Mirrors are magical.What it shows is not real but it can be as real as possible.This illusion has both – the pull of beauty and insanity. It knows your fevered rehearsals, your secret blushes, the hidden actor in you. A harsh but honest friend who hangs in our houses all the time. Quite Literally!
Director Mani Ratnam would come first in the contest of using mirrors as props and despite its recurrence, it never fails to astound us. Our breaths are caught in a collective gasp at the union of the camera lens and the mirror and as we sigh at the sheer beauty , it mists over some of the most beautiful mirror scenes of tamil cinema which is this legend’s signature move.
It is always there near his iconic couples. His heroines whisper their ‘yes’ to the mirrors first, before they say it to their men. Just like their love ,the mirror is versatile enough to take on a different meaning with each of them.The mirror is the first row spectator of the Sakthi and Karthik romance in Alaipayuthey. It is the matchmaker in Nayagan that reflects Neela in the shadows of a brothel room to Velu. It becomes the marriage officiant to Tara and Adi’s private wedding as they confess their agreement to each other’s mirror faces, finally coming clear and transparent about their intentions. By the light reflected on me ,I pronounce you husband and wife, I imagine the mirror’s statement! 😉
Mirrors give a chance for another version, another possibility. ‘Namba Mudiyadha Saayal’ , breathes Lalettan in Iruvar and the woman there shows him and us what had been long gone. She is the human mirror of a dead woman, but the similarities do not go beyond the reflection. Pushpa and Kalpana. A flower and its Imagined version. Two unlikely and different characters united by the same image they see on their mirrors.
Mirror is the circus artist who tricks us with the image of love and peace as Ragini dances to Kalvare around her husband in Raavanan. This is pretty but foreboding, especially when this image shatters to his gunshots at the climax. The omnipresent mirror is the spy who knows all the secrets of the characters who come before it. In Chekka Sevantha Vaanam ,Lakshmi sits patiently as her bandage is being unwrapped while the mirror helpfully shows her arguing sons in the background , a multiple choice screen from which she struggles to zoom in on the culprit.
‘It’s all smoke and mirrors’ – people tell this to describe illusions and tricks. It reminded me of Kaatru Veliyidai, when Leela and Varun face the mirror as she reveals her pregnancy, hoping the face it reflects will smile. But the mirror is quick to catch his frown ,so she turns reluctantly from the safety of the illusion to face the truth. The mirror becomes the ‘good’ twin of Divya in Mouna Ragam as her mother dolls her up. A consolation illusion prize to a mother.The woman in the mirror is who she wishes was her daughter, a pretty perfect image of womanhood, not the Divya who comes late dancing in the rain.
The list could go on and each time the mirror becomes a dual agent. An image of truth as well as the lair of lies. That is the tragedy of mirrors and lenses in Mani Ratnam films.To know everything and see everything but remain numb. But looking through all the beautiful scenes they create together, it made me realise that perhaps the camera lens and the mirror have a greater love story than that of the characters in his films.
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THE TALKING QUILL 