![]() ![]() ![]() It’s this realism that I count as the greatest virtues of Tamil and Malayalam cinema-their quest to make things real and relatable instead of attractive. Nothing about her was varnished, even thinly, with synthetic refinement. The superior calibre of that enactment lay in its honesty-the character’s hair, skin, body, clothing and mannerisms were avowedly faithful to any brassy Tamilian fisherwoman you’d run into. Even a song sequence centred on a fisherwoman singing by the sea, with a bunch of drunks tailing her, was choreographed with sensitivity towards the character. It was fascinating to note that at a time when Bollywood was obsessed with making “NRI” films, a new wave of Tamil and Malayalam films was probing deeper into the psyche of India. In the bargain, I grasped nuances of setting and character dynamics that I’d have missed had I allowed subtitles to dictate my visual intake. ![]() In the years that followed, the more I watched, the more there was left to devour Guna (1991), Virumandi (2004), Thevar Magan (1992), so much more beautiful than Virasat, its 1997 Hindi rendition, Paruthiveeran (2007), Sethu (1999), Naan Kadavul (2009)… I can go on and on.ĭespite being a thoroughbred north Indian, I got into the habit of watching these films without subtitles. It was only natural for a cinema fiend like me to fill my empty hours binge-watching Tamil films. Aaranya Kaandam, however, was not my introduction to the mind-boggling potency of south Indian cinema-that happened in 1997 when I was writing for and assisting Ram Gopal Varma, whose office (in those days) was based in Chennai. While gangster flicks abound, this one steers clear of predictable clichés and familiar character arcs as it lays bare the psyche of the dark figures who thrive on destruction of both self and society. The power of this neo-noir masterpiece (winner of the Grand Jury Award for Best Film at the South Asian International Film Festival, 2010), directed by Thiagarajan Kumararaja, is hard to describe-it has dealt me a savage punch in the gut, every single time I’ve watched it. My personal favourite, not-so-humble brag is that I am the only person in the world who has an uncut version of the cult Tamil film Aaranya Kaandam (2010) in my possession. ![]()
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