For Vikram, who plays Thangalaan, the film is a triumph. But how can a single performance save a movie? ‘Thangalaan’ places so much on Vikram’s shoulders that it feels like that is all that matters.
They say you should enter a film with zero expectations, and simply submit yourself to what the film is – as opposed to what you think the film is going to be, or what you want the film to be. But with Thangalaan, this is difficult. The expectations are huge because (1) it is a film by Pa. Ranjith, (2) it stars Vikram, who never takes a role lightly, and (3) the director and the actor have been on a hot creative streak of late. Pa. Ranjith is coming off Sarpatta Parambarai, the anthology film Dhammam, and Natchathiram Nagargiradhu, which is his most daring experiment in terms of form, breaking the boundaries between theatre and cinema. As for Vikram, take out Cobra, and we have had a blazing display of both star-power and actor-power in Mahaan and the two Ponniyin Selvan films, especially the second part. So does Thangalaan live up to the hype – the expectation – we have created for ourselves in our minds? The answer, sadly, is… no!
For Vikram, who plays Thangalaan, the film is a triumph. I could not make out if the character was underwritten or whether the lack of emotional connect was due to a much longer film being brutally cut short: in other words, I could not make out if this film’s problem is its screenplay or its editing. But Vikram gathers scraps of disconnected material and creates a totally awesome presence – as in, a presence that creates awe. His voice sounds different. The face looks different. The way he pushes himself towards his wife while still sitting – that body language feels different. The anguish on his face, framed by flames destroying his crops – that feels different. It’s a big performance, and at first, Vikram plays the oppressed character as an externally happy but internally tormented man. He is tormented by visions of war, visions from a long-long-ago past he seems to be a part of. But slowly, as he realises his destiny, the acting becomes more shaded. At times, like when someone dies, he seems to shrivel into himself, like a snail. At other times, he is a ferocious fighter.
But how can a single performance save a movie? Thangalaan places so much on Vikram’s shoulders that it feels like that is all that matters. The film is about mining for gold in the Kolar area in the 1850s, and the story is some kind of magical-realist adventure, plus some kind of messiah saga where a man realises he is The One, plus some kind of commentary on how the oppressed have been oppressed down the ages. (This latter part reminded me of Bala’s Paradesi.) These individual threads are interesting, but they don’t come together in a coherent way. I think Ranjith, with his editor, has tried to structure the film like one giant hallucination – like the visions Thangalaan has. (Thangalaan keeps whispering some kind of mystic prose-poetry.) But if that was the intent, what we lose is narrative coherence. The scenes don’t flow into one another. They seem to be chaotically smashed together, like a slideshow. And the staging of many of the sequences is confusing, in terms of geography and what’s happening and the positioning of the characters involved.
The big action set pieces, involving panthers and snakes, don’t work. But what’s more surprising is that, with the exception of Thangalaan, none of the characters are established strongly. Take the character played by Pasupathy. (He is rock-solid, as always.) The man is trying to break free of his situation by converting to Brahminism, renouncing meat, etc. And he urges others to do the same, if they want to reach a heaven apparently “reserved” only for the dominant castes. This is a pitiful situation, but the pity doesn’t trickle down to the audience.
As for Thangalaan, his way of reaching “heaven” – that is, his way of breaking free of his hellish life on earth – is to align himself with a Britisher named Clement (Daniel Caltagirone) who seeks gold. Why Clement would set out on this quest with a party of so few of his own men is anyone’s guess – or maybe the answer is in one of the many dialogues I couldn’t catch properly due to the sound mix. Whatever the reason, Clement recruits Thangalaan and becomes Thangalaan’s ray of hope, and we get to another beautiful idea of a scene. The near-naked, barefooted oppressed man gets to wear a shirt, a pair of pants, boots, plus he gets to ride a horse. The moment should feel triumphant. But again, it ends up feeling distant. We see these things happening, but these things don’t cross the eyes and enter the heart. This is an emotionally distant film, and we feel nothing when people die or are oppressed or end up betrayed. Everything is generic, at the surface level.
Parvathy Thiruvothu is given a generic role as Thangalaan’s wife. Bits of the actor’s feistiness peek through, but not nearly enough. And given what we get to know towards the end about the witch-like character Malavika Mohanan plays, her earlier actions don’t make much sense. I think the main problem – or rather, the main challenge – Ranjith and his team faced is trying to resolve the tropes of an adventure movie with those of a drama about oppressed people. Form-wise, Thangalaan is as daring an experiment as Natchathiram Nagargiradhu. Ranjith gives us very little backstory. He tries to establish the “rules” of this world through visuals rather than words. But this time, it doesn’t click. GV Prakash Kumar goes for a thunderous score that attempts to tie the two tonalities together. But we needed more. Maybe this story would have benefited from a more conventional treatment. We get a donkey, a peacock, a beheaded Buddha statue, a knife gifted by a king – things that surely have some kind of symbolic meaning. What we don’t get is a coherent, affecting film.
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