தளபதி / The Godfather
You can definitely tell that Mani Ratnam borrowed the playbook from the meeting between Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo and the Don. I mean, to the beat. Both scenes clock in at about three minutes, and in both, we’re dropped right into the middle of the meeting. Both open at the midpoint of the conversation, and both cut to wide to ease the tension and reveal the space. In Thalapathi, just like in The Godfather, it’s not about what’s said. It’s the silence, the weight of that silence, the subtle gestures, the space between those gestures, the looks—everything feels heavy, each move loaded with meaning, each glance a prelude to an inevitable consequence.
In both films, there’s a clash of ideals: one pits the old ways of conducting business against the aggressive innovations of the new order, while the other presents a deeper ideological conflict—anarchism contending with traditionalism. And, indeed, one might argue that it’s a battle for authority itself: who truly governs the streets—those who uphold the law, or those who bend it for their own gain? A confrontation not just between men, but between the very systems that define our world.