Filmmaker-cinematographer KV Anand’s signature fashion, within the movies he directed, was the trademark cinematic twists that gave the viewers a excessive In the post-Shankar section, one might maybe say that KV Anand and his love for masala cinema with a liberal scoop of social consciousness, resulted in industrial potboilers that have been racy and ‘massy’ and starkly totally different — each by way of packaging and magnificence, usually carrying what's now identified patented because the KV Anand twist.
The acclaimed Tamil director and cinematographer died early on Friday morning in Chennai following a cardiac arrest. He was 54.
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More than understanding the “pulse” of the viewers, Anand’s greatest achievement was the style through which he wrote the screenplay (alongside together with his frequent collaborators, SuBha) whereas being conscious of the viewers he was catering to, and the way in which he positioned and paced his scenes — like when ought to an interval block arrive or how ought to one kill a major character (Ayan, anybody?) that may alter the course of the movie. He described his creative process akin to “cooking noodles” to this author as soon as and insisted on making “unintentional errors” on the scripting stage. “I learnt this quality from Shankar. You shouldn’t critique your own work, especially when you are writing. You have to accommodate ideas that are illogical, nonsensical and pompous at the same time. Let it flow…”
The writing did stream, however Anand’s modus operandi appeared to have been this: to make sure that audiences left the cinema corridor on a excessive. Adrenaline rush, as he would have appreciated to name it, type of mirrored from his very first work, Kana Kanden, an oft-neglected movie in his filmography.
The attraction of Kana Kanden — excluding the couple performed by Srikanth and Gopika — was Prithviraj, or moderately, the way in which KV Anand wrote the character of a soft-spoken, kind-hearted villain who would wax eloquent however on the similar time, slit your throat when you’re asleep, turned the promoting level when the movie launched. The character’s twin nature was not even a topic of consideration for viewers and the “twist” labored largely to the movie’s benefit.
Anand went utterly bombastic with Ayan (2009), his best work and one of many all-time nice masala movies in Tamil. A quick-paced thriller a couple of smuggler from Chennai, with mouthwatering twists and turns, there may be not a single scene in Ayan that appears uninteresting or wasted even at the moment. But the movie’s success must be attributed to its interval block, among the finest written “twists” in Tamil cinema, when Deva (Suriya) finds that his dear-friend Chitti (Jagan) ratted them out. It is the form of twist {that a} filmmaker can be cautious of writing, for, it might have gone both means. But that positively was not the case in Ayan. In reality, it labored for the higher and the ‘two friends going either way’ template retained the emotional core of the film. Needless to say that the box office, too, was charmed by Anand’s inventiveness, just like the viewers.
Perhaps Ayan’s phenomenal success will need to have compelled Anand to ramp up the “twists”, which by now turned his signature fashion, when he made KO (2011), a movie a couple of photojournalist which is how Anand began out in his profession. Starring Jiiva and Ajmal, the movie, which took on modern-day politics, had among the finest climax twists when a distinguished character is revealed to be the movie’s antagonist, simply minutes earlier than the top credit. The movie finally ended up turning into a money-spinner on the field workplace.
With these three movies, KV Anand established why he’s a category aside with regards to toying with the viewers’s notion together with his “twists”. So a lot so that you’d see audiences strolling into the theatre, hoping for the trademark KV Anand twist. Since then, each movie of his had no less than one sequence that may shift the narrative gear — possibly not as efficient as his earlier movies.
Like, as an example, Maattrraan (2012), through which he collaborated with Suriya but once more, had an outrageous twist within the climax that later turned a topic materials for trolling. Anegan (2015), too, had a climax twist with Karthik Muthuraman being revealed because the villain, in his twisted movie about past-life. The filmmaker tried to copy his success formulation in later movies corresponding to Kavan (2017) and Kaappaan (2019), with little to no influence. Perhaps the audiences turned too conversant in his signature.
For somebody who constructed a profitable profession out of a bag of tips and turns, Anand’s premature demise will need to have been the largest plot-twist that no one would have foresaw. It is just not one thing that followers would dearly recall.
