Guru and the Truth

I read a blog on the film Guru the other day. While the blog was very well written, and while its true that ManiRatnam has proved himself time and again to be a pretentious filmmaker, I think that the idea of that film was not about capitilism alone. On a superficial level, yes this is about making money-loads of it- in as unscrupulous manner as you can imagine.

Did you watch the film chocolate? In a tiny Frech village where people are always told that to indulge oneself is "sin" and to hold back one's desires in light of the imperceivable "nobility" is indeed the greatest virtue. In this film as well as in Guru, I think the underlying idea is the triumph of the human spirit - over desire, over circumstance, over what we have passively come to accept as our "destiny". In doing what needs to be done- not being held back by preconceived notions of "good" and "bad". Being free means one gets rid of these preconceived notions. It might be true that the reason why we as a people did decide that somethings are good and some not is that perhaps collectively at some time point in history we must have seen some wisdom in that. But to allow those notions to become the guiding truth of our lives, is to lose the awareness that each one's truth is but his own.

It is this recognition that made a Copernicus, a Newton, an Aristotle. It is this awareness that brought us independence in 1947 ahead of majority of the "colonies". It is this indeed that made the nation of immigrants become "the greatest nation" in present times. If we can see this attempt of Maniratnam in this light, I think this is one of his most sincere attempts at film making. This film certainly rivals Iruvar as one of the finest flims made by him.