Sounds of lathis brushing with bones through layers of flesh; wails and groans piercing the wooden divides in a police station which looks so Indian, so seedy. There is barely a visible effort to tile or smoothen the floors on which the heads lay, with bodies suspended from ceilings. In some ways, the setting looks like a slaughter house with eviscerated carcasses of animals being treated by their indifferent butchers. There is blood, more sound and the butchers here are cops, the custodians of law and order.. Wait wait.. The butchers here are the Ins, ettu and saars. An interrogation is on and all the effort and trouble is not to obtain truth from the accused, if you think so. Instead, all they need is .. a lie.
Visaranai, when I saw the trailers some years ago, caught my attention since it was supposed to be about custodial torture. But I was not waiting for the film badly to catch it as soon as possible because it looked like it dealt with a world which I thought I had nothing to do with. I had read myriads of instances of innocent people being tortured to confess to crimes they had no knowledge about, but these were news items which barely made headlines. I had little care towards them, just like our own newsmen. But when the show was over yesterday and I was walking alone at 10 pm, something inside me shuddered at the sight of a blinking multi-color light dispenser at the top of a white SUV. It was a harmless police vehicle that was supposed to be guarding my streets. The shudder was instinctive and its seeds had probably been sown during a scene from the movie which had a policeman requesting a resident of a middle class neighborhood to quit being curious for their own safety, because a 'police operation' was on. (Watch the movie to learn more about it) All I had realised was that it could happen in my neighborhood and probably it has been happening all these years in my calm and settled vicinity.
I am still talking about the impact the film made on me rather than film making aspects which should have been the fulcrum of any movie review. What I still cannot shake off from me is the feeling that the villains(cops) in the film were not Pandyas of Kaaka kaaka or Vinayaks of Mankathas. Most of them here had pot bellies, weak arms and greying moustaches and receding hairlines. Can police-uncles in my vicinity conceal so much cruelty and heinousness beneath their weak and ordinary profiles?
Vetrimaran uses brute force much like his former colleague Bala to infuse his scenes in the first half with the much needed intensity to make us wince in our seats whenever a blow falls on the knuckles of the protagonist. The empathy hence is easily won, that I wanted to whistle for Dinesh when he walks in front, out of his row to face the menacing inspector who wants to know who gave the idea of fasting as a symbol of resistance. But the 'brute force' employed by the director recedes to the background in the second round 'post- lunch' session with Dinesh standing up each time, after a blow, to save his friends from the brutality of palm - branch torture. Here the craft of Maran takes over and so seamlessly melds with the now second fiddling 'brute force' to create a stirring stanza of cinematic poetry that weaves violence and values into a single fabric.
One of the main reasons why so much goes well in the first half is the contentedness to remain focused on one specific domain. The innocent migrant workers of a town versus the scheming local police. The detailing is precise and rhythm, razor sharp. In the second half, Maran transports the protagonists into a wider canvas where they are meant to be part of a state conspiracy whose scale and repercussions would be historical. It is here the messianic intentions of the director try coming to the forefront as he wishes to deliver a strong, far-reaching, univerally relevant social message. The use of the words 'System' by the local cops looked totally out of place with them and more in sync with Vetrimaran, who was speaking against globalisation in a television interview, a few years ago. The narrative, in the process shifts to the details of the conspiracy and loses its protagonists altogether for sometime. This kind of inconsistency in the writing is made pardonable by how well these scenes are staged. Samuthirakani must be given credit for acing the character that houses a troubled soul inside a benevolent body. He preserves so much of his 'Dayalan' goodness of his Saattai days and tempers it with the angst of 'Kadamai Kanniyam Kattupadu' Satyaraj.
I could not appreciate the humor of the Murugadoss character even if it was for comic relief. It is one thing for the protagonists to have moved on from all the trauma and another to make fun of it, which should surely have needed much more time. But I felt like someone in the sets had reminded the morbid Maran to remind his invested audience that all this was 'just cinema' and not to take it too seriously, just like our neighbor uncle who winked at us children who turned 'wide-eyed' serious at his antics. But the genuine moment of laughter came for me at Murugadoss ordering leg pieces forgetful of his lost teeth. This was a Chaplinesque moment where the audience is supposed to laugh first, then check and think about the tragedy.
These minor issues apart, I could read Maran's intention to have chosen this story among many others, for a film- for its voice against the overpowering hypocritical State. The State, even in a Democratic setup cannot shed its die hard tendencies to operate as an 'infallible' Patriarch who wields a menacing bludgeon to force its hapless citizens into submission whenever it finds them straying the line of arbitrary righteousness. The climactic sequence of Samuthirakani trying to recover the gun from Dinesh resembles that of a father who is in pursuit of an adamant kid who would not surrender his toy. The State has no languages, no religion and no other tangible bound that would check its intrusive influence. When the Telugu inspector cries 'Tamil aalungala patthi theriaadha' with so much condescension, the audience sent out something like a war cry as a defense for their language. I could see that director smiling with the tongue firmly in the cheek, waiting to unleash his bag of final tricks allowing the audience to wallow in their temporary victory, when the Tamil cop saves the protagonists. When Murugadoss says he loves working in a Tamilnadu police station compared to that belonging to Andhra, the audience cheered but I was bracing myself up. When the reliable Tamil cops turn towards their own 'compatriots' in the climax, the theatre was stunned into silence.
'Absolute Power corrupts absolutely'.
Visaranai, when I saw the trailers some years ago, caught my attention since it was supposed to be about custodial torture. But I was not waiting for the film badly to catch it as soon as possible because it looked like it dealt with a world which I thought I had nothing to do with. I had read myriads of instances of innocent people being tortured to confess to crimes they had no knowledge about, but these were news items which barely made headlines. I had little care towards them, just like our own newsmen. But when the show was over yesterday and I was walking alone at 10 pm, something inside me shuddered at the sight of a blinking multi-color light dispenser at the top of a white SUV. It was a harmless police vehicle that was supposed to be guarding my streets. The shudder was instinctive and its seeds had probably been sown during a scene from the movie which had a policeman requesting a resident of a middle class neighborhood to quit being curious for their own safety, because a 'police operation' was on. (Watch the movie to learn more about it) All I had realised was that it could happen in my neighborhood and probably it has been happening all these years in my calm and settled vicinity.
I am still talking about the impact the film made on me rather than film making aspects which should have been the fulcrum of any movie review. What I still cannot shake off from me is the feeling that the villains(cops) in the film were not Pandyas of Kaaka kaaka or Vinayaks of Mankathas. Most of them here had pot bellies, weak arms and greying moustaches and receding hairlines. Can police-uncles in my vicinity conceal so much cruelty and heinousness beneath their weak and ordinary profiles?
Vetrimaran uses brute force much like his former colleague Bala to infuse his scenes in the first half with the much needed intensity to make us wince in our seats whenever a blow falls on the knuckles of the protagonist. The empathy hence is easily won, that I wanted to whistle for Dinesh when he walks in front, out of his row to face the menacing inspector who wants to know who gave the idea of fasting as a symbol of resistance. But the 'brute force' employed by the director recedes to the background in the second round 'post- lunch' session with Dinesh standing up each time, after a blow, to save his friends from the brutality of palm - branch torture. Here the craft of Maran takes over and so seamlessly melds with the now second fiddling 'brute force' to create a stirring stanza of cinematic poetry that weaves violence and values into a single fabric.
One of the main reasons why so much goes well in the first half is the contentedness to remain focused on one specific domain. The innocent migrant workers of a town versus the scheming local police. The detailing is precise and rhythm, razor sharp. In the second half, Maran transports the protagonists into a wider canvas where they are meant to be part of a state conspiracy whose scale and repercussions would be historical. It is here the messianic intentions of the director try coming to the forefront as he wishes to deliver a strong, far-reaching, univerally relevant social message. The use of the words 'System' by the local cops looked totally out of place with them and more in sync with Vetrimaran, who was speaking against globalisation in a television interview, a few years ago. The narrative, in the process shifts to the details of the conspiracy and loses its protagonists altogether for sometime. This kind of inconsistency in the writing is made pardonable by how well these scenes are staged. Samuthirakani must be given credit for acing the character that houses a troubled soul inside a benevolent body. He preserves so much of his 'Dayalan' goodness of his Saattai days and tempers it with the angst of 'Kadamai Kanniyam Kattupadu' Satyaraj.
I could not appreciate the humor of the Murugadoss character even if it was for comic relief. It is one thing for the protagonists to have moved on from all the trauma and another to make fun of it, which should surely have needed much more time. But I felt like someone in the sets had reminded the morbid Maran to remind his invested audience that all this was 'just cinema' and not to take it too seriously, just like our neighbor uncle who winked at us children who turned 'wide-eyed' serious at his antics. But the genuine moment of laughter came for me at Murugadoss ordering leg pieces forgetful of his lost teeth. This was a Chaplinesque moment where the audience is supposed to laugh first, then check and think about the tragedy.
These minor issues apart, I could read Maran's intention to have chosen this story among many others, for a film- for its voice against the overpowering hypocritical State. The State, even in a Democratic setup cannot shed its die hard tendencies to operate as an 'infallible' Patriarch who wields a menacing bludgeon to force its hapless citizens into submission whenever it finds them straying the line of arbitrary righteousness. The climactic sequence of Samuthirakani trying to recover the gun from Dinesh resembles that of a father who is in pursuit of an adamant kid who would not surrender his toy. The State has no languages, no religion and no other tangible bound that would check its intrusive influence. When the Telugu inspector cries 'Tamil aalungala patthi theriaadha' with so much condescension, the audience sent out something like a war cry as a defense for their language. I could see that director smiling with the tongue firmly in the cheek, waiting to unleash his bag of final tricks allowing the audience to wallow in their temporary victory, when the Tamil cop saves the protagonists. When Murugadoss says he loves working in a Tamilnadu police station compared to that belonging to Andhra, the audience cheered but I was bracing myself up. When the reliable Tamil cops turn towards their own 'compatriots' in the climax, the theatre was stunned into silence.
'Absolute Power corrupts absolutely'.
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