Natchathiram Nagargiradhu: Pa Ranjith’s Film Is An Elevating And Thought-Provoking Experience

Director Pa Ranjith's Natchathiram Nagargiradhu Tamil-language musical with English subtitles, complements his completion of 10 years in the film industry. A director whose five films have hitherto encompassed unsparing, hard-hitting discourses on socio-political, cultural fronts with caste and class as cornerstones, Pa Ranjith now wades into the vagaries of love and romance with special emphasis on ideology, politics, gender, caste, and honour killing.

The filmmaker marks this film as a contemporary take incorporating all forms of gender-based love. So you have heterosexual and queer characters in a cosmopolitan set-up coming together to enact a musical theatre experience. References to Music Maestro Ilaiyaraaja's influences on the idea of love itself are very much in play here.

Love flourishes, couples break-up, and come to terms with their own fallibility, and rehearsals go on despite all the relationship hiccups that occur along the way.

Story

The film begins as a man-woman love story between a hip Dalit girl, Tamizh who prefers to be called Rene (Dushara Vijayan), and Iniyan (Kalidas Jayaram), an upper caste man. They belong to the same drama troupe of assorted performers who together, led by their director Subier (Regin Rose), are in the process of organically developing an experimental musical play, themed around love.

In fact, the individual love stories of the cast members intertwine with the narrative of the play they are preparing to enact. Rene is an Ilaiyaraaja fan and believes in the urban legend that there can be no love without Ilaiyaraaja's music playing in the background, while Iniyan goes into a rage at that very idea.

But their relationship is not the only one to take a heavy beating.

There's also a male chauvinist, Arjun ( Kalaiyarasan) who wants to become a cinema hero with the regular trappings, and joins the troupe in the hope of getting a break. His narrow-minded transgressions concerning love hita boulder when the entire troupe turns on him.

Ranjith's film boldly talks about the politics, the emotional blackmail, the manipulations and the corruptions that families and political Neanderthals employ in order to safeguard the existing strictures employed by individual societies in order to keep the power hierarchies intact. Inclusivity and empowerment become by-products of that intrinsic understanding.

Ranjith's chaotic churn of ideas and concepts of love encompassing live action, animation and documentary style footage are well aided by Kishor Kumar's colourful camerawork, Selva RK's non-linear editing, and serenaded by Tenma's unorthodox musical sounds that help string together the patchwork story situated in multiple locations, into a meaningful and powerful whole!

Performances

All the actors put in smartly enmeshed performances that heighten the experience. The viewer gets to experience the story through the many stages of growth - from an idea right up to the final performance.

It's another matter that unhinged ideology-backed hatred sets fire to those liberal ideas and within those flames, we become witness to new hope - albeit somewhat bloodied and ravaged.

Verdict

Pa Ranjith's effort has the power to ignite both hearts and minds. The near three-hour runtime and the over-indulgence in songs may overwhelm the narrative at times but the overall experience is still elevating and thought-provoking.

Rating

We go with 3.5 stars out of 5 for Pa Ranjith's excellent film.