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Baba Music Review

Topic started by Raja (@ 24.205.39.51) on Tue Apr 2 23:27:21 EST 2002.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Post the latest on Baba music here.

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: Paran (@ 210.193.13.133) on: Sat Oct 19 00:45:44 EDT 2002
  
  WHo cares...Rajni is BABA..
  he may come back..pay a visit to Himalaya get another 7 varam..and give life to the death CM again...
  
  may be that is why the people were smiling. Remember he even saved the Japanese guy who were almost dead because of Rasam & sambar (ade pavi, we eat that daily man!!!!)....
  
  
• From: Santosh (@ 203.124.0.245) on: Sat Oct 19 06:14:24 EDT 2002
  
  Yes You eat daily. so what?
  
  The japanese eat raw sea food daily and one day i was invited join them for a dinner. After eating them, i got a good stomach pain and i had take three days office M.C. I will never never take that type of food.
  
  So don't compare. It depends.
  
  Baba rulz! REACHING 100th day within 30 days.
  
  
• From: WN (@ 203.24.100.132) on: Sat Oct 19 07:07:12 EDT 2002
  
  I always found it stupid how everyone will smile and celebrate at the end in Tamil movies despite catastrophic events which wud leave half the cast dead...examples include the zillion movies where the heroine will smile and hug her saviour (the hero) and get married to live happily ever after tho her spouse wud have jus killed her dad, the unreformable villain wit no redeeming qualities (like all Tamil movie villains).
  
  Coming back to Baba, like the rest of the story, the scene wit people standing on one side and the sages on the other side and Baba deciding where to go is jus a symbolic story-telling..which I think is supposed to defy logic. It's story-telling in a simplistic way.
  
  And coming back to ARR's fast, joining him in the fast were Gangai Amaran, Ganesh (of SG), director Mahendran, actors Arjun, Abaas, etc. Singer Mano visited his as well.
  
  
• From: WN (@ 203.24.100.132) on: Sat Oct 19 07:19:50 EDT 2002
  
  Oops, tat shud be "And coming back to RK's fast".
  ARR' fast will begin on Nov 5. :)
  
  
• From: C~P (@ 202.9.147.113) on: Sun Oct 20 02:47:53 EDT 2002
  
  :))
  
  
• From: subash (@ 64.172.183.89) on: Sun Oct 20 20:17:33 EDT 2002
  
  "baba" music review is up at subashworld.
  
  http://www.geocities.com/subashworld
  
  
• From: C~P (@ 202.9.149.167) on: Sun Oct 20 23:53:46 EDT 2002
  
  wat is this??! .... the film has come and gone ... ippothaan music review?? :)
  
  not all that surprising considerin that a few still post here :)
  
  
• From: Paran (@ 210.193.13.133) on: Mon Oct 21 00:51:39 EDT 2002
  
  Santosh....u had a 3 day MC..acceptable...
  
  but if u say..u were in ICU..until Rajni cameand give u a varam...that's ridiculous rite...
  
  
  
• From: Paran (@ 210.193.13.133) on: Mon Oct 21 01:09:07 EDT 2002
  
  anyway, santosh...how to differentiate between a good stomach ache and a bad stomach ache?...
  
  
  
• From: Harish (@ 202.156.2.59) on: Mon Oct 21 03:25:04 EDT 2002
  
  Why you all making fuss about each and every issue about rajini's personnel life and film. Poor Rajini!
  
  
• From: C~P (@ 202.9.180.16) on: Mon Oct 21 04:05:10 EDT 2002
  
  that ICU matter was because of "vidiyamoonji" keiko :)) .... "eppo baba avala thangachiyaa yaethukittaaroo anniyilerunthu avarkku orey prachanai mael prachanai thaan" ;)
  
  :)) ... jus kiddin!
  
  
• From: Santosh (@ 203.124.0.245) on: Tue Oct 22 09:35:19 EDT 2002
  
  Watching mainstream Indian cinema can often be interpreted as a kind of
  ‘darshan’, similar to the feeling one gets while sighting traditional icons
  in temples. Indian cinema and its star icons often resemble sacred sites
  where viewers converge to indulge in a collective mystical experience.
  
  For a democracy, we know all too well how to behave perversely anti-secular
  and religiously chauvinistic with boards like ‘‘Only Hindus allowed’’ or
  ‘‘Only Parsis allowed’’; on the other hand we can be extremely modern in
  allowing a Farooq Abdullah gain entry into the Tirupati Devasthanam and get
  blessed by the most orthodox priests. It is this same kind of irreverence
  for ‘‘rules’’ that I observed in the film Baba, this amazing yet bizarre
  Rajni starrer. In fact, in an amazing coincidence, there were two other
  films running at the time - each probing this mystical outlook in various
  ways. One is Sajnani’s Agni Varsha and other is Manoj Night Shyamalan’s
  Signs.
  
  That narrators use cinema as the vehicle for their mystical ideas is at
  times contradictory, since cinema already exists at the level of the
  paranormal struggling to be realistic. So how does one portray the mystical
  outlook though a medium which is already wrapped in disbelief? In Baba the
  mystical situation is forced into becoming a realistic event, even demanding
  resolution in the present; in Agni Varsha it is part of a mythological
  scheme of narration somewhere in the Mahabharata, happily ensconced in the
  past; and in Signs it borders at the level of science fiction, content to
  receive explanations in the future.
  
  Baba certainly takes up the most difficult challenge among the trio. While
  the other two films’ quality, or lack of it, can be squarely placed on the
  shoulders of the individual filmmakers, with the so-called directors and
  story advisors shirking their responsibility for Baba, Rajnikant takes the
  entire blame. The general feedback from viewers is: ‘‘We don’t want Rajni
  and spirituality merged. After all, Rajni needs no mystic powers. So why
  should he try to seek for it in the first place? What has made Rajnikant
  come down to a temple begging the goddess for ‘Shakti’?’’
  
  Rajni has been the icon of omnipotence and a powerful symbol of
  anti-establishment. He is already endowed with supreme powers by the Tamil
  film paradigm and his fans. So the fact that Baba searches for another
  source outside this paradigm is unthinkable. Haven’t the writers of Baba
  learnt from an earlier disaster called Swami Raghavendra produced at the
  peak of Rajni’s popularity?
  
  Rajni the actor tries his best to provide some answers to the above
  questions. Quite like the hero in Lord of the Rings, the character of Baba
  has no desires, no aspirations and no self-esteem but is endowed with
  enormous spiritual powers at birth to reach the absolute. Tracing his iconic
  lineage in the beginning, the actor ridicules the way Tamil cinema had
  straitjacketed even his gurus like Sivaji and MGR into ‘‘idiotic’’ mystical
  films. Thus, the actor in Rajni virtually condemns the mysticism that
  surrounds the character of Baba.
  
  So far so good. But Baba, the ‘‘spiritual’’ character wants to delink the
  populist image of Rajni the actor from his political dimensions. The
  character Baba, reverently receives seven boons from a swami on a
  snow-capped hill. However, when the time comes to leave, an unimpressed
  Rajni asks, ‘‘How do I get back home? Do you think I am at the Chennai
  railway station?’’ And on returning home, Rajni the actor virtually
  decimates the boons by asking for seven ridiculous wishes. It’s as if the
  actor seems to be set on a kind of warpath with Baba the character! While
  Rajni the actor does the requisite stunts and dances, Baba the character
  spouts philosophy, quotes the yoga-sutras, speaks English and most
  importantly, decides to give up his sexuality. So who is telling whose
  story?
  
  In his earlier film, director Suresh Krishna had to contend with a Kamal
  Haasan who wanted him to tell a similar love-hate relationship between him
  and his misanthrope look-alike brother in Aalavandhan. In that case, they
  were actually twin siblings. In Baba, however, the hapless director has to
  contend with the twin siblings, the believer and the non-believer, in the
  same individual. It’s a lose-lose situation all the way because the typical
  mystic tale can never contend with a loser, a killer or an anarchist as the
  main protagonist.
  
  So what is Baba? Is it an elaborate masquerade to state that he is not born
  to be the chief minister of Tamil Nadu? Is this an attempt to avoid getting
  trapped into a right-wing political agenda? Is it the tragic tale of a
  reluctant Hamlet forced to play the beedi-flipping, dark-goggled, inadequate
  dancer with a horrible Tamil accent for the past 25 years? Or is Baba the
  ultimate revenge of an actor who, from all accounts, is by nature very
  gentle for an aggressive industry, extremely accommodating for an
  unscrupulous system and deeply religious for an allegedly atheistic
  population?
  
  There are certainly several films within this one film. And that makes our
  journey into the mystical world of Indian cinema more complex.
  
  K Hariharan is a graduate of the FTII, Pune and an independent filmmaker
  
  
  
• From: MusicIsLife (@ 208.237.178.229) on: Fri Oct 25 08:57:19 EDT 2002
  
  Santosh
  Wow what a review, some things i could imagine are put in words!!!
  Marvelous language, in years i have seen something like this (a great fan of Art Buchwald).
  
  
• From: priya (@ 216.7.231.104) on: Sat Oct 26 17:24:12 EDT 2002
  
  i am not a rajin fan, but i like baba, its good
  
  
• From: Lord LabakuDas (@ 12.162.224.5) on: Sat Oct 26 18:43:59 EDT 2002
  
  I am a Rajini fan..but still i like Baba..ha ha ha..:-)...The sentence shud be like that..:-)))
  Anyway i think u people will discuss Baba till Rajini's next movie comes..
  
  

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