Bharathiraja took Tamil Nadu’s red soil to the silver screen

Everywhere Bharathiraja looked, he seemed to see potential. He looked around rural Tamil Nadu — the red soil of its fields, dried river beds and waving palm trees — and saw its cinematic beauty. Until he trained the lens on village life in his directorial debut 16 Vayathinile, Tamil cinema’s aesthetics were bound by the limits of the studio and the sensibilities of its largely city-based storytellers. They determined what could be shot and whose stories could be told. By bringing in the sights and textures of rural Tamil life on the screen — gently exploring how caste, inequality and deprivation shaped relationships — Bharathiraja, who died this week at the age of 84, changed its grammar forever.

The filmmaker, who made such classics as Kizhakke Pogum Rail, Sigappu Rojakkal, Vedam Puthithu and Mudhal Mariyadhai, was also a master at spotting the potential in people. Partly out of instinct and partly as a gesture of defiance against an industry that had stymied his own ambitions of becoming a star, he launched the careers of actors like Revathi, Radhikaa and Karthik. His journey, from a village in Theni district to the ‘Iyakkunar Imayam’ (pinnacle among directors), inspired filmmakers such as writer-director K Bhagyaraj, Parthiban and Pandiarajan, whose work embodied the same granular approach to storytelling.

Music was key to the appeal of Bharathiraja’s films, owing largely to his long partnership with Ilaiyaraaja. A relationship that dated back to when the duo, along with the composer’s brothers, performed at communist meetings, it was instrumental in establishing the soundtrack of rural Tamil Nadu. Even today songs like ‘Sendhoora poove’ (16 Vayathinile) and ‘Kodiyile malligai poo’ (Kadalora Kavithaigal), rooted in folk traditions and evoking a certain romance with the rural, continue to stir the imagination of moviegoers.