.@dagalti

Great post! Seriously superb stuff.

>>And mind you, it isn't all being-in-the-scene alone. There is a good degree of cinematic aestheticization that they manage to blend in here.<<
Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't even call this 'realism' to begin with. (But that's for another day!) All these stunts are also first and foremost stylized in specific ways to evoke specific effects. It's sleight-of-hand as you said. If I've to summarize the changes you've described in your excellent note, I'd put it this way. It got dirty (since nAyagan), dusty and was infused with dynamism/urgency. In recent years, there's the heightened sense of rawness (the sound of actually hitting a muscle and so on).

Here's the gist of where I differ with you on Mysskin.

"doesn't understand the higher bar on believability now and wants to execute some independent fantasy (possibly it is exactly that, which appealed to you)."

Yes, this is what appeals to me. As I said, the sheer strangeness makes it a thing of its own. His fight scenes are abstract, stripping the action sequence framework to its bare minimum, long 'silences' and bursts of real action. No doubt a strong departure from the standard fare of contemporary Tamil cinema. But this is very much true of his overall project too, not just in doing action scenes. His melodrama for instance. Would you say he's returning to standard 80s fare with his melodrama/sentimentality for instance? I'm not sure. I find it more affecting and clearly far stranger.

Coming back to stunts, what's also important I think is this departure in style still incorporates quite a bit of contemporary Tamil cinema aesthetics and not anything from the old school. The heightened violence, the rawness, the sharp cuts are all there in (the bursts of action you see in) chiththiram pEsuthadi and anjAthE* for instance, but there's a deliberate slowdown of the showdown (oops, didn't intend to rhyme) which I don't think marks a regression to the old grammar. I think the answer to this is one word: Samurai. The looming presence of the 'Japanese' in his style is of course well known.


* The YS fight is of course further stylized (with a nail-cutter!) and the rawness is not at all there.

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