I picked the last issue of Sudha kannada magazine for its cover story on Sandalwood (i mean the Kannada film industry) turning 75. It made an interesting read, for someone who grew up on copious amounts of its influence in the faraway towns of North Karnataka no amount of words or reams of thoughts can explain its phenomenon. So I’ll restrict myself to some random nostalgic soliloquies. This is one wood that is supposed to bear a symbolic semblance to its more famous product from this part of the country. The actual sandalwood, it’s said matures well with age adding to its luster & smell. It becomes precious. But the same cannot be said of this Sandalwood which has been aging in the reverse order, it has been mired in problems, some of its own creation and others to external forces.
A lot of my friends from outside the state and settled in Bangalore cannot comprehend the phenomenon of its mascot Dr.Rajkumar. His pictures dot many public places but many have not heard of or seen him. They will not because he was a shy and reticent person who avoided public glare unlike most people today. His films belonged to the 1950s -80s period (he was on the wane in the 1990s) and he reigned over a different cult of commercial cinema that has very little semblance to the current genre of films. He carried the reputation of the Industry in its fledgling years and it is said that the last point of his film distributed in the region marked the territory of the film Industry. His golden voice and his song numbers added to his vast repertoire of talent and immense popularity cutting across all sections of the audience. He came from a strong theatre background and his films in many ways espoused his personality which was steeped in simplicity & good values.
Yet it’s sad to see many groups use and abuse his name for parochial gains. Sandalwood also churned out an amazing array of cinematic talent in the Acting, Filmmaking, and Music fields that finds little peer today. Maybe it’s got to do with the lack of Institutional support & framework and partly with the dying Theatre culture that once flourished under stalwarts like Gubbi Veeranna that fed it with a constant stream of talent. Puttanna Kanagal in my opinion was the equivalent of Satyajit Ray to the Industry in terms of sheer quality & the ‘hat-ke’ themes of his films. The duo of Ragan-Nagendra in the 1960 -80 period brought in a melody of pure brilliance on par if not better than the best in the country of its times.
There were several Actors & Actresses who also held immense sway over the imagination of the masses. But 2 of them hold almost mystical sway, maybe because of their untimely & tragic deaths. Its Shankar Nag & Kalpana. Shankar Nag was brilliant in portraying the common man, his one film ‘Auto Shankar’ made in the mid-80s was so popular that most auto-wallahs in Bangalore still carry his photographs. He is well known outside the state as director of the immensely popular TV serial ‘Malgudi Days’, he brilliantly & almost with perfectionist zeal recreated the fictional Karnataka town which was the base of RK Narayan’s stories. Kalpana on the other hand ruled the industry in the 1960 -the 70s but was far ahead of her times. Others who left their mark were Ambarish (anti-hero), Vishnuvardhan (my favorite, the challenger), Anant Nag, Manjula, and Jayanthi, among lots others. One cannot also forget greats like Rajnikanth, Illayaraja, Yesudas, SP Balasubramaniam & Kamal Hassan who have been associated with Sandalwood for decades.
One redeeming feature of the Industry has been to hold its own among other more influential Tamil & Telugu film industries by churning its creative outputs on the vast body of original literary works in Kannada. Some of its most memorable & National/International award-winning films have come from the works of local literary greats like TK Ramarao, Girish Karnad, UR Ananthamurthy, BV Karanth, Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar among others. And the remake culture is threatening that. It is sincerely hoped that the current torchbearers in the Industry like Girish Kasarvalli, Manoharmurthy & Jayant kaikini among others will place it back on its pedestal.
2 comments:
Enjoyed reading this, Vaz.
Just hope that Sandalwood gets out of its remake frenzy that it's been showing of late. Where's the fun in that? There's an old Arabic saying that goes: "Better the ganji in the house than the feast in the neighbor's."
I wondered about the picture of Shankar Nag on autorickshaws. Now I get the connection.
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