June 2, 2006

Mani Ratnam was born on 2nd June, 1956 in Madras. His birth name was Gopalaratnam Subramaniam. He was the son of a Tamil film producer ‘Venus Gopalratnam’. He completed graduation in Chennai and obtained a management degree from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies. He started his career as management consultant and he steered his career towards filmmaking.

Mani Ratnam is the director who brought new perspective to South Indian cinema with his work. Mani Ratnam started off his career with beautiful love stories and slowly started giving more importance to social issues and political problems.

His first film Pallavi Anu Pallavi (a Kannada film starring Anil Kapoor) was a flop at box office, but won Karnataka state award. He also made a film each in Tamil and Malayalam before breaking into the limelight with his 4th film Mouna Ragam (starring Revathi). Then he came up with the best film of his career Nayakan (inspired by Francis Ford Coppolo’s The Godfather). He Indianized Godfather film and applied it to the life story of Bombay based gangster Varadarajan Mudalair. Kamal Hassan won the National award as best actor with this film.

His next film Agni Nakshatram (Gharshana in Telugu) was another blockbuster that explores the conflict between two step brothers. Then came Mani’s most poetic film Geetanjali that explores the feelings and love between two terminally ill people (played by Nagarjuna and Girija). Mani Ratnam’s next film was ‘Anjali’. This film deals about a disabled child. This film was selected by the Government of India for Oscar race under the best foreign film category. Mani Ratnam then teamed up with Superstar Rajnikant to make Dalapathi which was a big blockbuster.

Roja made Mani Ratnam popular all over India and Mani Ratnam introduced music whiz kid AR Rehman with this film. Roja is about a wife’s war against the government for her husband who is captured by Kashmiri militants. AR Rehman won the National award for his music in Roja. His next film Thiruda Thiruda (Donga Donga in Telugu), which is heavily inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a flop.

Mani Ratnam rekindled the hearts of movie lovers all over India with his film ‘Bombay’, which is set against 1993 Hindu – Muslim riots in Mumbai.

Mani Ratnam made a complete political film ‘Iruvar’ (Iddaru in Telugu) that is based on MGR – Karunanidhi life story. Mani Ratnam experimented with this film by making it partly black and white. Though it got rave critical acclaim, this film turned out to be a disaster at box office.

Mani Ratnam’s fascination with politics continued as he made his Hindi debut with Dil Se, which features the backdrop of Northeast terrorism. Though it was one of the best technical films of Mani Ratnam, it failed miserably on trade front.

Mani Ratnam came back with ‘Alai Payuthe’ (Sakhi in Telugu) a love story that deals with troubles after marriage. This film is a huge hit. His next film Kannathil Muthamittal (Amrutha in Telugu) has the backdrop of LTTE. This film too flopped at box office. His next film Ayitha Ezhuthu (Yuva in Telugu and Hindi) too did not do well.

Mani Ratnam is currently directing a straight Hindi film called Guru with Abhishek Bachchan, Aiswarya Rai, Madhavan and Vidya Balan in the main leads. He also announced intentions to make ‘The Mahabharata’ in grand scale.

Mani Ratnam is married to popular Telugu and Tamil actress Suhasini. Interestingly Mani Ratnam shot all his songs in India only (except for Amrutha where story demanded Srilanka backdrop).

Idlebrain.com wishes Mani Ratnam a happy birthday!!