Nayanthara – Beyond the Fairytale Documentary Review: It isn’t easy being a film star in India. There is no sense of privacy for a public figure — Everything is criticised, scrutinised, commented upon, and dissected. In a world where your every move has to be carefully calculated, can you actually find a moment of honesty? Can you actually find your own cosy corner that allows you to be what you really want to be? After watching the 80-odd minutes of Netflix’s Nayanthara – Beyond the Fairytale, it is clear that the ‘Lady Superstar’ found her cosy corner at the centre of her world in Vignesh Shivan, and everything in this documentary leads to that moment… That moment where Nayanthara can look into the camera and say, “I feel like I don’t need anything else anymore.”
The documentary, directed by Amith Krishnan, begins on a rather shaky note because, they adopt a cinematic style. We have people ‘acting’ a script. It feels too staged when they discuss the last-minute wedding preparations. Of course, the obstacles were true, but watching it feels like seeing a rehearsed stage show put on by teachers for a school’s annual day. It immediately leads to a sense of dissonance, and we are only brought back into the documentary when the focus is on Nayanthara’s journey from Manasinnakare to Jawan.
Her reasoning to film this documentary, which she says is to make everyone want a bit of hope and see other people’s happiness is flimsy, but it is too early to judge. First up, we see how Diana Kurien from Thiruvalla got into films. It is like the stuff of dreams. She is featured in a famous magazine, and Sathyan Anthikkad, one of the best Indian directors needed a newcomer in a film that marked the comeback of actor Sheela, one of the biggest icons of Malayalam cinema. In her first six films, she is paired opposite Jayaram, Sarath Kumar, Mohanlal, Mammootty, and Rajinikanth. It was an unprecedented rise, and nothing could have pulled her down from that ascension.
“Ghajni was my lowest point,” says Nayanthara in the documentary. After the 2005 film, she was criticised for her sartorial choices, her physical appearance, and was the subject of intense trolling. It was also the first time the audience were seeing her in anything but a traditional saree or a salwar. “I was trolled, and shamed. No one came and told me that it was okay. I was a newcomer. I just did what the director told me. I just wore what the director asked me to. I had no choice,” points out Nayanthara, who reveals that she was battling inner demons because her father had fallen sick, and her mother was taking care of him. Producer Pushpa Kandasamy, who launched Nayanthara in Tamil with Ayya, says, “It is very tough in cinema for someone who is all alone. People look for chances to exploit you.”
The documentary wonderfully traces her initial cinematic journey by bringing in the right people to talk about Nayanthara. We have director Vishnuvardhan, who reinvented the brand Nayanthara through Ajith Kumar’s Billa. “Yes, the bikini was an issue. But I had to prove a point,” says Nayanthara. But the documentary isn’t just focussed on projecting her as this power figure even if many, including actors Nagarjuna, Rana Daggubati, and Upendra, say that she is a fighter or a thug or a warrior or royalty. It is the vulnerability of Nayanthara that truly holds the documentary together.
When Anu Varadhan says Nayanthara doesn’t know how to relax or chill, it gives us perspective. When Tamannaah says Nayanthara changed the system even when being part of the pattern, we understand certain film choices of hers. When Vijay Sethupathi says Nayanthara understands how actors are projected, we realise why her image is carefully constructed. And when Parvathy Thiruvothu points out that she was a ‘girl boss’ before the word was cool, we realise the repercussions of certain things Nayanthara did post 2012. It is succinctly put together by Radikaa Sarathkumar, who says, “It was fate that everywhere we went it was the male stars who got the recognition. Nayanthara changed it.”
While the documentary does a good job of pointing out the obstacles in her way, it doesn’t dwell too much on the failed relationships of hers that made primetime news every single time. It is clear that Nayanthara didn’t want this to be a tell-all interview about others. She simply says, “Because I didn’t address the breakups, they started assuming, and it was always the worst of me. No one asked the boys in the relationship. It wasn’t fair.”
Even here, they do touch upon her relationships, and how she was ready to throw away her cinema career to be with the man she loved. Nayanthara revealed that the choice was not hers to make, and she was told to quit cinema. “I was not mature enough, yes. But I took the call. I was at my lowest when I knew it was my last day of acting.” When the relationship broke off, Nayanthara took a two-year break from everything. The documentary doesn’t go into the darkness of it all, and instead focusses on the comeback.
Again, the makers are firmly fixed on focussing on the fairytale aspects of Nayanthara’s life, even if it promises to tell a story beyond it. The documentary isn’t going to take sides because it is about Nayanthara, by Nayanthara, and for Nayanthara. This is all part of that carefully constructed image, and it is just a window into how things pieced itself together in her life after that crushing downfall. It is structured so well that Vignesh Shivan is brought into the documentary at just the right time. He is brought back only after Nagarjuna and Atlee talk about calling up Nayanthara to make a comeback with their films. He is brought back only after Nelson talks about Kolamaavu Kokila, and how she changed the business of women-fronted films in Tamil cinema. From the return of Vignesh Shivan into the documentary, we see less of Nayanthara the actor, and more of her as a partner, friend, and a girlfriend.
From here, the documentary is a hit-and-a-miss because they don’t really delve into the aspects of a superstar actor forming a relationship with a one-film-old director. This isn’t new if the genders were reversed, but this was novel, and could have given more than just a glimpse into how the equation would have evolved. Here, we are left with a perfunctory monologue or two about the trepidation and the trials. What could have been a rather interesting exploration of the dynamics turns out to be a simple ‘he said-she said’ kind of a story that doesn’t tell anything new. As Vetri Maaran once said, real-life doesn’t need logic, but cinema does.
In more ways than one, Nayanthara: Beyond the Fairytale is more cinema than a documentary. Everything is staged to perfection. Not a single thing is out of place, and it is all too prim and proper to give us a feeling of watching something real. Again, it doesn’t mean the emotions are fake, it is just that it comes across as less real because there is no moment where we see or hear anything that Nayanthara or Vignesh Shivan don’t want us to see or hear.
Probably why, the rare moments of vulnerability really shine through. It stings when Nayanthara says, “I feel guilty because if not for me, he might have been happier. Life would have been easier for him.” Of course, Vignesh denies it, but this rare moment of pulling down the veil was important. Just that, the documentary needed more of such moments.
Everything culminates into the marriage, the preparations for it, the guest list, the tension, the tears, and the success of it all. In between, there are nice moments of ingenuity when Vignesh Shivan calls the wedding dress as “costumes have come” or Nayanthara revealing why she didn’t want to wear a Kanjeevaram saree for her big day. It is these moments that make the documentary more real. And when she wears her wedding ‘costume’ for the first time and walks down the aisle, or Vignesh candidly saying he didn’t even imagine he’d be invited to such a grand wedding, or the biggest names of Indian cinema like Rajinikanth, Shah Rukh Khan, AR Rahman, Suriya, Jyotika, Karthi, and Anirudh Ravichander smiling and blessing the couple, it is tough not to feel emotional about how things all fell into place.