Arar Asaippadar - A documentary/film on Sanjay Subramaniam

ram · Post by **ram** » 24 Dec 2006, 14:38

At the outset, my apologies if this is not the right place to post this .... I couldn't find any other section on the forum where I could write this and so am posting it here.

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Prasanna Ramaswamy's "Arar Asaippadar", a documentary on popular Carnatic singer Sri Sanjay Subramaniam, was screened at Sathyam Cinemas in Chennai today morning at 10.00AM. I walked into the hall at about 9:55AM and was greeted by an audio track of Sanjay's rendition of Sri Subbaraya Sastri's rItigOwLa composition "jananI ninnuvinA" being played before the film started. A nice idea I thought to build up the mood of the audience.

The documentary started with Sanjay's rendition of Sri Muthu Tandavar's nAdanAmakriyA composition "ArAr AsaippaDAr". The initial part just dragged on and on and on, supported mainly by the audio track of Sanjay's songs running in the background. I think the aim here was to show snippets from the daily life of Sri Sanjay but what resulted was a random collection of clippings depicting different things making it very unclear to judge what was being conveyed. The first words spoken by anyone come about 18-20 minutes into the movie.

Sri Sanjay was shown practising the kalyANi aTa tAla varnam "vanajAkshi" at his home with a tambura. He was shown drawing open the blinds at his house in the morning, taking a peep at the outside world from his balcony etc. Suddenly clippings from his performance at a venue came in. There were also clippings inbetween that showed temple architecture. He was also shown in the green room with Sri S. Varadarajan and Sri K. Arun Prakash explaining them the structure of the gambhIranATTai mallAri just before a concert.

There were glimpses of Sri Sanjay's family life, Sanjay teaching his disciple Swarna Rethas, Sanjay's wife preparing dosa(?) with copious amount of oil (like Jyothika in that idhayam nallennai ad), Sanjay reading out detective stories (Sambu stuff) to his children, Sanjay sharing memories of his grandmother telling him how to sing a verse in a song, Sanjay recollecting how Sri Calcutta K.S. Krishnamurthi taught him subtle differences in prayogas for different ragas etc. There was also a sequence where he was shown learning a few songs from nadaswaram vidwan Sri Vaidyanathan(?), primarily the Arunachala Kavi composition in suruTTi "kANa vEnDum laksham kaNgaL". In another sequence Sri Neyveli Venkatesh, Sri Guruvayur Dorai and Sri Nagai Muralidharan were shown discussing and appreciating his music. There were also some good clippings of temple festivals with appropriate songs sung by Sri Sanjay played in the background.

I think overall the documentary is okay. What is however lacking is a theme and lack of clarity over what the maker of the documentary wanted to convey. Without Sri Sanjay's songs playing in the background with very good accompaniment from Sri S. Varadarajan and Sri Arun Prakash, it became kind of difficult to sit through the dragging portions.

I think there need to be more such films documenting lives of musicians and carnatic music itself, at least for the benefit of future generations. I am sure people like Sri Rangaramanuja Iyengar, Smt Indira Menon etc would have faced a lot of hardships when they wrote their books without much of historical material available in codified form to readily support their works. Films like this can also help in spreading some knowledge of the art among the masses. That way I think this is a step in the right direction.

Some general information in case you are planning to watch the documentary: The duration of the film is supposed to be 85 minutes and there is an interval of about 10 minutes duration somewhere near the middle if you are watching the movie at Sathyam Cinemas. The next screening is at the same venue on 31st Dec 2006.

Source: http://ramsabode.wordpress.com/2006/12/ ... bramanian/

rajeshnat · Post by **rajeshnat** » 24 Dec 2006, 15:29

ram wrote:Sanjay's rendition of Sri Syama Sastri's rItigOwLa composition "jananI ninnuvinA"

jananI ninnuvinA is subbarAya sastri's composition.

ram · Post by **ram** » 24 Dec 2006, 15:48

Thanks for pointing it out. Have made the correction.

Ananth · Post by **Ananth** » 24 Dec 2006, 23:27

Agree in toto with Ram. Would have been difficult to sit through but for the excellent audio. But surely a no-miss for some one who loves carnatic music, if only because we rarely get to see such a genre of films. Some points I'd like to add:
Photography was excellent. (A speciality of the movie is that it is made in HDV format - whatever it is.) I especially liked the kolams on the street before Kapali's procession and the full moon. Most of the movie seems to have been shot in ambient light, not using any artificial lighting.
The nadaswara vidwan is Sembonnarkoil S R D Muthumaraswamy.

vijay · Post by **vijay** » 25 Dec 2006, 01:10

Ram, you are diligent as ever! I had typed a post out this afternoon after getting back from the film but had to scramble to a concert. As I suspected your commentary was already in when I got back! Anyway, since I had written it out, here it is:

With a shaky foundation in music and none whatsoever in film-making, I am hesitant to talk about a film on music in a forum meant for discussing kutcheries! Nevertheless, it left a strong enough impression, musically and otherwise, to prompt me to share my thoughts on it.

Thereâ€™s good reason to question the choice of the subject, given the number of masters, past and present, whose lives are woefully under-documented but the persona of Sanjay Subrahmanyam turned out to be a remarkably effective portraiture of the intensity of Carnatic music.

The documentary commences, very appropriately, with the Kalyani Ata Tala varnam and winds its way through a number of musical journeys before concluding with the song that gives the film its title. Prasanna Ramaswamyâ€™s gift for visual metaphor is breathtaking, - a Begada alaapana tumbles its way through a frenzied maze of blinding streetlights whereas Husseini floats gently along the backwaters of Kerala. In one of the filmâ€™s most striking moments, the clamorous crescendo of Kapaleeshwararâ€™s nightly â€œUrgolamâ€

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 25 Dec 2006, 03:07

Thereâ€™s good reason to question the choice of the subject, given the number of masters, past and present, whose lives are woefully under-documented but the persona of Sanjay Subrahmanyam turned out to be a remarkably effective portraiture of the intensity of Carnatic music.

I have that exact question in my mind. What is the need for documenting Sanjay's life at such an early stage in his career? I can definitely understand if the idea for the documentary is really about Carnatic Music and Sanjay was chosen to anchor it. But from your reviews it looks like that is what ended up as the final product even though the title indicates that it is a documentary on Sanjay. True?

rasam · Post by **rasam** » 25 Dec 2006, 06:43

Vijay, you must spend a lot of time on the prose and the metaphors in your posts/reviews to come up with pieces like the one above. Thanks for the effort and the review!

mahavishnu · Post by **mahavishnu** » 25 Dec 2006, 09:53

I've attached a very interesting recent interview with Sanjay Subrahmaniam (& Prasanna Ramaswamy) re: this documentary that appeared in the Sunday Express. http://brangan.easyjournal.com/entry.aspx?eid=3167305

I found the writing to be quite good and *almost* as good as Vijay's prose

There are some answers to the questions of 1) why this film, 2) why Sanjay and 3) why now?

Like everyone else, I was not sure where to post this but it felt like a natural in this thread. BTW, isn't the nadaswara vidwan Semponnairkoil Vaidyanathan not Muthukumuraswamy?

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 25 Dec 2006, 11:05

Thanks mahavishnu. It is a very engaging interview.

The incident narrated at the end of the article had me ROFL.

vijay · Post by **vijay** » 25 Dec 2006, 14:59

Thanks Rasam - if somethings affects you enough, finding words is generally not a problem. On the other hand, my office reports often get hauled up for being too drab!

Mahavishnu, thanks for the interview - I'd read it in the Indian Express before but this seems to be a longer version. Very intersting and well written.

VK, I think the intention was to make a film on Sanjay but you need to give the audience (who would be unfamiliar with CM, leave alone SAnjay) a context - so what emerges is the documentation of an art form as seen through the eyes of one of its leading proponents...and here, it is hard to fault Prasanna Ramaswamy for her choice although it was made anyway, given that she is a big fan of Sanjay.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 25 Dec 2006, 15:14

In that interview, sanjay says about the press always asking him

>what the difference is between singing in India and the US,

In the Cleaveland Tyagaraja Utsavam telecast, the Jaya TV person asked him that exact question and when I heard Sanjay's answer, it sounded very odd and strange. This is what he said, paraphrasing, 'In Chennai, half an hour before the concert, I get ready, put on the shirt, go to the sabha and sing. Where as here, between the time I put on the shirt and sing it is a few hours... that is the difference'.

Now I realize that he was just toying with the interviewer.

Just as a minor aside, in such brief exchanges, I found his spoken tamil to be a bit rough, more on the side of Chennai colloquial style. It was endearing in one sense and relatable, though that is not what I instinctively expected.

Is there much dialog in the documentary? If so, is it in Tamil or English or a mixture of the two?

chalanata · Post by **chalanata** » 25 Dec 2006, 19:23

i read an interview by sanjai in kalachuvadu. it was a very elaborate interview and the interviewer was prasanna ramasamy. i do not know the similarities between the interview and the documentary. the interview indicated genuine words of a passionate CM performer. i do not also find anything wrong in documenting a performing and busy artist though he is junior compared to many older artists. we have to only find fault with not documenting the older people and seniors for this long.

mahavishnu · Post by **mahavishnu** » 25 Dec 2006, 21:50

Well said, chalanata. I think it us our own fault for not documenting the lives of several legends (in fact in some cases not honouring them in their lifetimes). I would love to see a documentary on GNB or MDR in their prime, not just historical features about them.

Re: the question of singing in India and the US, I think Sanjay and many others dislike this question because of its inherent silliness. In the US, one sings largely to the Indian diaspora, there are exceptions of course. So, as Aruna Sairam once said in an interview (to the same guy who wrote the Sanjay Indian Express story) it is no different from singing in Mylapore or T.Nagar. Singing as a representative of CM for international audiences in Carnegie Hall or Europe might be different however.

Sanjay gave a brilliant interview during his JayaTV margazhi special last year. His answers were laced with a touch of humour, sarcasm and modesty. He speech appeared really spontaneous like his music. VK, I agree that his tamil is a tad colloquial but I found it easy to relate to especially when he spoke about passing his tamil course in school with Konar notes etc.

meena · Post by **meena** » 26 Dec 2006, 02:00

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