"A.R.Rahman isn't a good judge of scripts"

I was in the midst of a discussion between two friends talking about Rahman and Yuvan, and this made me to think of one contrasting difference between these composers. When you look at A R Rahman’s career graph, you can’t help noticing that most of his flop movies (not flop songs) are with new directors that he makes music for

-recent example, Kala Prabhu’s Sakkarakatti. A sample list of other moderate to flop movies would be: Pudiya Mugam, May Madham, Enakku 20 Unakku 18, Sillunu Oru Kadhal, Udhaya, Parasuram, ATM, and Ratchagan. You will notice that 90 percent of his hit movies are with well established directors or are backed up by strong personalities, such as Aamir Khan for his nephew in Jaane Tu.

This is a sharp contrast to someone like Yuvan who is more successful with new comers. And his father, Ilayaraja, has an unprecedented record of hit movies with new comers. The irony is that Rahman's judgment in scripts is not that great; he can connect with his music but I don’t think he has the ability to judge what scripts will work and what will not. If Mani Ratnam, Aamir Khan, and Shankar move on at this point to new music directors, it will at least give Rahman a new bandwidth of newcomers to experiment with.

I am not disputing that Rahman has set a benchmark in the industry. However, I would prefer that Rahman try and experiment with more new comers and hone his instinct to connect with new scripts instead of circling back to those five top directors all the time.

VIJAY SRINIVASAN
Behindwoods visitor
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