After a long time, I had the opportunity of seeing a Tamil film, that smells with raw rustic flavour. Paruthiveeran, Director Ameer’s third film is the debut of Karthick, son of actor Sivakumar and brother of Surya. Ameer narrates the story with a particular style, so that the viewer is enchanted, and the film is a hit too. Veeran is a petty criminal, who never shuns to visit jails, along with his paternal uncle Sevvalai. Like many other films, here too, he is always chased by the heroine, his cousin, in love; Yes, she loves him so madly that she wants to marry him, because he had saved her life during their childhood. Her father, his maternal uncle, hates him and there is a reason behind it .
He is the son of a Thevar father and a Kurathi mother, two different castes in hierarchy. Veeran always drinks, gambles, womanises and sometimes attacks the cops themselves. He interrupts , when some truck drivers bring a pros*itute to a lone shed, to enjoy her first. They sign an unwritten contract to share such kind of booty in the future too. Veeran, is fed up with the local Police stations and Prisons and his ambition is to do something bigger, and visit Chennai Central Prison, give interviews to TV channels and become more famous as a criminal.
When Veeran decides to romance with Muthazhagu, after heeding to her chases, his maternal uncle is agitated. She always wishes that he must be the only man, who could see her in nude. And in the climax, when the couple elope from the village to marry, he leaves her in the same shed, to return after seeing what is happening in the village. The truck drivers, four in number, mistake her for another pros*itute, and try to woo her. When she gets furious and announces that Veeran won’t tolerate this, they decide to rape her. In this sequence she hurts her skull, and they rape her, in a well enacted scene, and she is nearly dead, when Veeran returns. He is unable to assess what happened, and she whimpers that you have passed all your sins on me, and requests him to slaughter her body, when she dies, so that nobody should know that she was raped by some others, and she dies... When he is rounded up, he carries on her wishes- mutilates her corpse and declares that he could not tolerate her being married to somebody, and so he killed her. And he is also finished off and there ends the film.
Paruthiveeran is like fresh air among the suffocating films that we see nowadays. The power of Director Ameer is omnipresent throughout the film. Every scene, and every character has been well chiselled out in a lively manner. The South TamilNadu, especially Madurai and Ramnad district dialects have been used in a brilliant way. The casteism that prevails among those people is well etched through the behaviour, dialogues and body language of the characters. The local art forms, are well used to flavour the scenes. The court scenes, the Police station scenes etc. are soaked in realism. The flashbacks are printed in sephia tone, and especially the scene, where the old kurathi is suffocated to be killed like a pig, and the squeals of her pet piglets in the background, are excellently depicted. Cinematography by Ramji, never glorifies any scene or character. Mostly the scenes have been shot in available or natural light, with a yellow tinge that goes along with the sunny territory. The music by Yuvan Shankar Raja is a great hit and purely based on country music and local instruments. Yet, personally I believe, the songs mar the flow of the film.
The irony of the movie is Ameer is a city man, Yuvan is a highly westernised youth, and the hero Karthick is a city bred and US educated engineer, and yet these guys have successfully incorporated in bringing a movie that smells every inch of the footage, the aroma of rustic beauty. As a debundant actor, Karthick has given a performance that could even make his pop and brother worry, why they had no opportunity to enact such a role. His dialogues, body language, eyes and every other thing exhibits the rogueness of a lovely rascal. And it is evident that the director would have grilled him to squeeze out this sterling performance. And another thing about this movie is that every actor has given their maximum performance, even when they are doing a minor role. The maternal Uncle Ponvannan, Uncle ’Sevvalai’ Saravanan, heroine Priya Mani, and other actors playing petty roles like Ponanthinni (Corpse eater), Douglas ’Ganja" Karuppu, the kids, the old matriarchs, the Kurathi lady who sells illicit arrack, the eunuchs who perform their own style of dances have all done justice to their roles.
The climax sequence has been criticised by the press reviews as stinking and spoiling the movie. But I think no other climax would have done justice to the film and it shows the directors intelligence, in making the viewers discuss about the climax scene. It is well choreographed without any obscene depication.
I prescribe this movie to my friends, who don’t see Tamil movies.