Sorry, however comedies a couple of household dying or a poverty-stricken every day wage-earner struggling to purchase a brand new bicycle, received’t work within the film theatres.

Re-telling of spectacular tales from Hindu mythology will.

Bigtime.

It instantly flashed in entrance of me once I watched the long-awaited trailer Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan. The pictures are disembodied however fascinating. The intention and execution are unambiguous. This can be a movie designed to wean the audiences into theatres. You possibly can’t benefit from the full ferocity of Vikram on a horseback at house. And Aishwarya Rai Bachchan trying as untarnished by the ravages of age as she was when she did Mani Ratnam’s Guru, taking part in the beauteous the ability behind the throne would look absurdly incongruous on your private home.

Ponniyin Selvan is cinema designed as an epic. It’s possible you’ll argue that an epic isn’t designed. However you’ll be losing your power. That was true within the days of Pakeezah and Mughal-E-Azam. These days the visible spectacle is encrypted into the narrative.

Ponniyin Selvan seems luxurious. I’ve to confess I didn’t really feel something past the exhilaration of a clear sweep throughout the senses .The downpour of spectacle is the necessity of the hour. These Chandamama kind of tales patented by Rajamouli in Baahubali and RRR, was aggravated by KGF; for, what was KGF if not a celebration of sanguinary mythology with machine weapons changing swords

What’s in a maim? A severed heard by any weapon feels simply the identical.

Nonetheless, I now understand that these mythological /pseudo-historicals /Primordial Epics are what’s going to work: Karthikeya 2, and now Brahmastra adopted by Ponniyin Selvan. I feel the universe is making an attempt to inform our moviemakers one thing.

My downside with these Nani Maa Ki Chandamama Kahaaniyan is their monotony. After some extent, each battle scene from the Moghul Empire/ Hindu Dynasty feels simply the identical as what we noticed in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani and Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar.

What offers authenticity to Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan isn’t solely the visible spectacle but in addition the authenticity of the actors. Akshay Kumar didn’t look convincing on a horse in Samrat Prithviraj. Vikram in Ponniyin Selvan does.

Oh, thing more: that voiceover is Kamal Haasan’s. I assumed Mani Ratnam and Kamal Haasan had been over and completed with after Nayakan. Good to see them again collectively.

Subhash Okay Jha is a Patna-based movie critic who has been writing about Bollywood for lengthy sufficient to know the trade inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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