Karthi and Arvind Swamy star in C Prem Kumar’s ‘Meiyazhagan’, a sweet, leisurely, talky story about broken family ties

The lead actors are both fantastic. The first half is charming, but later, the film feels like it needed to be tighter, more focused. But all said, this is a work worth watching. The rest of this review may contain spoilers…

Actually, there may have been no need for that warning, because Meiyazhagan, in a way, is a movie that cannot really be “spoiled” for an audience. This is Prem Kumar’s second film, and like his first one, 96, the storyline is super-simple. There, it was about two estranged lovers meeting after a long time. Here, it is about two estranged relatives meeting after a long time. Arvind Swamy plays the royally named Arulmozhi Varman. He lives in Chennai with his wife Hema (Devadarshini) and daughter Janhvi. Note the daughter’s name. As opposed to the father’s very South Indian name, this is a “North Indian” name, a Sanskrit name. The gradual erosion of Tamil values is one of the themes of this conversational movie. Later, we will listen to a drunken rant about how, in school, we learn about the Rani of Jhansi but not about Rani Velu Nachiyar, who preceded her.

But no, this is not a “versus” movie. This is not a movie about the South being better or some such divisive thing. Prem Kumar may be one of the most inclusive filmmakers working today. He finds place in his story not just for humans but also street dogs, cats, parrots, a bull, an elephant. Likewise, he includes this point about North India only to say that – in comparison – we are slowly forgetting our own roots. Both the central characters in this film have old-fashioned multi-syllable names with the Tamil letter “zha”. Will future generations take these lovely names forward? Will they care about Tamil traditions like jallikattu? Will they know Ilaiyaraaja songs word for word? Will they hang pictures of Periyar on their walls, alongside pictures of gods that the atheist leader renounced? Will they recall the politics of the State, whether it is MGR (referenced through a statue) or the Eelam issue or the Sterlite violence in Thoothukudi?

These thoughts are smuggled through a story that gets going when Arulmozhi Varman goes back to his Thanjavur town for a wedding. This is the first and best half of Meiyazhagan, and it plays like Anbe Sivam remade with the gaze of mid-2000s family films either directed by or starring Cheran – like Thavamai Thavamirundhu and Pirivom Sandhippom. The Anbe Sivam connection comes from the two central characters, one of whom is a city-based cynic who is transformed by the goodness of the other. Arulmozhi Varman just wants to mark his attendance at the wedding, and leave ASAP. But you know that won’t happen because otherwise there’s no story. You also know this because the venue of the wedding is named Chozhan Kalyanana Mandapam, and what greater “home” can exist for a man named Arulmozhi Varman!

The wedding portions are wonderfully directed, and they give the sense of a little documentary or wedding video of a Tamil wedding (or as the song goes, a “delta kalyanam”) put together by an observant videographer. We see the little nothings that happen in conversations with relatives and with the man in charge of the kitchen. We see guests standing in line to greet the couple. We see the easy familiarity of small-towners, who open up about problems like alcoholism to people they have not met in decades. We see the banter during meals. Like in 96, Prem Kumar’s idea is to (1) bring an outsider to a reunion of once-familiar faces, (2) single out one of these faces (the Karthi character) as someone specially connected to the outsider, and (3) construct the second half as a massive series of talks between these two people. 

Before diving into more details, let’s look at the performances. An early scene in Meiyazhagan shows the young Arulmozhi Varman and his family leaving their ancestral home. There is a fantastic wide shot from the inside of the huge house as the doors are locked from the outside. For a second, we are filled with an image of the emptiness of space after the people in that space have gone away, and this could be seen as a visual metaphor for the emptiness that Arulmozhi Varman will carry in his heart, long after he leaves. Arvind Swamy plays this character beautifully. The man is all locked-up inside, like that house. He has physically left that house, but not mentally, emotionally – and his journey from annoyed and uncomfortable “outsider” to an insider again is portrayed with exceptional dignity and control. Except in the rare instance where, say, the character loses his temper about missing a bus, Arvind projects very little and yet conveys a lot.

In contrast, Karthi has the crowd-pleasing character, someone whose every emotion shows on his face, his tone, his body. The character is Arulmozhi Varman’s opposite in every possible way: he talks a lot, he hides nothing, he has no boundaries, and he is all love. Arulmozhi Varman is all rules. He won’t have tea without brushing his teeth. He won’t go to a temple without having a bath. Karthi’s character has zero rules, and is led not by his head but by his wide-open heart. Karthi hits these notes superbly, and makes the man a lovable pest. The more difficult thing Karthi does is to play the writer-director’s mouthpiece without driving the film into a messagey zone. In other words, he incorporates these thoughts about Tamils and Tamil Nadu and Tamil culture while still staying in character. But this is where, I feel, the audience will decide whether they are with the film or not.

In fact, Prem Kumar lays out his “take it or leave it” storytelling rhythm right from the very first and very long stretch, which shows the young Arulmozhi Varman and his family leaving their hometown after losing their property. There is a moving Govind Vasantha song, whose lyrics convey the necessary emotions: “Poren naa poren, verum kooda poren… Pattan pootan katti kaatha veetta pirinjen…” And so forth. And on top of this, we get dialogues and visuals that keep emphasising these very same feelings. And some of us may wonder: how much do we need to dwell on one particular emotion, especially when the grown-up Arulmozhi Varman will once again talk about how much this house meant to him? How many Ilayairaaja songs do we need to be sung by two drunk men? How many digressions into Tamil politics and Tamil identity do we need in a story that is essentially about nostalgia and relationships?

One argument that could be presented by those who completely buy into these developments is that this is who Prem Kumar is. He likes to idealise and romanticise things: young love in 96, and the goodness of small-towners and their relationships in Meiyazhagan. In 96, too, the protagonist loses his house. If 96 got sentimental about the pazhaya vaasanai of school-day items, Meiyazhagan gets sentimental about the pudhu vaasam of freshly bought clothes. But the big difference between the two films is this. In 96, the central relationship was all that mattered. In Meiyazhagan, the central relationship is one of the many things that matter. And after a point, the film begins to offer diminishing returns. I liked Meiyazhagan. I think it is impossible to actively dislike a Prem Kumar film, given how much sweetness and goodness there is. But I might have loved the film had it stayed tighter, more focused.

I wished that, along with the long conversation about jallikattu and other issues, we had gotten to know the other people in the movie. I wished that the care given to the character arc of a cycle had been given to some of the women, nicely played by the likes of Devadarshini and Sri Divya and Swathi Konde. I wanted to know how a borderline-depressed man as closed and inward-looking as Arulmozhi Varman had managed a functioning relationship with his wife. I would have liked to know more about the Karthi character and his wife – even if all this had come in the same conversational format. The form isn’t the problem. The content is. At least, for me it was. It’s great that something we discard because it is old, like a cycle, can become something of a saviour in someone else’s life. But it would have been equally great to see how the super-emotional bride – and this sequence of emotion is exquisitely melodramatic – interacted with her long-lost cousin outside of the wedding setup.

But that, perhaps, is Prem Kumar’s way of working. He plants so much in his minimalistic plotlines that even if one stretch doesn’t quite work (like the contrived intervention by a daughter), there’s another one that does. I certainly felt that the three-hour Meiyazhagan could have been shorter and still covered a lot of the same issues and the same emotions. While I watched the film, I was simultaneously engaged and also a bit detached. But this is not a lazy movie and its “flaws” are those of ambition, of trying to infuse the rhythms of prose and poetry into a medium that traditionally relies more on event and action. Meiyazhagan makes you look forward to the director’s next, and how his unique style will transfer into newer stories. For all its issues, this is a film that bears the signature of its maker on every frame. Nothing is generic. That itself is some kind of success.