Locations in Europe: Spain City of Arts and Sciences – Valencia The Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall – Bilbao The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Gate of Europe towers, Madrid Gate of Enlightenment, Madrid
Storyline
Director/Producer: Shankar (Director) MS Guha, M Saravanan (Producers)
Line Producer: Tirlok Malik (US)
Star(s): Rajnikanth, Shriya Saran, Vivek, Suman
Songs/Dance: Shot across different locations in Spain
Indian/ International Crew: French hairstylist Sandrin Veriar Seth
Language: Tamil
Film Location Analysis
By Veena Hariharan
The “Style” Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESAXsMYMMa8
This song composed by AR Rahman, with lyrics by Pa Vijay and sung by Blaaze, Tanvi et al, used the Dolby Atmos Sound technology and wowed film goers. As AR Rahman added his masterly touch with his novel instrumental choreography using Spanish rhythms, Blaaze hits out with his staccato rap, Suresh Peters tosses in English and Spanish phrases for effect, and Tanvi adds a beautiful melody in Tamil. This song is essentially about mobility, in terms of geography, wealth, desirability, and race parodied in the notion of “style”. As the opening lyrics of the song suggest, it talks of style, which is the essence of the superstar Rajnikanth.
Pastiche of Whiteness
The dark-skinned superstar Rajinikanth plays the role of Sivaji in the film. In the ironic framework of the film, he has been attempting to whiten his skin in order to attract his object of desire, and this song sequence suggests that he has indeed achieved this target, with help from VFX, hairstylists, makeover artistes, and gorgeous built-up landscapes in foreign locales (in this case Spain). Except that this is a fantasy sequence in the film.
Introduced in phantom-like, pasty-white makeup, blonde wig, dapper hairstyle, and a shocking pink velvet jacket, surrounded by a bevy of item girls, he sings and dances. In the course of the song, he goes on to appear in a dazzling array of costumes, wigs, and girls on his arms. This scene elevates Rajinikanth to the “desirable white man”, while poking fun at his efforts, because the audience are in the know about him—both in the film and in real life.
This is underlined at the end of the song when the whiteface Rajini is seen to be getting ahead with a girl, while a blackface Rajini, in a Rastafarian matted hairdo, attempts to intercept. She turns around to slap the black face Rajini, who skulks away while whiteface Rajini and the girl seem to be indignant about his presumption.
Through pastiche, whiteness and blackness are performed to reveal their constructed-ness as “performance” and their effects in the real world (whiteness is rewarded while blackness is scoffed at).
Locations reflecting theme
It is fitting that Rajinikanth performs the song in front of the iconic locations (noted above) moving between these in the course of this single song sequence. Peter C. Pugsley calls it
a “self-orientalising” move “by way of contrast—this is not an Indian, these are not Indian buildings”.Guggenheim Bilbao
One of the main locations in this sequence: The Guggenheim, Bilbao, for example, designed by architect Frank Gehry, is built in stone, glass, and titanium, and forms a perfect shimmering backdrop for the play with identity in the film and the fantasy milieu of this sequence. The New Yorker praised the building as a “fantastic dream ship of undulating form in a cloak of titanium”, its brilliantly reflective panels also reminiscent of fish scales. The curves on the exterior of the building were intended to appear random; “the randomness of the curves is designed to catch the light” as its “mercurial brilliance” can be seen for miles along the river.
This is reflected in the song’s lyrics inspired by the surroundings and goes: “Oru koodai sunlight/ oru koodai moonlight/ondraaga sertha colour thaaney en white/appatha vecha karuppey/ ippothaan Sekka Sevappey (“A pot of sunlight/ a pot of moonlight/ a mixture of these is my texture/ I had a dark complexion then/now I’m awesomely white.”)
The interior “is designed around a large, light-filled atrium with views of Bilbao's estuary and the surrounding hills of the Basque country". The atrium, which Gehry nicknamed The Flower because of its shape, serves as the organising centre of the museum, and boasts of massive site-specific installations. The museum is seamlessly integrated into the urban context, (also termed the Bilbao effect—how the museum revitalised or to some critics “gentrified” the city) unfolding its interconnecting shapes of stone, glass, and titanium on a 32,500-square-metre (350,000 sq. ft) site along the Nervion River in the ancient industrial heart of the city.
The building featured in the James Bond flick, The World is Not Enough (1999), Mariah Carey’s music video Sweetheart (1987), to which the some of the camera angles, shot designs, and choreography in the Style song sequence in Sivaji may be compared.
Additional Information & Links
Rajnikanth appears as a white-skinned European in this song sequence. The digital skin grafting effects used for his fair look were created using VFX by V. Srinvasa Mohan, the head of the Chennai-based firm Indian Artists.
Cinematographer K. V. Anand re-shot every single movement of Rajinikanth with a British woman named Jacky, who was also one of the song's background dancers.
All the shots featuring Rajinikanth in the song and those featuring Jacky were scanned in 4K resolution to enhance their clarity after which Jacky's skin colour, tone, and texture were digitally implemented onto Rajinikanth's skin.
This whole process took almost a year, and 25 technicians were on the job for the whole period working on over 6,500 frames that needed to be worked on one by one.
French hairstylist Sandrin Veriar Seth designed two distinct hairstyles for the entire film and 13 hairstyles for this song sequence alone.
Promos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCQpNm_6RuY
https://www.filmibeat.com/telugu/movies/sivaji/videos.html
Tourism
Although much of viewer attention was stolen by the costumes, wigs, and VFX that converted the dark-skinned superstar into a pasty white man complete with a blonde wig, the film’s Bilbao locations caught the eye of other filmmakers and promoted tourism to Spain.
