Thangalaan Movie Review: Even if not as sparkly this time, Ranjith's ...

Pa. Ranjith really knows how to create a world. Never once during Thangalaan do you doubt the authenticity of its period setting—of clothes, of language, of behaviour, of the land and lives of Thangalaan (Vikram), Gangamma (Parvathy), their children, their community… I’ve long been an admirer of this filmmaker’s ability to build communities in his film, his ability to have multiple authentic people occupy a frame, and again, in Thangalaan, he shows great eye for it. Watch, for instance, how compellingly he presents Malavika Mohanan as a warrior-goddess figure.

But yes, having been raised on Bala cinema, we know that when villagers are shown to live peacefully, rather self-sufficiently, horror soon beckons. Even at the beginning of the second half, as Thangalaan sells a dream to the villagers and a song plays, I felt similar feelings of dread. And sure enough, like in a Bala film, we see these naïve, trusting people get led to a horror house. However, the fundamental difference between both filmmakers is, of course, that while Bala is a bit of a fatalist, Ranjith is a revolutionary. And that’s why the latter won’t delve too much into the how of the villagers’ exploitation. In a speedy montage that shows great craft, he establishes the passage of time through quick snapshots of their suffering. Yes, yes, he seems to be saying. You know how they can be exploited; can we move on?

Director: Pa Ranjith

Cast: Vikram, Parvathy, Malavika Mohanan, Pasupathy

What are we moving towards though? For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what Thangalaan was. For a while, the film feels like it could be the story of exploitation, and you figure that Thangalaan, perhaps, like a hero figure, will smash all the bad men and rescue them all from the labour of gold mining. But I suppose that’s a different Kolar Gold Fields story, one that we have already seen in two parts. As the first half picks up and Thangalaan and team set out on an expedition along with their British masters, Thangalaan begins to wear the garb of an adventure film. Man versus nature, as they all almost drown in a river. Man versus nature again, as a black panther threatens to halt them. In between, there’s quite a bit of magical realism as well, with Thangalaan haunted by visions, with a warrior-goddess haunting different members of his family. You see, there’s a story—or is it history turned into myth?—that has haunted Thangalaan and his ancestors for ages. For proof of the effect it has on Thangalaan, you just need to notice the trance he is in, as he finishes narrating it to his children. Ranjith toys with the delicious idea of this folk tale coming alive in Thangalaan’s life. It’s a story that has perhaps played out in the lives of his ancestors too. It’s a familiar story, you see, of sacrificing pride and identity and property, and toiling for someone else’s benefit, so you can be thrown scraps for wages. It’s a story about blood gushing out of a dying deity figure, so land can turn into gold. The meaning is not hard to grasp.

And yet, for all this meaning, as the folktale plays out in Thangalaan’s life, I asked myself why it wasn’t as emotionally powerful as it ought to be. Is it a problem with the folk tale itself and how compellingly it’s presented? Did we perhaps need to know more about how Thangalaan was affected by this story before it gets super-imposed on his life? Did we perhaps need to know more about him in the first place? In its quest to be an adventure, to go places, perhaps there isn’t enough time for the kind of intimate moments that Ranjith is so good with usually. Perhaps for that reason, Thangalaan is a strangely unaffecting film, even though the ideas are all there—and armed with incredible performances too, especially from Vikram and Parvathy (to the point of being almost distracting). While we are already aware of their general excellence, it’s still incredible to behold how comfortable they are with their physicality in this film. Vikram wearing Western clothes is sold as a mass moment but watch how carefully he never quite occupies it. Parvathy too gets a new garment at one point, and she responds to it with a sort of unabashed innocence that’s quite rare on screen.

Thangalaan feels like a potent short story stretched to fit the duration of a feature film—one about a man haunted by a short story himself, dealing with the incredible feeling of seeing it come true in his life to transformative effect. It’s almost like the origins of the great, sad gold story—almost like Ranjith is asking himself where it must have all began and what it must have taken for plunderers to gain such easy access to our wealth. But then, Ranjith also asks, what is true wealth? What is real gold? Hint: Character name. Hint: Golden appearance at the end of the film. Thangalaan is a film about a search-party on the lookout for gold, yes, but it’s deep enough to launch a critique of material greed by telling us that one’s identity, one’s harmonious existence with the environment, is real wealth. This isn’t politics; this is profound enough to be philosophy.

During the Thangalaan journey, Ranjith touches upon the symbolic death of Buddhism. He speaks of the ills of Brahminism. There’s a passing line about Ramanujam and a reference to other castes being converted into Brahminism. Pasupathy hits a wonderful balance of being both comic and serious about his character, based on the needs of the film. His laughable aspiration of reaching vaikuntam is in stark contrast to the film’s point that heaven is possible on earth, if only we didn’t exploit land and each other—and its insight into how religion sometimes serves to distance people from reality, leaving them praying for escapist resolutions. Also, through Thangalaan, we once again see Ranjith’s takedown of reliance on leader figures for salvation. The villagers also see the pitfalls of falling prey to chasing someone else’s version of happiness.

My most favourite part of the film is how the hero, Thangalaan, takes a long time to behave like… a hero. He’s loving and naïve, sure, but his thinking is all wrong. Perhaps that’s why he’s referred to as ‘satan’ for a while. Perhaps that’s why he’s so remorseless about all the animal life he’s killing. He casually decapitates a buffalo, many snakes, and smacks a black panther about. It’s not quite befitting the compassion that a Ranjith protagonist is usually capable of (“Paravayoda gunam parakkardhu, adha parakka vidu.”). There are more traditional villains too, of course. There’s the nosy, crafty Brahmin supervisor. There’s the British leader of the expedition about whom Ranjith keeps us guessing for the longest time. Even when you expect him to reveal his true nature in the second half, he doesn’t and keeps you waiting. Among the best moments in the film is when he speaks about wanting to help the villagers and the Brahmin supervisor mistranslates his English. However, Thangalaan sees right through it—and it makes for a lovely moment. We are used to seeing many such moments across Ranjith’s filmography, mass moments that don’t come at the expense of meaning.

It's a mark of the thought—and the craft—that Ranjith puts into these films that even though I didn’t resonate as well with Thangalaan as I have with other films of his, I still think it would be a disservice to dismiss this work. It would mean a refusal to acknowledge some striking moments—like that final fight scene that seems to happen across day and night, that seems to stretch across time. The battle between an oppressor and the oppressed is, of course, one that has gone on forever. Pretty much everything this filmmaker has touched so far has turned to gold; perhaps this time, the results aren’t as sparkly. But that’s all right; you can see he’s still experimenting with form and more brazenly, the kind of stories that can be told in mainstream cinema and with a star no less. That’s its own kind of gold.