Talk of the Town - Ponniyin Selvan 2

In the last four or five years four regional movies have taken the nation by storm: Bahubali, Kantara, KGF, and Ponniyin Selvan. Have I missed any?

On Sunday evening as Aunty and I were about to step out for a walk the intercom interrupted. “Akka, can you and Athimbar get ready in fifteen minutes and come to Gate 3?” asked Shanthy, her sister in Cedar. “Anything special?” asked Aunty. “We will watch Ponniyin Selvan Part 2.” “Not fifteen minutes, we will be there in ten minutes,” Aunty reassured her, and we did it - and waited for them instead.

While waiting for the cab, Preeti and Hari, on their slow-motion run, stopped by to have a chat. We are going to the theatre to watch PS-2,” we said enthusiastically. “We saw it yesterday,” they replied. We felt deflated.

Later we shared it with Kaleeswaran and Koma now in USA. They said they had watched it first day first show. You too Brutus…? I felt. They are 12 hours behind us, still they saw it before us.

Kannan, my brother in law, rang up the next morning to enquire about the 75th year celebration of my co-brother-in-law. I mentioned about the movie. “Yes, we too saw it Athimbar, but in Orion Mall.” Blatant betrayal. Moral: Never ever overestimate yourself.

Now on to the movie. By way of background information, Sriram, a Historian, has this to say. Back in the 1950s the historic novel, which he calls ‘faction’ (fact and fiction combined) was serialized in Kalki, a weekly Tamil magazine. Thanks to that the circulation soared from mere 12 000 copies to 73 000 copies, and every household waited for the next issue. 

My mother was no exception. She used to send me, then about 10, to Pushkala Mami’s house to fetch Kalki (with incentives on unwilling occasions), as part of their magazine-exchange programme. Such was their keenness on the story. The author, who hailed himself Kalki Krishnamurthy, was inspired by the history of the Chola kingdom, and wove into it his own fiction to make it interesting week after week. Also, as an ardent admirer of the French writer Alexandre Dumas, he transplanted some of the characters of Three Musketeers into this story… 

As for the title, the famous king Raja Raja Chozan, when a child,, got drowned in the river Cauvery and was saved at the nick of time. The farming community hailed river Cauvery as Ponni, the giver or gold. Thus the name Ponniyin Selvan, the son of Ponni or Cauvery. 

In part 1, Mani Ratnam focused on introducing the characters. It had more to do with the audience getting a grip of the characters, apart from watching with open-mouthed admiration the cinematography, the musical masterpiece, and direction, and every artist playing his role a la Nala Pakam of food (the right blend of all ingredients and preparation).

In this Part 2, Mani develops the characters. Whether it is Vikram, Kartik, Jayam Ravi, Jayaram, or Aishwarya Rai, Trisha, or Aishwarya Lekshmi,  each one gave his/her best. The flow was excellent. Mani sustained the interest of the audience for all the164 minutes. Rahman’s music was good; may be loud because of the acoustics. And, accustomed to adjusting the volume through remote at home, I personally felt the absence of a remote at hand. Luckily, after a while I got involved in the pace of the movie so much that the background score effect took a back seat.

The cinematography, realistic magnificent structures, costumes, music, fulsome star-studded movie (with only Rajni, Kamal and Vijay missing), each artist playing his role with an element of competition to find a mention, and direction can be rated between 3 and 4. Hence I would put it at 3.5 in a scale of 5 overall. 

PS-2, replete with plots and sub plots, offers something as takeaway. Back home it should keep the four of us (Aunty, me, Shanthy and Sekhar) busy for the next four days fixing loose ends. Why did X kill Y, why did A want to seek vengeance on B; why did C who paid allegiance to the revolting group join the mainstream. Some of us might have grasped some portions better and missed something else, and vice versa. No problem.  Rummikub, Sequence, and other board games can wait.