Favorite Screenplays

The Writer's Guild of America, in its first ever best-of list, has chosen Casablanca as the best screenplay of all time. The news led me to think about screenplays in general. I think the screenplay is the most important aspect of a film since a good screenplay can make us overlook deficiencies in most of the other departments of the film.

I know that the screenplay is what makes a story suitable for the big screen. But beyond that, I am not clear about exactly what makes up a screenplay. I'm never sure where the story ends and the screenplay begins. I'm not sure how much of the script is part of the screenplay. I'm not even sure in what state the director gets a screenplay in hand or how much of it he can change as he directs the film. With such vagueness about what the screenplay is, it didn't seem fair coming up with a list of any sort. So I thought I'd just write about some of my favorite screenplays in Tamil movies. And I found that all my favorites could be thrown into 1 of 3 categories.

Tamil cinema, for the most part, has seen stories being told in a linear, chronological timeline. The only break in the timeline occurs when there is a flashback. So any movie that attempts something different from this straightforward narration catches my attention. One of the few movies that attempted this among older movies was Andha Naal. It juggled its stories skilfully as each person came up with his own version of how Sivaji could have been murdered. We've seen more such narrations recently ofcourse. 12B threw up the question of how different a man's life would've been if he'd caught a bus instead of missing it and presented both versions of his life in a fascinating manner as they converged and diverged at various points. Virumaandi presented the same story(with slight embellishments in one case) from two different points of view, showing us how the truth can be spun. Aaydha Ezhuthu presented a key incident in the lives of three youth and then moved back in time to show their lives as they led to that point.

A good screenplay is capable of presenting the simplest of stories in an engrossing manner. And it can make a cliched story seem completely fresh to us. My favorite example of the former is Agni Natchathiram. Manirathnam blew up a 1-line story about warring step-brothers into a stylish and entertaining affair. The sheer energy in the meetings between Prabhu and Karthik and the cuteness of their romances made the film slick and thorougly entertaining. Films like Dhill, Dhool and Gilli would be good examples of the latter. Dharani presented the same 'common man against powerful man' story in each of movies but made it seem fresh each time with the help of his screenplay.

Sometimes a screenplay amazes us with its cleverness in developing its plot points. Two movies that immediately spring to mind in this category are Aboorva Sagodharargal and Michael Madana Kamarajan. As I've said several times before, the screenplay developments(like the puli - puliyaattam connection) that made Raja the suspect for Appu's crimes in Aboorva Sagodharargal are simply amazing. Michael Madana Kamarajan's screenplay was almost a wonderfully choreographed dance in the way it fashioned interactions between the 4 look-alikes 2 or 3 at a time, before bringing all 4 of them together at the end.

I'm sure there are several more wonderful screenplays in Tamil cinema over the years. But the 10 movies I've listed above would probably be the ones that make it to the first draft of my top 10 list in this category.