It was a simple conversation that led to the
fruition of a documentary film on the lives of the ever-so-crazy fans of ‘the’
Rajinikanth that has been shot throughout the last four years. The producer of
the film, Joyojeet Pal, a professor at the University of Michigan, was
discussing the crazy fandom that Rajinikanth enjoys and the extent to which his
fans can go to for the love of the man. Rinku says, “I had always heard of
Rajini’s dedicated fan clubs and it always made me wonder as to what makes him
click? Why is the same phenomenon not happening at the same level in Bollywood?
In 2010, I was in Amsterdam and I knew ‘Enthiran’ was about to release. I knew
that if I had to understand this phenomenon, the only way to do it would be to
experience it. So I flew down to Chennai and asked the auto rickshaw driver to
take me to a theatre. He took me to Albert Theatre where Rajinikanth’s movies
are screened throughout the year. Once I was there, I was blown away by what I
saw. What was supposed to be a research trip became a film shoot as I started
recording the events happening there. For every release of his, the fans
perform something called the ‘Pal Abhishekam’ where they pour milk on the 60
feet tall cutout.” Satchit adds, “Over the years, Rajini has been having
relatively few releases – maybe one in two years. So for the fans, it becomes a
big festival and they attempt to make it bigger than the last time. Be it his
birthday or his return from the hospital, you never know which of the smallest
of reasons might take the form of a festival.”
The crew has been working on the film for the past four years and has shot Rajini’s fans extensively in Vellore, Trichy, Bangalore and Japan. The project is 80% complete and the team hopes to release it by February 2015. ‘For the Love of a Man’ follows four main protagonists— an auto rickshaw driver and long-time fan organiser Ravi Anna, mimicry artist Kamal Anand, gangster-turned-peanut-seller G Mani, and small-town politician N Ravi. The crew has spent four years following their lives and has tried to show how being a fan of Rajinikanth has impacted their household. The film also features a lookalike of Rajinikanth who does a great impersonation of the man and hence gets hired during ‘Rajini events’ by the fans. The film talks about ‘how he is on the fringes of fandom and owes his earnings to Rajinikanth’.
Surprisingly, the film does not feature any bytes or clips of Rajinikanth but the man can be seen in the film only through artworks, pictures, cutouts, posters and film clips. Satchit says, “It was a conscious decision not to have him in the film. Enough has been written and spoken about the man himself but we wanted to show him through the eyes of the beholder. To understand the phenomenon, we had to actually see how regular people like you and me are affected by him.”
On a concluding note, Rinku says, “It is easy for a person to sit in his chair and be a self-proclaimed fan of something / someone. But this film is about the toil of actual fandom. It is the story of all the fans who crawl bare-knee to the Tirupati temple ahead of the release of Rajini’s film, fans who empty their life’s savings towards Rajini fan clubs, and fans for whom being a fan of Rajini is a way of life. For them, this documentary will never end. Even till date, the fans remind us affectionately, ‘The next film is about to release soon, you have to come!’”