Recently I watched Mankatha-the 50th ajith (popularly known as thala in South-India) movie. Though the movie was watchable, I couldn't digest the theme of the movie where the villain is shown in positive light. The movie was more about justifying the act of two corrupt police officers.
The people throng the theaters whenever a superstar actor movie releases, (be it a negative theme based movie). It is the responsibility of the directors (and producers) to make movies that produce positive energy in the society. Movies have been influential to the behavior of the people in our society. The release of Rang de basanthi (RDB) was followed by public becoming more about corruption. In a way today's anti corruption strike led by hazare owes a lot to RDB.
But today directors, in the name of exploring new themes are making movies like Mankatha which might influence people to commit crimes.
Looking back at Tamil Cinema history, I would say that, Tamil cinema has evolved a lot technologically, but in terms of story, characterization and picturization the quality has come down.
Just look at the kind of movies that are made today. Most movies have a standard theme where the hero has supernatural abilities, the heroine has no role to play and ya there is an item number.... Come bollywood, the movies there add a few raunchy sex scenes. Where is the cinema industry heading?
60's and 70's was the era of classical movies, where lot of emphasis was given to character. Even our demi-god rajnikanth ACTED in the movie 16 vayathinile. We have seen more classic like Edhiroli, Karnan, Apporva ragangal, avargal, mahakavi kalidas etc...oh ya rajni can act!! :)
80's and 90's was the of age of offbeat theme based movies..we had the best of directors in this age..from KB to maniratnam, P Vasu, Bharathi raja to name a few...:) and they gave us excellent movies...remember anjali? i will shed couple of tears even today if i watch that movie! apart from that we had guna, thever magan, chinna gounder, duet kadalan etc to name a few...this period also coincided with kamal shifting to acting versatile characters and rajni doing more superhero roles..
The quality of movies begin to steadily deteriorate in the 2000's..Even Rajni acted in a hopeless movie - 'baba'..we are still having the steady flow of characterless, emotionless and logic-less movies of actor vijay..
but still i feel tamil cinema industry was fairly much better when compared to bollywood or tollywood..even though vijay's movie was logic-less it never promoted any wrongdoing. he would fight the wrong/evil with the help of his supernatural abilities like jumping from one movint train to another, jumping from 100+ feet in the air without any support system etc. We can forgive vijay for that.
but mankatha has opened the pandora's box. now tamil cinema directors will start making 'A' rated porn movies, they wont mind making movies where wrong doing is justified..we would soon see movies like the dirty picture, dellybelly made in tamil.
This is not good for a society like ours where fans blindly follow what their stars do. I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow some ajith's fan commits a crime and justifies his crime by pointing fingers at mankatha.
Inspite of this I haven't lost hope. We still have a handful of quality directors like maniratnam, shankar, kamalhasan etc. The rest have to just refocus their views and make films with moral responsibilty.
