2016, Tamil, Netflix, 8.6/10 IMDB, Directed by Leninbharathi
Neither an entertainer, nor a documentary, but a stirrer..
A true biopic of rural humans whom an urban human like me never knew that those kind even existed. Kudos to Vijay Sethupathi for producing a movie like this to document such lives on the silver screen.
Unfamiliar story line in an unfamiliar terrain with unfamiliar casting, that’s the strength as well as the pull down for the movie to lean more towards a documentary.
One liner- A hard working human from a downtrodden background is lashed by fate or destiny or by opportunist or by all of the above?
Story is introduced with the hardship of people travelling towards uphill estates and hamlets without roadways. Sole livelihood is to carry cardamom sacks from hillock to the owners on plains. Cardamon estate’s daily wagers are exploited by greedy estate owners while communist unions fights for fare wages. A handy man/messenger hero with an ambition of buying a land of his own is prematurely pulled into this vicious sack carrying trade through marriage. Does he end up buying a land of his own, does he prosper as a farmer, what a poor man’s syndrome did to him, is the rest of the story.
Though the story is hard hitting it fails at some point to translate that on screen. Story is new, but you are already familiar with this kind from news about the ill-fated farmers.
I was simply numb when I came out of the theaters just the way our farmers are numb towards fate, environment and society. May be that’s what the director wanted us to feel. If so, it sure is a winner.
If there is a real villain one could think of winning the fate with might or with intelligence. But here God seems to be the villan in creating a low socio economic group of people who live and die a mundane life of a looser.
They seem so damn helpless, with either no rain or too much rain to ruin their lives or with a small oppurtunistic fertiliser vendor who lures the naive people to rise to a land developer and an agro industrialist.
These people are not uneducated, mind it, the hero signs his name and is not a finger printing illiterate.
Urbanisation takes a toll on the hero’s dream to own a peice of land and flourish as a farmer. A communist fights against roadways amongst the hillock, quoting it might snatch the livelihood of the people as roads might make it easy for machines to take people’s jobs. But isn’t that the irony that the people are destined willingly to live a measly life with no basic amenities just for the sake of daily wage opportunities?
You are posed with too many such questions and debates as the movie progresses and ends with a sad note that the movie is dedicated to all land less people.
I wonder what on earth are the people shoved to think, owning a peice of agriculture land can give them salvation? All this when global warming and urbanisation takes a toll on nature’s routine and leaving farmers either as victims or at the mercy of begging politicians or the government for their debts.
It’s not the time that I watched the movie that was hard hitting but it’s the aftermath that bothers you with ‘the hand-tied helplessness’ that churns your tummy, and here you go, the movie is a winner.
Prayers for more guardian angles like the green revolutionist and geneticist M.S.Swaminathan kinda clan to help break the vicious cycle that our Indian farmers have gotten into and make them our country’s back bone again..
Kudos to all the real lives for being themselves on the screen. I couldnt find any actors just performers..