teams up with a new generation director Ranjith.

A fresh team, some hot ideation and new age belief systems combining with the epitome of style- the man still has plenty more to offer. Hope Ranjith channelizes his talent keeping all the constraints in mind and delivers an all-new Superstar!