From letter to pixel
Some reflections on the movie Ponniyin Selvan 1
Ponniyin Selvan is a five-part novel by Kalki where he masterfully weaves gripping plotlines in-filling sketchy historical facts and characters about Chozha kings. And now almost 70 years after the novel was published, Mani Ratnam has attempted to enliven the letters into pixels on screen.
Letters and pixels are different mediums. Kalki’s words emboss deeply etched characters who struggle with varied emotions and are tossed about by events in a world where information travels at the speed of horses. Mani’s pixels on the other hand show the clashing of swords, the tossing of ships in tempests, and the movement of moods and bodies to music, almost pulling viewers along at the speed of horses.
The movie provides us a different lens to look at some of the themes of the novel.
History
The hay days of Chozha period represent a climax in a civilizational history where a people reached a peak culturally and politically. Kalki’s letters are a portrayal and celebration of this climax, inviting readers to see how the milieu of today came about.
We often struggle with history in choosing if we should see it as a complex trajectory of a people and ideas or as a punctured sequence of battles. Battles are momentous defining victors and losers, setting the stage for intriguing revenges and coups. But history may be more elusive, slipping our grasp through these battles and into the alleys of common folk, into the temples and hospitals, through the lines of devotional and folk songs, and into the pains suffered through natural calamities.
Kalki perhaps saw history through its escapades, and remarkably wrote a five-part historical novel without taking us to the battlefield. Mani finds this hard to emulate - today’s blockbuster implicitly demands action from the battlefield to provide the adrenaline viewers seek and to exercise the best cinematographic advances.
Beauty and Sacrifice
Kalki named his novel ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ after the Chozha emperor who came to do much after the novel ends. One is tempted to believe that had R. R. Martin written this novel, he may have well called it the Song of Beauty and Sacrifice. For, Kalki’s two defining characters - Nandini and Rajaraja Chozha - embody beauty and sacrifice, respectively, to an unprecedented depth.
Nandini’s allure and charisma that defeat many a valorous man is only matched by her strong intent to realize her ambition. Most depictions of female shakti would pale in comparison to what Kalki has created across his two thousand pages. In sharp contrast to this, Rajaraja Chozha represents a glowing example of a principled ruler who restrains his personal desires to maximize action for the good of his people.
Beauty may be in the beholder’s eyes, but Kalki’s letters paint a more dazzling beauty in the reader’s minds than do Mani’s pixels in the viewer’s eyes. The theme of sacrifice is less instantaneous, and one will have to wait for Mani’s second installment to see how he portrays it.
Space and Time
Kalki’s novel moves as if tuned to staccato: Characters traverse their own journeys but somehow congregate in important locations at the same time, setting up the stage for eventful scenes.
To a modern mind this may seem forced, but perhaps life in those times was sparse with fewer landmarks and modes of transport. This tempo creates much room for secret tunnels, travelling spies, and hide-and-seek games to add intrigue and mystery in the novel.
Mani’s movie also moves about these locations announcing arrivals with subtitles. But the compressed timeline of a 150-minute movie provides little time for viewers to make the journey themselves.
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Letters provide a uniquely rewarding medium to experience various aspects in Kalki’s novels such as the freedom in the spirit of a character like Poonkuzhali, the deepening darkness in the Thajavur palace as the emperor remains bed-ridden, the subtle intertwining between religion and power, the beauty of nature experienced by a journeyman and many many others. Translating these delights to pixels is hard, and even so it seems to require a canvas much larger than what Mani was afforded in this two-part movie.
Today, as the visual medium has come to dominate the creation and consumption of creative content, the delights of the medium of letters need to be reiterated. The spout of creativity that the fountain pen unleashes may be hard to match even by the best of cameras and computer graphics.
P.S.1: Given all the challenges, Mani’s attempt is commendable. The songs by A R Rahman are superlative, Karthi’s screen presence carries most of the first half through, comic relief by Jayaram is effective, art direction and cinematography are beautiful in many scenes, and Aishwarya and Trisha do justice to the two strong female characters. However, there are holes; computer graphics is not up to current standards, there is a disproportionate focus on action at the expense of character development, and there are some differences from the book that bring no value such as a psychotic Aditya Karikalan, a healthier Sundara Chozha, and an active rebel king in Lanka.
P.S.2: Let’s wait for PS2!