Alaipayuthey(2000) / Saathiya(2002)

                  It has been been more than a decade but there was always one thing that bothered me about this film. So i decided to get to the bottom of the problem. This is considered to be one of the greatest romantic films(in Tamil at-least). When the film came it was revolution and even now a lot of people would consider this a very very close to their heart films. Because it talks about the love, marriage and fights between a two ordinary people like most of us. The boy is not super hero beating up 20 people at a time to save the girl. Nor the girl is some beauty queen of the college  being chased by some bad guys. He is an aspiring software guy and she is a medical college student. That is all. This i think is what clicked. Suddenly, we are seeing some one whom we can relate to.
                 However, as i said earlier, there was always one thing that bothered me in the film.We can see that the guy is a crazy guy who falls in love instantaneously with the girl. This i think is not a strange thing for all of us. We can see that he is mightily impressed with her and he chases her every where. He chases her in the train , college and even to her home. So, we have the guys intentions clear from the very beginning of the story.
                  However, the girl is very mysterious. She flirts with him alright, but at no point in the beginning of the story she looks like she is love or something. She is definitely attracted to him. She even looks around in the train when he seemed missing. But she definitely not seen in love with him And she definitely does not look like the kind of girl who would secretly marry a guy. Think about it. She has a loving family, good career ahead and she is very very happy.She even says this to him. "I have veedu, amma, naikutti (house, mom and puppy) and that is enough for me". But then how did her mind changes all of a sudden? I never understood.This baffled me all the time.                          
                  However, from the overall story perspective we can understand why she has to be an average girl. She has to come from a normal family which she sacrifices for the sake of love. Otherwise the second half will not be a balanced one when they actually get into the fights. He would have looked entitled.
                  So, how do you show this normal girl who in no frame of mind would have thought of disturbing her beautiful setup, changing into a girl who would actually betray the entire family for the sake of this handsome yet jobless. Well, in my opinion, you cannot show this transition in a three hour film. Even done it would require a huge drama.She has to  be harassed by some guy or he doing some thing great for the society etc etc. But that would have eaten the entire time and that is not the intention of ManiRatnam as well. He wants us to get to the ICU in the climax as quick as possible which is where the knot of the film unravels.
                     So my guess is instead of wasting time in explaining this stuff  he puts in a song to convey her feelings for him even though we have never seen her in love with him before. This song acts us the necessary underline. It convey her feelings on the screen which even a hundred scenes wouldnt have conveyed properly. Without this song, their secret marriage would have never looked convincing at all. We would have thought she is a crazy selfish girl.
                      So, here is the most important and beautiful song of the film.Thanks to Rahman that this saved Maniratnam a hell lot of screen time and headaches to come up dramatic sequences which would have looked silly for the tone of the film.

                         
                              I realized all this from Bhradwaj Rangan's book Conversations with Mani Ratnam. It is a great book and i highly recomment it for film enthusiasts. Not only this, the book made me realize the importance of songs in our movies. Maniratman explains it quite beautifully.Songs are not a curse for our movies. They are blessings. They can effectively convey the feelings and moods which could not be conveyed by dialogues and visuals. They work in a very very meta level. Without songs our films would be lifeless two dimensional images and thank god i understood this.