Mudhalvan – Always a viewer’s choice….
Mudhalvan a tamil Political film that released in the year 1999 directed by Shankar, starring Arjun, Raguvaran, Manivanan and others was a box office stealer. It has always been a viewer’s choice on Television whenever it is telecasted; it steals the TRP whenever it is on air.
Today though I have seen the movie several times both on big screen as well as TV, I was attracted towards it, but this time I wanted to analyse the film as an audience as well as a film analyser. I was taken aback by seeing some insight things hidden in the characters, names and dialogues.
I am basically a very big fan of writer late Mr. Sujatha Rangarajan, his combination with Shankar has always been keenly noted by everyone.
First of all let us discuss about the face value of the film, the first USP of the film is its director Shankar, this happens to be his fifth film all the fourth films that he has directed before from Gentleman to Jeans were all a box office stealers, his first was with Arjun and made a twist in the history of tamil cinema all his films lived upto the expectations, his gentleman fought against corruption while his Kadhalan was a love story, his Indian starring Kamal Hassan set a benchmark and that was too against bribery with a unexpected characterization of Kamal Hassan plying both protagonist and antagonist, his next was Jeans with Prasanth playing dual roles and starring Miss Universe fame Aishwarya Rai, it was a Romantic comedy film so obviously his next created more hype in the minds of the audience, and it was speculated that Mudhalvan was to be originally done by Rajinikanth and due to some reasons Arjun took over the project, beyond all these massive inexpensive marketing insights it had A.R.Rahman’s music which gave the film another USP. And with all these face values it is always a cat on the wall situation for any film to meet the expectation of the audience but the film did it with a very effective yet different storyline.
Now we shall discuss about the storyline of the film, the film had all the above said pre-release expectations, and now after all these fanfare it is the story which should keep up the promise made by the publicity, and this story kept the promise. This film also deals with a vigilante subject as the earlier films of Shankar like Gentleman and Indian did, but this time with a very different perspective. The main plot of the story is an ordinary layman taking up the challenge of a state’s Chief Minister to be the Chief Minister of the state for one single day (i.e) “One Day CM”, which the audience never had in their mind at all. It is always a dream of every layman to curse his ruler and aim to become CM one day and do good to the people, this simple desire was taken as the knot by Shankar and Sujatha and made into a very interesting film with it. This story deals with very ordinary next door character of ours, and that character does many good to the people like arresting and suspending more than 300 corrupted officials ranging from a weigh boy in a ration shop who cheats people with fake weighing to the ministers of the state in one day. This was the main pulse capturing thing in the story. The second half of the film where Arjun becomes CM and faces all the problems kindled by Raguvaran the Ex CM is a usual cat and mouse fight of tamil cinema. The first half of the film made the content of the second half look brighter though it was usual.
Today when I saw the film things I noted were the names of the characters in the film which itself marks the brilliancy of Sujatha Tamil names like Pugazhendhi, Balavesha, Mayakrishnan, Aranganathan, Thenmozhi, Muthuvadugu, Needhimanickam, Indhrani, Manavalan, etc,. these type of good Tamil names disappeared from films for a long time. And things like “Angathu” a tradition followed by the farmers during the harvesting were told casually along with the story without any force. This is a technique that must be followed in the screenplay, nothing must find a separate track in the film apart from the main storyline, the comedy, romance and message must be constructed along with the storyline not as a separate track. Indian cinema always has a gift of a character called Comedian in all its film, but not many are being used effectively, a comedian is the person who answers the questions of the audience about what the Hero is going to do next, in this film both Vadivelu and Manivanan’s characters are designed to do the job neat and clean, for instance Mayakrishnan’s character motivated Pugazhendhi to become CM which is the main question of the audience in that moment. In that way every character a Village girl, a old fashioned Farmer with the desire of getting a Groom with a Government job to his daughter, a Cartoonist father, a Serial Addict Mother, etc, were was different.
The film had very strong and punchy dialogues full of messages, for instance, the dialogue Mayakrishnan says to Pugazhendi crawling through the crowd waiting for this decision to contest in the election “” உங்கள மாதிரி படிச்சவங்க எல்லாம் அரசியலுக்கு வாங்கடான அரசியல் ஒரு சாகடன்பனுங்க , சேரி சாக்கடைய எறங்கி சுத்தம் பண்ண வேண்டியது தானே, அதவிட்டுட்டு நாததுலயெஹ் வாழனும்னா எப்படி” . Sujatha as a writer gave excellent dialogues all over the film.
The cast of the film Arjun, Raguvaran, Manivanan and Vadivelu who carried the film on their shoulders were brilliant throughout, Raguvaran was excellent from his introductory scene where he breaks the hand of a follower to his last word in the film “that was a nice interview”. Manivanan had a brilliant role who motivates both the audience and the central character of the film to the main knot of the story, apart from these Manisha Koirala, Haneefa, Vijayakumar, etc were at their best.
The music of the film was a chartbuster with songs of all genre, the winning combo of Shankar and Rahman reaped the gold again in Mudhalvan too, K.V.Anand the colourful cinematographer of the Tamil cinema did a colourful capturing of the film and pleased the audience with more beautiful yet appealing shots.
Finally, Mudhalvan had a complete structured screenplay with all the necessary ingredients that a common audience needs, and that brought it the winning olive crown at the box office.
A screenplay is not complete unless or until all the questions of the audience are answered before the end card pops in and all the characters in the film had something to do with the story not anything separate.
