J Mahendran: The director who directed films that inspired men to pause and reflect

Mahendran did not discover Rajnikanth – it must be credited to K. Balachander, whose films of the early 1970s, such as Apoorva Raagangal and Moondru Mudichu puts the actor on the path of fame. But somehow Mullum Malarum placed Rajinikanth on a solid foundation.
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In his last years, Rajinikanth certainly disappointed Mahendran, and I remember our meeting in Delhi with a Panorama jury in 2009 to select titles for the International Film Festival of India. The director was clearly dissatisfied with the route taken by the star. "He was a remarkable actor," Mahendran said of Rajinikanth's choice to be a showman.
In Delhi, I could see that Mahendran was clearly a sad man, seeing the state of Tamil cinema and his way of leaning on gadgets to get into cinemas. "Time is over," he said, "when movies were socially relevant. They talked about the problems of the day and made you think.

Indeed, yes. Movies made by men like Balachander and Mahendran were powerful and punchy. These were great voices for the outsiders, the oppressed and, most importantly, the women. Balachander's cinema had great female characters and he, along with Mahendran, made Tamil cinema a fascinating time for Tamil cinema.

Today, with the exception of a handful of films (those that come to my mind are Sarvam Thaala Mayam and Super Deluxe ) that deal with topics that affect what's wrong in our society, others are just "tamashas" of songs and dances.

But even at the beginning of his life, the cinema was a mixture of juvenile humor, propaganda and pure puerility. Mahendran, whose films can be considered social documents (much like the works of Aravindan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan or Girish Kasaravalli), had once told the media that it was his anger to Tamil films (similar to François Truffaut's feelings towards French films of the 1960s), this led him to make a kind of real cinema, where people smile and speak normally, without exaggerated mannerism or fat painting.

But I wonder if a Mahendran or a Balachander could have made the films they believed in without political tolerance. In an interview with The Hindu, he said, "I had the opportunity to criticize Tamil cinema in front of Mr. G. Ramachandran (who later became the Tamil Nadu Prime Minister). Later, he spotted me during a meeting with the press, brought me home and introduced me to the volumes of Ponniyin Selvan (a Tamil literary clbadic). This is the starting point of my writer journey.

A Ramachandran, popular. called MGR, could accept a dissenting note. A draftsman could ask the designer Shankar to criticize him freely, and he even castigated Panditji.

However, on the night of his life, Mahendran was to be a sad soul, seeing the decline and degeneration of a cinema that he had helped, among others. build and shine. It is highly likely that in the absence of funding and sponsors for his genre of cinema, he turned to the theater. I remember one of his roles in particular. In Rajinikanth's Petta Mahendran describes a complex, caste-obsessed character who uses his influence to create new divisions. I wondered then the emotions that would have played in his head. Here is a Rajinikanth on a road so different from that where men like Mahendran and Balachander guided the star.