04. Mauna Raagam 1986 (முனராகம்)

Director: Mani Ratnam
[1986]

It is almost 22 years after release.
It is about arranged marriage. Nope. Arrange marriage is a factor in the movie.
It is about human relationship based on love and mutual consent.

I prefer to see movies when I am alone because I can laugh when i want and I can cry when i want. Without inhibitions.

Few movies can stir up your mind, make you laugh , make you cry , make you think - all at same time.
Within the 2 minutes of movie i felt so happy because of the thought that i picked the right film and i am going to have a nice time!.

The first quality for a film aspirant is observation.
When you observe people u learn a lot of things. It is a kind of language.
Once you master the language you don't need words.
A blink of an eye ,a stare, a smile can means a lot.
As they say a FRAME can say thousand words.
There is a kind of democracy in the sense of characterization. Nobody is too fat to fill up the screen for 2.5 hours. Everybody has got their piece of action.

I happened to see substandard movies of kaarthik and i never knew he was an actor until this.
For Revathy as an actress i really don't dare to judge her performance.
In an age where girls show up their extreme ends of their anatomy , geography and geometry just to earn few extra bucks there is someone who had her share of meaty roles without flesh show.
I was thinking about Shreya in "Sivaji", Nayanthara in "Gajni" .
If you are going to call them as actresses what you call species like Revathy?

Mohan - This is the first time i see his movie. It is difficult to believe this guy acted in many tamil movies , had his share of hits. Such a graceful man with elegent acting and dialog delivery skills!. I doubt someone can ever be softer than this character.

Camera work of P.C Sreeram was so good that in certain frames you wish to to pause the movie and watch the stilll on the screen.

There are 2 mispalced songs in the movie which was not a good idea.
It looks like one item\Semi-item number is a must for maniRatnam.
I have not seen all his movies but there are in :
1) Mounaraagam2) Nayagan 3) Roja 4) Thiruda thiruda 5) Bomaby 6) DilSe 7) Alay payuthe 8) Guru etc.
Not sure why he does compromise on this. Noramlly nudity and flesh show is used to hide the weak story.

Complete List of Movies of ManiRatnam

Pasted from WikiPedia .

Year	Film	Language	Cast	Music Director	Notes
1983	Pallavi Anu Pallavi	Kannada	Anil Kapoor, Lakshmi	Ilaiyaraaja	Dubbed into Tamil as Oh! Priya Priya
1985	Unaru	Malayalam	Mohanlal, Sukumaran, Sabina Jose	Ilaiyaraaja
1985	Pagal Nilavu	Tamil	Murali, Revathi Menon, Radhika Sarath Kumar, Sathyaraj	Ilaiyaraaja
1985	Idaya Kovil	Tamil	Mohan, Radha, Ambika, Goundamani	Ilaiyaraaja
1986	Mouna Raagam	Tamil	Mohan, Revathi, Karthik Muthuraman	Ilaiyaraaja	Dubbed into Telugu
1987	Nayagan	Tamil	Kamal Haasan, Saranya, Nassar, Janagaraj	Ilaiyaraaja	Remade into Hindi as Dayavan Dubbed into Telugu as Nayakudu
1988	Agni Natchathiram	Tamil	Prabhu, Karthik, Vijayakumar, Nirosha, Amala, Janagaraj, Jayachitra	Ilaiyaraaja	Dubbed into Telugu as Gharshana
1989	Geethanjali	Telugu	Nagarjuna, Girija, Vijayakumar	Ilaiyaraaja	Dubbed into Tamil as Idhayathai Thirudathey Dubbed into Malayalam as Geethanjali,
1990	Anjali	Tamil	Raghuvaran, Revathi, Prabhu Ganesan, Tarun Kumar, Shamili, Shruti, Saranya	Ilaiyaraaja	Dubbed into Telugu as Anjali,success at box oofice
1991	Thalapathi	Tamil	Rajinikanth, Mammooty, Arvind Swamy, Amrish Puri, Sobhana, Bhanupriya, Srividya, Geetha, Jaishankar	Ilaiyaraaja	Dubbed into Telugu as Dalapati Dubbed into Hindi as Dal-pati
1992	Roja	Tamil	Arvind Swamy, Madhubala, Pankaj Kapoor, Nassar, Janagaraj	A. R. Rahman	Dubbed into English as The Rose Dubbed into Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi as Roja
1993	Thiruda Thiruda	Tamil	Prashanth, Anand, Heera Rajgopal, Anu Agarwal, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, Malaysia Vasudevan	A. R. Rahman	Dubbed into Hindi as Chor Chor Dubbed into Telugu as Donga Donga
1995	Bombay	Tamil	Arvind Swamy, Manisha Koirala, Sonali Bendre, Prakash Raj, Nassar	A. R. Rahman	Dubbed into Hindi and Telugu as Bombay
1997	Iruvar	Tamil	Mohanlal, Aishwarya Rai, Prakash Raj, Madhubala, Tabu, Revathi Menon, Gouthami, Nassar	A. R. Rahman	Dubbed into Telugu as Iddaru
1998	Dil Se	Hindi	Shahrukh Khan, Manisha Koirala, Preity Zinta	A. R. Rahman	Dubbed into Tamil as Uyire Dubbed into Telugu as Prema Tho/ Dubbed into Malayalam
2000	Alaipayuthey	Tamil	R. Madhavan, Shalini Kumar, Arvind Swamy, Kushboo, Vivek, Sukumari, Lalitha, Jayasudha	A. R. Rahman	Dubbed into English as Waves Dubbed into Telugu as Sakhi remade into Hindi as Saathiya
2002	Kannathil Muthamittal	Tamil	R. Madhavan, Simran Bagga, Nandita Das, P. S. Keerthana, Prakash Raj, Pasupathy	A. R. Rahman	Dubbed into English as A Peck on the Cheek Dubbed into Telugu as Amrutha
2004	Aayitha Ezhuthu	Tamil	R. Madhavan, Surya Sivakumar, Siddharth Narayan, Meera Jasmine, Esha Deol, Trisha Krishnan, Bharathiraja, Janagaraj	A. R. Rahman	Dubbed into Telugu as Yuva Dubbed into English as The Three Dots Simultaneously remade in Hindi as Yuva.
2004	Yuva	Hindi	Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachchan, Vivek Oberoi, Rani Mukherjee, Esha Deol, Kareena Kapoor, Om Puri	A. R. Rahman
2007	Guru	Hindi	Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, R. Madhavan, Vidya Balan, Mallika Sherawat, Mithun Chakraborty	A. R. Rahman	Dubbed into Tamil as Guru Dubbed into Telugu as Gurukanth
2010	Ashokavanam	Tamil	Vikram, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Prithviraj, Priyamani	A. R. Rahman
2010	Raavan	Hindi	Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Vikram, Ravi Kissen	A. R. Rahman