Mani Ratnam's Iruvar

The Other Banana

This episode is brought to you by MUBI, a curated streaming service showing exceptional films from around the globe. Every day, MUBI premieres a new film, each one thoughtfully hand-picked. From new directors to award-winners. Beautiful, interesting, incredible movies—there is always something new to discover.

After 102 episodes on South Indian cinema, The Other Banana Podcast has finally chanced upon a film by Mani Ratnam. In this episode we discuss Mani Ratnam's polarizing Iruvar - his take on the friendship between the real life figures of MG Ramachandran and M Karunanidhi, two stalwarts of that heady concoction - cinema and politics. We discuss both the aspects of the film - the form and aesthetics, and Mani's depiction of the Dravidian politics and the various characters in its inception and implementation.

You can watch the film with subtitles on MUBI. You can try MUBI for a hugely discounted price by signing up on https://mubi.com/theotherbanana or click here. The film stars Mohanlal, Prakash Raj, Aishwarya Rai, Nasser et al.

To talk about Iruvar, we are joined by a special guest - writer, researcher, author Suchitra Vijayan who runs the independent research and journalism organization The Polis Project. Her new book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India came out this year.

Participants:

Suchitra Vijayan

Deepauk

Aditya Shrikrishna

Episode edited by Anantha

You can listen to the episodes referenced in this podcast here:

Vada Chennai

Andha Naal

Music/BGM Courtesy: Iruvar Soundtrack by AR Rahman/Pyramid