Readers Write In #703: Wishful ‘Maharaja’

By Latha Rajasekar

A complex narration of an average person’s tale, told with conviction, beautifully concurs a parallel story to catch the audience by surprise. Director Nithilan showcases his narrative prowess through the overlapping plot points and handles the ensemble’s individual arcs largely, except for couple of futile female characters. The compromise in exploring the mind space of the lead roles in view of keeping the suspense and non-linear narrative intact, let’s the narration down in places.

The director chooses to narrate the story of actor Vijay Sethupathi’s title character, keeping in dark his true intentions, up until the interval block. A grim-faced man who is adamant of giving all things best to his daughter, be it sports shoes or an apology from the school principal who had mistakenly accuses her.

I couldn’t help being reminded of a similar sequence, a school backdrop in the movie ‘Chithha’. Both the situations translated similar to me even though the essence were in complete contrast. In Chithha, on knowing that his niece did commit the mistake, actor Siddarth, the uncle would change her school instead of giving an apology letter. Both men are shown adamant, demanding that the child is given due respect. Here Vijay Sethupathi holds adamantly on to the grill till the ceiling debris down demanding the principal to apologize and there Siddarth adamantly moves his niece from an environment where she might be stigmatized. The latter composition, seemed to have blossomed organically while the former was loudly attention seeking. The director not only establishes how much the child means to Vijay Sethupathi but also seems to build a firewall for the actor’s actions that are to follow.

In Chithha, when actor Sidharth tries to revenge his niece’s molester, as audience we were left to hope that someone would stop him, so he doesn’t become a murderer. But here, owing to the non-linear suspense, not knowing the trauma of his and his daughter’s, when Vijay Sethupathi decapitates someone, it doesn’t draw the due sympathy for the griever. From the viewer’s perspective I was kind of left in lurch, not knowing whether to condemn or commend the actor’s deeds.  

The brilliant plot overlapping on timelines works flawlessly. The quest, at the police station to find the whereabouts of ‘Lakshmi’, the personified ‘dustbin’ that saved Vijay’s ‘apparent’ infant daughter (irrespective of the master climax twist), reminds of VJS’s ‘Naduvula Konjam Pakkam Kaanom’ repetitive episodes. The repetitiveness would not have been so forceful had there been enough prologue to the character’s trait, I wondered. The laughter intended to dodge the viewers off the suspense, does provide comic relief, but only superficially, as it stalls the momentum of the serious story that awaits to transpire.

Anurag Kashyap’s performance in ‘Imaikka nodigal’ was much spoken about, as the character was seen to challenge the protagonist and her team by hampering and trailing their investigations from scene one. On the contrary in ‘Por Thozhil’ the protagonist was revealed much later just before the interval block. And in ‘Ratsasan’ the antagonist’s story is not revealed much later towards the last third of the movie. All the three antagonist’s characters work brilliantly even though their entry into story is differently placed.

In Maharaja, the character Selvam played by Anurag, is placed on the parallel story as antagonist and Vijay Sethupathi is on a different trail for a ‘dustbin’, By the time the two stories concur on revealing parts of the suspense, the darkness over the motive of the lead actor doesn’t pay off as much as it was intended. The reveal of overlapping knots sweeps the awe factor, rather. The reveal was indeed path breaking but the intensity that the other three antagonists in the movies mentioned earlier had, Anurag’s character Selvam couldn’t emulate.

And yet again in the climax suspense, the reveal was breathtaking and Vijay Sethupathi’s reaction on seeing Anurag was priceless. It beautifully reminded of the ‘gasp’ that Kavin’s character in the movie ‘Star’ had when he was given his newborn after the death of his wife. But the final reveal made me wonder if the director had captured enough of the benevolence of the character ‘Maharaja’ himself, to substantiate the action of Vijay Sethupathi raising ‘the baby’, that was saved by the fall of the ‘Dustbin’ Lakshmi.

Except for the incident that Vijay goes to give the baby’s chain to the customer Anurag, who had left it accidentally in the former’s barber shop, we are not given the prologue of his traits. Other than evident facts that he lives with his daughter far away from the hustle of the town, shares a strong bond with her, is supportive of her passion and is adamant, we are forbidden to enter the mental space of the character, owing to maintain the ‘suspense’ the screen play houses.

But the final reveal makes one retrospect the reason behind the grim, non-expressive face of actor Vijay’s, all through the movie and the kind of emotions that would have driven him to avenge the way he did. The brave adolescent girl wanting to confront the offenders was super commendable but I was filled with nostalgia,recollecting ‘Gargi’. The climax left me walk home with memories of ASI Vinod Kumar, of the movie ‘Iratta’, played by the fantastic Joju George.

Abirami plays the antagonist’s wife. Her sub-urban dialogue delivery, casual body language, motherly instincts and love talks with her husband doesn’t translate the script’s depth onscreen, as the innate nativeness went missing in Anurag’s vague counter reactions. Indigenousness in a script makes the visuals more profound and I was left to long, thinking of the bond between the characters of Kalaiyarasan and Riythvika from the 2014 movie ‘Madras’. The bars were set high for the director after this debut feature film ‘Kurangu Bommai’ and while Maharaja doesn’t let him down, it doesn’t set the bar at a new height, either. Actor Vijay Sethupathi’s passion for the craft, lets him dwell into the mind space of his characters and he chooses intentionally to act restrained in ‘Maharaja’. But sadly, his sketchy scheme,made more sense, retrospectively, much after the end credits rolled.

Posted in: Cinema: Tamil, Readers Write In