Movies

21 Years Of Classic: Facts You Never Knew About Your Favourite Kandukondain Kandukondain!

How many fans of this film?

It has been 21 years and Kandukondain Kandukondain still remains fresh in our minds like we just watched it yesterday. The movie was the romantic drama that blew us away with AR Rahman’s music, Sujatha’s dialogues and the gorgeous stills of Ravi K Chandran. The cast is nothing short of an actors’ gala with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Tabu, Mammootty, Ajith Kumar, Abbas and many more veteran actors supporting the drama.

The man behind this project shared some interesting pieces of information which we probably never knew before. The mammoth task at hand was of course to bring such a big starcast together. “It was very difficult to get everybody together, but once they came together, it was great fun,” says the director.

As we know, this movie had a stellar cast. But how did each piece fit perfectly into the jigsaw puzzle? Each character has its own story. “I had imagined someone like Parthiban, but there was some issue going on between him and the producer at that time. I tried Arjun, but he was doing films like Mudhalvan, so there was no need for him to play one among five characters. I felt Mammooty would be great as this aggressive character and reached out to him. Mammukka was cool and he said OK,” says Rajiv.

Inspiration is all around you, they say. Some characters are just a reflection of what we see. “I had a very close relationship with my father’s mother because she stayed in my room after he(my grandfather) passed away. I used to spend time talking to her, and the relationship that you see between Tabu’s character and her grandfather is based on that.” At times, our life can be a story worth sharing.”Certain elements of me are in Manohar’s character. One of the scenes that is very close to me is the one where you see the character doing wedding photography. I’d precisely done that in my life,” says Rajiv. The characters came to life because of how grounded and real they were.

We often call a movie a visual treat. This isn’t possible if the frames and lights don’t work in accordance with the story. “The visual style for this movie was based on the elegant dignity of characters who are living in a plush place, which they are not the owners of and do not have money — classy, but not rich. That treatment exists even in the colours that I used for Aishwarya’s Meenakshi (blues and greens), the ones that I used for Tabu’s Sowmya (earthy and sombre).” says Rajiv reminiscing his experience working on this masterpiece.

Be it Minsara Kanavu, Kandukondain Kandukondain or Sarvam Thaala Mayam, music has been an integral part of the entire project. After experimenting with Broadway and Western music in Minsara Kanavu, Rajiv Menon wanted to try some folk tunes with Rahman. “I knew that Rahman had the ability to do great folk music, and it was so beautiful. Each of the songs has a history. The first composition we did was the title song,” says Rajiv Menon. Every song in this movie is hummed even today and that shows the power of the album.

This evergreen movie will remain immortal. The scenes, the dialogues, the songs and the huge starcast: this movie will probably remain to be one in a million. Every year, we will discover something new, every watch will feel like the first watch.

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