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| A still from Jigarthanda (source: internet) |
“Tarantino, Godfather,
Scarface… make a movie modelled on those
lines; if possible, rip-off from them totally. Also, get loads of violence,
blood…” a movie producer tells an aspiring director as he hurls in front of him
a bunch of Hollywood CDs and DVDs rather dismissively. Chastened, and desirous
of an authentic debut, the director seeks a real-life don for a muse that leads
him to Madurai. Thus begins Jigarthanda, Karthik Subburaj’s second
venture (after Pizza) -- an absolute entertainer that could, in all
probability, turn out to be the movie of the year.
By straddling various genres with utmost ease –
comedy, gangster and romance -- not to mention the gamut of cleverly-placed
twists in a near-flawless plot, Jigarthanda
leaves the audience yearning for more, as if after an orgasm. As far as flicks
set in Madurai go, Subramaniapuram may
finally have a contender.
The first half proceeds at break-neck speed, thanks to slick editing, as
Karthik (Sidharth) comes to Madurai and meets his friend (Karunakaran, who
excels in yet another comic role). From then on, it is all about his tailing
the members of Assault Sethu’s (Bobby Simha)
gang with absolute determination – even if it means ignoring a receptive Kayal
(Lakshmi Menon), who is a compulsive shop-lifter, and "using" his friend to the hilt. Throughout its running
length, Jigarthanda elicits gags as
well as shivers in equal measure. The thriller quotient gradually gives way to
humour when Karthik, on the verge of being murdered by Sethu, tells him he is
not a police source and gets him to speak about his life. Characters with
unique traits – the gang member addicted to porn, another in an early love
marriage, the mobster’s mother who refuses to speak to her son for 12 years –
lend to the narrative. The odd swipe at stereotypes of Tamil cinema aside (the
preference for machetes and knives over guns is attributed to “Combeny rules”),
sub-plots develop gradually and do not slow down the narrative – the traditional bane of
many a movie.
The bedrock for Jigarthanda,
undoubtedly, is the character of Assault
Sethu; the movie to fire needed a power-packed performance from Bobby Simha, and boy,
he does deliver. He dishes out a range of expressions effortlessly – from
spine-chill inducing laughter, his humorous fetish for the cult classics Thalapathy, Nayagan or Annamalai, to
his spiritual call before embarking on a murder – such that viewers can be
excused if they relegate the hero to the background. The autobiographical touch
in Jigarthanda is hard to miss: the
hero (Sidharth) is named Karthik, his exchanges with producers and directors
who failed to make it give the impression that these could have been incidents
in his real-life. Anymore, and only a disclaimer would suffice. The scene where
Karthik mentally interprets a conversation into a filming sequence (starring
Vijay Sethupathi, in a cameo) is a piece of genius, as does another where he
sits gloomily in a road at night and receives encouragement to go on with his
endeavour at the stroke of dawn.
Chinks, if it can be called that, appear in the
latter half, primarily in the transformation and denouement of Sethu’s
character. Unsettling but not implausible, given the levels of perfection in most
departments of the movie, this tends to stick out like a sore thumb. One gets the
impression that Sethu’s sudden change in emotions towards Karthik seems predictable and hastily paced. Nevertheless the director packs a power punch with a Pizza-esque climax (or climaxes; think the neo-noir flick Aranya Kandam).
The icing on the cake has to be Santhosh Narayanan’s
delightful music score and songs, which seems to be maturing, like wine, movie after movie. Special mention also needs to be made of the film's cinematography which manifests itself in the movie's critical scenes or its portrayal of Madurai's landscape. Case in point: the scenes where Sethu's gang arrive in front of Karthik's house or the one in which he bumps off a rival.
Not watched Jigarthanda yet? What are
you waiting for?
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