Official Trailer:

To quote Sujatha from his novel Pirivom Santhipom, Love is nature’s way of ensuring pregnancy. Call it love or lust (people don’t fall in love at first sight they fall in lust), since it is driven by nature one may think it must be easy to get attracted to someone opposite to you. Opposite here doesn’t mean opposite gender but the person in front of you, could be same or different gender. In reality it isn’t that easy though. Love gets complicated by caste, religion, and patriarchy. Love is political. There is politics in love, music, food, and dress. Director Pa.Ranjith wonderfully captures this in Natchathiram Nagargirathu (NN) showcasing his cinematic workmanship. In NN Ranjith breaks the form moving away conventional narrative structure. Once the opening scene sets up the conflict, movie breaks into conversational style with characters engaging in open discussion and the dialogues move the plot forward. Ranjith’s decision of using a theater setting is clever, where the writer and actors come together to put together the next play. They discuss and debate the play subject, and acts get staged as part of play preparation. This technique is so beautifully deployed, we as audience get the immersive feeling of being part of the discussion. We identify with the characters based on our views and opinions. Even the real footages and interaction with real life victims are seamlessly integrated into the screenplay. Like Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, conversations between people are the soul of the movie.

Natchathiram Nagargirathu (NN) expands on the short film Modi & Beer from Neelam Productions which came few years back. Here Ranjith is ambitious with a bigger canvas. NN shows us different forms of love between people, seems no one is missed out, inter-caste, inter-faith, queer love, genderless casteless love. Refreshing to see this kind of inclusivity. Play director Shubeer decides to put together a play on love. This kick starts a conversation between the characters leading to various interpretations – love is freedom, love is genderless, love is romantic but painful, Naadaga Kaadhal, honor killings – and heated discussions. They come face to face with their social and political stands getting challenged and questioned with conflicting views.

While same sex and transgender couples get their screen time, most of the character arc development is focused on Rene, Iniyan, and Arjun. Rene, Dushara Vijayan gives a splendid performance, expresses her feelings freely and confidently never holding back. She has created her own social identity (justified by a short and moving backstory). Rene wonders will we fight if we all realize how inconsequential we are in this vast Universe. Rene’s character is etched with an exceptional agency driven by her own thoughts and cultivation of mind. We all wish to be like her.

Arjun, a superb performance by Kalaiarasan, wants to become an actor, comes from a dominant caste background, and sees only binaries. Conditioned by the environment he grew up in, he comes across as a misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic. Arjun gets repeatedly challenged and questioned by others and turns a new leaf eventually.

Iniyan, Kalidas Jayaram with his nuanced performance, thinks of himself as a progressive person but still not able to fully root out the conflict in his system. When confronted and pushed to a corner his prejudices come to the fore and he resorts to verbal violence – birds of a feather flock together, All said and done your nature won’t change. He loves Nina Simone but looks down on Ilayaraaja. I think we all are a mix of Rene, Arjun, and Iniyan.

There are good number of well written sequences. The opening sequence starts as a chit-chat after making love, develops into an intense conversation and ends in a break-up. It sets the tone for rest of the movie. The anniversary celebration event where Kalaiarasan’s outburst to Roshini and misbehavior in the party leads to the political correctness will not come in a day’s time discussion scene. Kalaiarasan’s change of mind is superbly brought out in the play itself – his transition from mindset of justifying honor killing to can we give a positive outcome and deviate from the society’s behavior. Similar to how Quentin Tarantino had fun with KKK and face masks in Django Unchained, here we get one from Ranjith when Arjun’s mother does an emotional blackmail to convince Arjun not to marry out of caste. Ambedkar said women are the biggest victims of caste and also the gateways of the caste system. Then there are two symbolic getting enlightened scenes, when Rene leads Iniyan up the stairs to light, like a Stairway to heaven, and Arjun through the door with a mural of Buddha illuminated with lights.

When the troupe has to decide on the caste names, instead of using real caste identities they go with Naattu Poonai and Kaattu Poonai, to avoid controversy and also a commentary on the current reality Tamil cinema – Malayalam movies refer to real caste and religion names with their big actors in those movies and are well received…what is stopping Kollywood? There are many threads of love but not all get the required screen time leading to not able to connect or relate with those characters. Due to the nature of the structure, there is no sense of closure on any story threads. These are minor issues and didn’t bring down the experience for me but for others mileage may vary.

Vibrant set designs, artwork, colors, costume, cinematography, editing, and musical score elevate the mood of the story. All the actors give their best performance. Ranjith movies are political (art is political, isn’t it?), but in NN his love for cinema stands out and he is at his best. Yes, it is loaded with political subtext and viewers will have fun time decoding and discussing them. Theater provides the group with an open and safe environment, no threat to their existence because of their thoughts and ideas. But when they come out in the open to perform the play, the Perum Poonai, the big cat, symbolizing the ideology, isn’t happy and threatens with physical violence. While the play doesn’t get staged, NN does end on a positive note with Nattu Poonai and Kaattu Poonai joining hands against the Perum Poonai. In the final shot all the theater actors are together looking up the sky and a shooting star. NN leaves us with an idea, a spark to reflect upon.