As the great Kamal Haasan turns 69 on November 7, plans are afoot to release his best-known(though not necessarily best) film Nayakan, a tribute to The Godfather which Mani Ratnam denied being a tribute to the Marlon Brando classic.
However Kamal Haasan was more candid one the source material for Nayakan. In a past interaction with this writer he admitted, “Nayakan was definitely inspired by The Godfather. In fact we were so conscious of our source material that we made deliberate efforts to make my characters dissimilar to Marlon Brando in bearing walk talk and attitude…hence the efforts to bring in a true-life Tamilian gangster in Mumbai …But Brando and the Godfather loomed large over Nayakan.”
Kamal Haasan went on to reveal that a lot of ideas and scenes derived from The Godfather couldn’t be used in Nayakan. “So we used it in my other Tamil tribute to The Godfather which was Thevar Magan. In fact in terms of ambience and setting Thevar Magan turned out to be closer to The Godfather than Nayakan.”
Why didn’t Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam ever come together again after Nayakan?
To this question, Kamal had replied, “All I will say is, the answer to the question that haunts both of us — why not another film together after Nayakan? Nayakan is no doubt the most influential film of my career.”
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