“Whoever came up with the line – You can be a mother even if you’re a man – in the old Nescafe ad must have been inspired by Nathan Lane’s performance in this movie!” – is what I thought when I watched The Birdcage again a few weeks back. Made way back in 1996, the movie still retains the original charm and relevance, really, as it did, all those years ago. Briefly summarizing, The Birdcage is about a gay couple (Robin Williams and Nathan Lane) and the fact that Williams’ heterosexual son is dating the daughter of a conservative senator (Gene Hackman). The plot revolves around Hackman’s attempts to have a ‘white’ wedding for his daughter, which will offset the scandal that his party is going through – of a fellow senator dying, while soliciting the services of a coloured commercial sex worker (can this BE more politically correct???)

So we have the son requesting Williams to pretend to be straight for just one evening and send Lane away, who is upset – as he has literally brought up the boy. I love the way he has a cake sent to the boy saying something like “To my dear piglet, love, auntie”. And the rest of the story is about how Williams tries to get the real mother of his son for dinner with Hackman’s family, how she can’t make it on time as she is stuck in traffic, and how Lane fills in instead – as the boy’s mother. The relationship that develops between Hackman and Lane – Mrs. Goldman / Coleman, if you will – is endearing, to say the least.

The point that came across extremely strongly is how well Lane pulled off the role of the drag queen, in a way that probably not many others can. His gait, mannerisms, the pinky finger going up when he lifts a glass – this is authentic, at its very best. Add to this, his chosen stage name, Starina, and how can you not love him? J In fact, the movie brought to mind, one of the topics that I was considering for my masters’ thesis way back – of studying the portrayal of fathers in Indian, actually Tamil, cinema. Typically, I had the movies I wanted to study in mind and tried to weave a topic around it, instead of doing it the other way around. While I ended up choosing another topic to work on, for the thesis, I still believe that I would have loved working on a piece along these lines, with the movies in question being Anjali and the then-recently released Kannatthil Mutthamittaal.

By and large, I think Raghuvaran is one of the best actors in the Tamil film industry. I truly believe that he was capable of a lot more than the kind of roles he did. And his performance in Anjali is true vindication. While many people have expressed issues with the script per se, the performances in the movie have been memorable. Whether it was Revathi, the siblings, even Saranya in her brief role as the doctor, and Raghuvaran himself – I believe every one of them left an impact on the viewing audiences. For me, this was Raghuvaran at his best – as the husband who made an extremely difficult choice, as a father who spends every free moment that he has with his challenged daughter, as a father who goes on the offensive against other people in the building complex, who worry about the influence that his daughter may have on the rest of the children there.

The other, of course, is the film where Madhavan adopts this little girl from the orphanage in Rameshwaram and the child’s quest to find her biological mother when she comes to know that she was adopted. The innate feminist that I am, I took objection to the point that Madhavan gets into a marriage only to adopt the baby. I guess this resolved itself in my head over a period of time J but the point I’m trying to make is the beauty of Madhavan’s relationship with his daughter. And the sensitivity with which it’s been portrayed. Now contrast these roles with others like the one Mr. Bachchan plays in Mohabbatein – this is one movie that makes me want to put my hand down my throat and rip my lungs apart – or the same Mr. Bachchan’s role in Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham. Safe to not get started on my reactions to that movie, I guess.

All said and done, I’m convinced that Nathan Lane inspired the profound line in the Nescafe ad J