Baradwaj Rangan
2003-11-08 04:42:15 UTC
Pithamagan
Baradwaj Rangan
(C) The Economic Times, Madras Plus - November 8, 2003
In 'Pithamagan', Bala continues his love affair with the
fringe-dwellers and the misfits of society. He continues to nurture
characters that you care about before scotching all hopes for their
happiness. And he continues to detail some most unpleasant and
horrific stretches of film that disturb and make you cringe even as
they grab your attention and admiration. Yes, this is undoubtedly the
work of the man who made the superb 'Sethu' and the not-quite-there
'Nanda'.
'Pithamagan' is the story of the heroes - Siththan (Vikram) and Sakthi
(Surya) - getting in the way of a corrupt local big-shot, but the
incidents around this theme are almost incidental. By the end of the
first half of the film, you are no closer to figuring out its dramatic
crux than you were at the beginning, because the 'story' isn't
anything but a peg for Bala to hang his characters on. The complete
lack of narrative urgency in the initial portions may disorient
viewers more used to the A-leads-to-B-which-causes-C style of
storytelling, but this is really a character study posing as a
'masala' movie.
And what characters they turn out to be! The Hero, Siththan, burns
bodies at the graveyard and appears like a mangy dog, all yellowed
teeth and animalistic grunts and unkempt exterior. The Mother Figure,
Gomathi (an extremely moving Sangeetha), is a 'ganja' peddler. The
Hero's Best Friend, Sakthi, is a con man who holds court on the
subject of flatulence, and claims to possess the soapbox used by
Saroja Devi in 'Aalayamani'. And the Heroine, college student Manju (a
miscast Laila), expresses her displeasure with extended bouts of
shrieking.
These eccentricities make the central relationships feel fresh, even
if the director merely glosses over certain elements, like why Manju
falls for Sakthi or why Siththan is such a barbarian. Though
'Pithamagan' isn't quite a love story, it has different depictions of
the emotion - the Siththan-Sakthi friendship, the Sakthi-Manju
romance, the budding relationship between Siththan and Gomathi - and a
good part of the film shows them developing these bonds, giving us the
time to take these strange people into our hearts.
Bala, who never met a love angle that he couldn't taint with tragedy,
then takes things to their brutally violent conclusion. These are the
most dramatic portions of the film - the atmosphere is charged with
Ilayaraja's outstanding, if at times overbearing, score - and you see
why the big, fat character-building scenes were needed earlier on.
Pre-interval, you may have felt, for instance, that Sakthi has been
shown doing one too many con jobs, but these sequences, bringing out
his lightheartedness and his live-wire nature, hugely reinforce our
subsequent responses to his (mis)adventures.
Bala's ingeniousness is evident everywhere - from making a creepy
godman an almost-sympathetic figure of fun to Sakthi's offhand mocking
of a policeman as "nought-nought-seven" to making the most gratuitous
of episodes (an interlude with Simran, playing herself) seem halfway
relevant to the goings on. And he gets tremendous support from his
leads. Vikram essays a showy part with a potent mix of spectacle and
silence - think Kamal Haasan in 'Guna' without his Abirami fixation -
while Surya follows up his 'Kaakha Kaakha' grimness with an all-out
explosion of effusiveness and energy. It all adds up to a first-rate
film that excoriates as much as it entertains.
Baradwaj Rangan
(C) The Economic Times, Madras Plus - November 8, 2003
In 'Pithamagan', Bala continues his love affair with the
fringe-dwellers and the misfits of society. He continues to nurture
characters that you care about before scotching all hopes for their
happiness. And he continues to detail some most unpleasant and
horrific stretches of film that disturb and make you cringe even as
they grab your attention and admiration. Yes, this is undoubtedly the
work of the man who made the superb 'Sethu' and the not-quite-there
'Nanda'.
'Pithamagan' is the story of the heroes - Siththan (Vikram) and Sakthi
(Surya) - getting in the way of a corrupt local big-shot, but the
incidents around this theme are almost incidental. By the end of the
first half of the film, you are no closer to figuring out its dramatic
crux than you were at the beginning, because the 'story' isn't
anything but a peg for Bala to hang his characters on. The complete
lack of narrative urgency in the initial portions may disorient
viewers more used to the A-leads-to-B-which-causes-C style of
storytelling, but this is really a character study posing as a
'masala' movie.
And what characters they turn out to be! The Hero, Siththan, burns
bodies at the graveyard and appears like a mangy dog, all yellowed
teeth and animalistic grunts and unkempt exterior. The Mother Figure,
Gomathi (an extremely moving Sangeetha), is a 'ganja' peddler. The
Hero's Best Friend, Sakthi, is a con man who holds court on the
subject of flatulence, and claims to possess the soapbox used by
Saroja Devi in 'Aalayamani'. And the Heroine, college student Manju (a
miscast Laila), expresses her displeasure with extended bouts of
shrieking.
These eccentricities make the central relationships feel fresh, even
if the director merely glosses over certain elements, like why Manju
falls for Sakthi or why Siththan is such a barbarian. Though
'Pithamagan' isn't quite a love story, it has different depictions of
the emotion - the Siththan-Sakthi friendship, the Sakthi-Manju
romance, the budding relationship between Siththan and Gomathi - and a
good part of the film shows them developing these bonds, giving us the
time to take these strange people into our hearts.
Bala, who never met a love angle that he couldn't taint with tragedy,
then takes things to their brutally violent conclusion. These are the
most dramatic portions of the film - the atmosphere is charged with
Ilayaraja's outstanding, if at times overbearing, score - and you see
why the big, fat character-building scenes were needed earlier on.
Pre-interval, you may have felt, for instance, that Sakthi has been
shown doing one too many con jobs, but these sequences, bringing out
his lightheartedness and his live-wire nature, hugely reinforce our
subsequent responses to his (mis)adventures.
Bala's ingeniousness is evident everywhere - from making a creepy
godman an almost-sympathetic figure of fun to Sakthi's offhand mocking
of a policeman as "nought-nought-seven" to making the most gratuitous
of episodes (an interlude with Simran, playing herself) seem halfway
relevant to the goings on. And he gets tremendous support from his
leads. Vikram essays a showy part with a potent mix of spectacle and
silence - think Kamal Haasan in 'Guna' without his Abirami fixation -
while Surya follows up his 'Kaakha Kaakha' grimness with an all-out
explosion of effusiveness and energy. It all adds up to a first-rate
film that excoriates as much as it entertains.