Krishnamurthi, national award winner for art direction and also for costume design for `Oru Vadakande Veera Katha' (Malayalam, 1989) and Bharati (Tamil, 2000) lives up to his reputation. Next to the director, it is the art director who dominates the film. You can see the influence in the way he frames and composes a scene. He has used storyboard method, in which the filmmaker sketches each scene, developing a crisp visual style. It was under Cheran that Simbudevan had his apprenticeship, in three films.Ī former comic strip illustrator, Simbudevan has applied this skill in filmmaking. How? He turns to the audience and in a direct address tells them `Otherwise how does one undo this knot in the screenplay?' Cheran opened his film `Autograph' (2005) with an effective instance of direct address, in the Egmore station sequence. The minister tells the twin brothers that he all along knew that they will get together one day. But the concerns that get expressed are contemporary - conservation, child labour, globalisation, bureaucratic apathy and so on.
In fact quite a few actors of Black and White era feature in this film. The film has echoes of the Fifties Tamil films `Malaikallan' (1954) `Nadodi Mannan' (1958) and `Uthamaputhiran' - of the two dominant stars. Asterix comics, Black Adder (remember the pigeon episode?), Mad Magazine and our own company drama. The filmmaker reveals many influences that have worked on him. More over, the characters in the film are not the stereotypes to which Indian/Tamil film audiences are used.
This film disproves both these points of view. Another argument one often hears is that Indian films have their own grammar and so do not compare them to international cinema. To counter the criticism against mindless entertainers, many filmmakers here have been saying that the audience wants only such films. Pulikesi, an imaginary poligar, is a lackey of the British and curries favour with them until his long lost twin brother, with a koan-like name Ukkirabuddhan, surfaces and sorts things out. The story is set in the backdrop of the Poligar wars - end of 18th and beginning of 19th century - with Kattabomman and Ettappan as off-screen characters. `Imsai Arasan 23aam Pulikesi' (King of Torture, the 23rd Pulikesi) is mesmerising Tamil audience.įor his first feature film, director Simbudevan has chosen a daring subject. 3 crores investment, he put up 11 sets and produced a movie in 61 days. Simbudevan, the debut filmmaker, was fortunate to get a producer willing to back his idea and put in the money. In an age when most of the filmmakers in this part of the country are enlarging time worn genres like the gangster, vigilante, patriotic and the boy-meets-girl, one filmmaker has done some lateral thinking and come out with a movie that breaks some myths built over the years about cinema in Tamil Nadu and in the process he is laughing all the way to the bank. Worked as a cinematographer for more than 25 films.
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