Framing a viewpoint: How Murali G shot Pa Ranjith s acclaimed boxing drama Sarpatta Parambarai scroll.in - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scroll.in Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Close on the heels of Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s boxing drama
Toofan comes another movie about a pugilist battling rivals within the ring and demons without. Pa Ranjith’s
Sarpatta Parambarai shares with
Toofan a streaming platform (Amazon Prime Video), heroes from historically marginalised communities (a Dalit in the Tamil movie, a Muslim in the Hindi production) and a lodestar in the form of Muhammed Ali.
While the American legend inspires Toofan’s Aziz Ali to put on his gloves, his bold political activism beyond the boxing arena hangs over
Sarpatta Parambarai. Ranjith sets a routine story against the backdrop of the Emergency in 1975 and amidst Dalit assertion in Tamil Nadu. Photographs and murals of BR Ambedkar adorn the background, while the boxing matches themselves take on the quality of a crucial election that must be won at any cost.
In Tamil film ‘Kuthiraivaal’, the tale of a horse’s tail turns out to be an unforgettable head trip
Manoj Leonel Jahson and Shyam Sunder’s experimental movie will be screened at the International Film Festival of Kerala’s Thalassery edition on February 25. Kuthiraivaal (2020) | Neelam Productions/Yaazhi Films
Lacan and Freud, Borges and Siddhar – what are they doing in a Tamil film? What happens when legends, myths, beliefs, stories, epics, scriptures and blogs mix and meld? And what does all this have to do with MGR, his ardent fans and immortal legacies?
In the world of
Kuthiraivaal (Horse Tail), these elements are equally potent and converse with each other beyond the gravitational limits of time/periods, space/places and narrative/contexts. You are only a dream away from the umpteen other magical worlds that you inhabit and refuse to see. Follow a dream and it turns into a journey down the rabbit hole, which is where the film too takes you.
Seththumaan (2021) | Neelam Productions
The young and bright Kumaresan is telling his beloved grandfather Poochaiyappa about his first day at school. The teacher asked me if I ate all kinds of meat and sniggered when I told him I did, the boy says. Grandfather, is it wrong to eat meat? The ones who eat and relish meat do so discreetly, Poochiyappa replies.
This exchange, marked by innocence from the boy and a deeply lived understanding of hierarchy and hypocrisy from the grandfather, is one of the ways in which the Tamil movie
Seththumaan explores the realities of caste and the normalisation of violence. Tamizh’s feature film debut is set in rural Tamil Nadu and revolves around a handful of sharply etched characters. The 116-minute movie reveals the implicit and explicit ways in which caste divisions operate and touch every aspect of life, including what we eat.