Quotes from Mani Ratnam

What is film-making about if not romance?

It doesn't matter which genre you're working in, you try to find an honest relationship within that space, and say if it's the romance genre, within that you have to find a story and characters that resonate with an audience.

Characters are not created on paper or laptop alone.

What you write sets the visual style for the film. But you have to compromise your style in your first few films before people let you do what you want to do.

Language, I think, has nothing to do with film-making. It is how you make your point and whether you exploit the visual medium maintaining a certain standard that does the trick.

Films will break barriers - and good films will travel all over India.

The fact that technology has developed so much gives you the liberty to tell the stories, which were difficult to say earlier. It allows you to tell it more convincingly, more elaborately and more beautifully.

With each film, you are still trying to get the length and measure right. And failure is all about others' perception of you. When you have one success, they think you know it all. But if you fail, they think they know it all.

I am a big fan of sleek action films.

I don't watch my old films like 'Roja,' 'Dil Se' because I only see mistakes. I see five minutes of the film and I am scared I will start finding mistakes in them.

Roja,' 'Bombay' and 'Dil Se' weren't planned as political films. It was a phase India was going through and these things affected me and found their way into my work.

Rahman is very very director friendly. He is ever ready to go whichever the director wants, the story wants, depending on the kind of movie or the music you want, and within that he finds his niche. It is a constantly complementary process. At the end of the day he is not pleasing you, he has to please himself.

I want to make a film that can reach as many as possible so I want to talk in a language which I can easily communicate with.

I watch films, so I know what it is to be there in a theatre as the audience. So I always want to communicate with them when I make films, but that is not the only thing. I also want to say something which I feel deeply, and which I feel I can connect with the rest of the audience.

I like songs. It's a weakness that I have.

You can't say there is only one way of doing things, the police way of ensuring law and order.

If you ask a filmmaker to analyse his own film, it would take three or four years to do that, honestly. Because when you make a film, you have to be convinced about it. You are married to that film for a year.

In a film like 'Kannathil Muthamittal,' I can't have a Rajnikanth or a Kamal Haasan. If you have a star, the expectation of the film is different. So, you cast according to the subject of the film. Some films are best done with stars because it gives you a base on which if you can get the correct performance, you can reach higher.

Bilingual films come with a certain inbuilt practical problem with respect to the setting of the story and the dialect.

In school I was sidelined by Tamil language teachers. But in the film industry, I got interested in Tamil poetry after reading and working with the Vairamuthu.

Every film you see at a festival teaches you something.

For a filmmaker, whether the film is liked, understood or appreciated counts as much as the moolah.

Every time you make a film, you want to do it in a genre that is different from your previous film, so that there is something fresh about it.

When your principal artists deliver convincing performances, the film's quality is elevated.