Mouna Ragam

aka Silent Raga 1986 145’ col Tamil d/s Mani Rathnam pc Sujatha Prod. p G. Venkateswaran lyr Vali c P.C. Sriram m Ilaiyaraja lp Mohan, Revathi, Karthik, Kanchana, Vani, Kamala Kamesh, Kalaichelvi, Shakila, Sonia, V.K. Ramaswamy, R. Shankaran, Bhaskar, Rani Patel, Suresh

Rathnam’s art-house melodrama just prior to his big-budget breakthrough hit Nayakan (1987). Divya (Revathi) is unable to resign herself to a forced marriage living in Delhi with Chandra Kumar (Mohan). She recalls, in flashback, her carefree days with her first boyfriend, the gansgter Manmohan (Karthik), who was shot dead in front of a temple even as she waited inside to marry him. She seeks a divorce, but as the law requires the couple to stay together for a year, they decide to live separately in the same house. After she has nursed her husband back to health following a murderous attack by an employee, the couple decide to stay together. The film inaugurates the Tamil love story genre set outside the state, associated with the director (cf. Roja, 1992), also featuring camerawork typically associated with Rathnam and Sriram: frontal and profile close-ups, set against long shots with fuzzy foreground. Not to be confused with Ambili’s Malayalam Mouna Ragam (1983).

Film