Sarkar vs Tamil Nadu govt - Now showing: A political drama outside theatres
TNN | Nov 12, 2018, 11.50 AM IST
CHENNAI: I haven’t watched ‘Sarkar’. And, from what I’ve heard about the movie, I am not going to. The political drama that surrounded the Vijay-starrer past week, anyway, was more entertaining than the movie. The government threatened to charge the filmmakers with sedition. The reason: The film shows people setting fire to freebies given by the government, and the antagonist is called Komalavalli, the name of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa in her early years.
Politics, especially of the Tamil Nadu kind, has much in common with cinema, and that’s not just because of the umbilical cord some of our leaders had with the tinsel world. In both the fields, many people come in with the ambition of becoming heroes, play the villain and end up being comedians.
In the Sarkar Vs Government thriller, the hero and villain remained in the backroom, leaving all the action to the comedians. He may not be able to emote to save his life, but Vijay so far remains the hero in real-life drama. And that’s because he has not shown his face, not tried any punch dialogue.
Edappadi Palaniswami played the villain with gusto, letting his more-than-eager-to-talk ministers make all the noise. And the chief minister scored a brownie point here: If someone looks like more loyal than the king, it also looks like there is a king. EPS, however, made an entry after the filmmakers agreed for four cuts, trying to punch below A R Murugadoss’s belt, saying the director’s relatives were beneficiaries of government freebies.
The ministers did a commendable job as sidekicks and comedians, while cadres performed well as stuntmen. There was tough competition among some ministers to be the villain’s deputy, while AIADMK cadres went on a rampage across the state tearing down ‘Sarkar’ posters and abusing the film’s makers.
C Ve Shanmugham, ironically the law minister, said some scenes in the movie “incited violence” and warned of “action”. Food minister R Kamaraj expressed anger over a scene in which people are shown throwing the state government’s doles into fire. “It is not for a film to decide if people want such things,” he proclaimed. Revenue minister R B Udhayakumar did the honours of thanking the filmmakers for deleting the ‘controversial’ scenes.
Raju said the antagonist being named Komalavalli hurt the sentiments of everyone from the party cadre to the chief minister, “who sees Jayalalithaa as God”. At the end of the row, he was happy that the “Komala’ part of the name was edited out (hope no Valli in Tamil Nadu is politically influential). When sections of the media said the government has no business interfering with a movie that has been cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification, Raju had this gem of a suggestion: The censor board should include a representative from the state government to avoid such problems in future.
The whole sordid drama was but the latest episode in institutionalizing intolerance. And thereby hangs a tale of an accidental government trying to claim the legacy of a leader who aspired to be an authoritarian — and with considerable success. Despite having been at the receiving end of half-a-dozen defamation cases between 2001 and 2006 – or because of them — I can say that Jayalalithaa played the role of an authoritarian leader with élan. The self-appointed successors just don’t measure up.
The politician as villain is not new in Tamil movies. Sayaji Shinde as minister Kaalaipandi in ‘Dhool’ and Raghuvaran as chief minister Aranganathar in ‘Mudhalvan’ were notable. But to have Narayan (Vivek) play Kaalaipandi or Palavesham (Vadivelu) do an Aranganathar would’ve been not even comic. It would’ve been tragic.
TNN | Nov 12, 2018, 11.50 AM IST
CHENNAI: I haven’t watched ‘Sarkar’. And, from what I’ve heard about the movie, I am not going to. The political drama that surrounded the Vijay-starrer past week, anyway, was more entertaining than the movie. The government threatened to charge the filmmakers with sedition. The reason: The film shows people setting fire to freebies given by the government, and the antagonist is called Komalavalli, the name of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa in her early years.
Politics, especially of the Tamil Nadu kind, has much in common with cinema, and that’s not just because of the umbilical cord some of our leaders had with the tinsel world. In both the fields, many people come in with the ambition of becoming heroes, play the villain and end up being comedians.
In the Sarkar Vs Government thriller, the hero and villain remained in the backroom, leaving all the action to the comedians. He may not be able to emote to save his life, but Vijay so far remains the hero in real-life drama. And that’s because he has not shown his face, not tried any punch dialogue.
Edappadi Palaniswami played the villain with gusto, letting his more-than-eager-to-talk ministers make all the noise. And the chief minister scored a brownie point here: If someone looks like more loyal than the king, it also looks like there is a king. EPS, however, made an entry after the filmmakers agreed for four cuts, trying to punch below A R Murugadoss’s belt, saying the director’s relatives were beneficiaries of government freebies.
The ministers did a commendable job as sidekicks and comedians, while cadres performed well as stuntmen. There was tough competition among some ministers to be the villain’s deputy, while AIADMK cadres went on a rampage across the state tearing down ‘Sarkar’ posters and abusing the film’s makers.
C Ve Shanmugham, ironically the law minister, said some scenes in the movie “incited violence” and warned of “action”. Food minister R Kamaraj expressed anger over a scene in which people are shown throwing the state government’s doles into fire. “It is not for a film to decide if people want such things,” he proclaimed. Revenue minister R B Udhayakumar did the honours of thanking the filmmakers for deleting the ‘controversial’ scenes.
Raju said the antagonist being named Komalavalli hurt the sentiments of everyone from the party cadre to the chief minister, “who sees Jayalalithaa as God”. At the end of the row, he was happy that the “Komala’ part of the name was edited out (hope no Valli in Tamil Nadu is politically influential). When sections of the media said the government has no business interfering with a movie that has been cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification, Raju had this gem of a suggestion: The censor board should include a representative from the state government to avoid such problems in future.
The whole sordid drama was but the latest episode in institutionalizing intolerance. And thereby hangs a tale of an accidental government trying to claim the legacy of a leader who aspired to be an authoritarian — and with considerable success. Despite having been at the receiving end of half-a-dozen defamation cases between 2001 and 2006 – or because of them — I can say that Jayalalithaa played the role of an authoritarian leader with élan. The self-appointed successors just don’t measure up.
The politician as villain is not new in Tamil movies. Sayaji Shinde as minister Kaalaipandi in ‘Dhool’ and Raghuvaran as chief minister Aranganathar in ‘Mudhalvan’ were notable. But to have Narayan (Vivek) play Kaalaipandi or Palavesham (Vadivelu) do an Aranganathar would’ve been not even comic. It would’ve been tragic.
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