Where do you start? Where do you end? How do you recapture cinematic magic, the captivating power and charisma of one man, who manages to transcend the rational faculties in all of us? How do you re-create this attraction of soul and heart? No matter what, no review is ever going to do justice to Sivaji -The Boss as no writer can summon the ability to bring in words the impossible swathe that Rajnikanth's appeal cuts across various strata of the society. Rajni's movies are not so much art as appeal. Like mother's cooking which is not about taste, Rajnikanth on screen makes a bonding with your heart. It is about emotions, that maybe blind, but all real and very human. In Sivaji-The Boss, this surreal feeling gets a further magical touch in the form of techno-wizardry that Shankar has patented to be his in Tamil cinema. When state-of-the-heart and state-of-the-art find a match, what you get is three hours of sustained entertainment that is at once a compelling phantasmagoria of trademark Rajni fun and typical Shankar grandeur. It is a case of desire meeting dream, and almost making it plausible.
Such a laboured intro to the review is required to put Rajni phenomenon in perspective. To see a Rajni movie in the opening weeks is in itself an experience that only an illusionist could conjured up. This review too is being written just after experiencing similar breathless moments out of a theatre where the audience almost willed the film to never end, and seemingly let stretch the dreamy dilation of mind to linger. Rajni is gifted with the ability to change in a trice even a hardened and cerebral critic into a agreeing applauder. It is a magic that is all quite his. So to review his movies in conventional idioms would be to miss the mark, and also all the fun.
If Rajni packs a punch, Shankar punches his worth in nice, gritty and glitzy packages. The success of Sivaji-The Boss will eventually lie in the fact that both Rajni and Shnakar, with a huge individual constituencies of their own, have not had to break their preserved moulds. Where Rajni and Shankar meet is in their social sensibilities, in their populist propensity to convey, what the industry calls as 'the message'.
Rajni has a history of getting across moral ideas in his movies more than Thiruvalluvar ever has in his pithy lines. Shankar too is forever garnishing his grand kaleidoscope with interesting specks of social thoughts. Sivaji, in that sense, is a contemporary commentary on the state of the nation where as a dialogue in the film aptly sums it up as 'the poor get poorer and the rich get richer'. Sivaji has many strands, each unique in its heft and heave. Affordable education and health for all is one theme. Rooting out black money is the main one, however. Woven into this large tapestry is the bureaucratic bunglings, red-tapism and other issues that bug our quotidian life. Sivaji is an everyday story that gets the sheen of a moral fable as well as the shine of fairytale, as Shankar stretches his imagination even as he compels you to stretch your threshold of incredulity.
To say Sivaji is just about Rajni and Shankar is like saying that Mahabharatha pertains to Krishna and Arjuna. They are the bulwarks. But there are other standouts like A R Rahman, who has matched the mood and the moments in his own musical methods. The re-recording is tall and inspiring, in sync with the essential idea of the film. K V Anand's camera is another winner. It is not about angles. It is not about the lighting. It is not about the technical excellence. It is all this, plus something more that technical experts like Anand can come up with regularly. And what of Antony's editing! It gives the fil the pace and the passion. The movie races along as if on an autobahn, and for this you have to thank Antony's skills. Thota Tharani's sets are the equivalent in cardborad and wood the magic re
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