Official Trailer:
We know about Cheras, Cholas, and Pandyas from our history classes and books. Most to all of the time the kings are either glorified or vilified. We never had a peek into their lives or subjects other than learning about dates of historical events. How did they live? Their culture? What kind of Tamil they spoke? Why did they go to war? How did they convince their people to follow them? Yathisai takes a slice of history from 7th century AD, builds a historical fiction, and immerses us in that time period. Pandyas have taken over the Kingdom, Cholas have lost and gone in to hiding, and Cheras sold as slaves. Instead of from Cholas, the threat for the Pandyan King comes from Kothi from Ainar Clan. He gathers his people and with support from few other small groups, wages a surprise attack on the Pandyas and takes over the fort. Ranatheera Pandyan’s come back and the showdown between him and Kothi forms the rest of the movie.
The underlying theme is that wars are always for authority. Kings went to wars to keep or gain authority. Land and people are just tools and means for them to get to their goal. Yathisai doesn’t ask us to take sides between Kothi or Ranatheeran. Its goal is much bigger, it gets into the male psyche. Toxic masculinity of the Kings. Or in general men. Kings are all men who lust after power. Even marriage is for power in the game of thrones. How the riches of the fort and the authority gets into the head of Kothi and corrupts him is shown wonderfully without any voiceovers. As mentioned earlier, Yathisai doesn’t take sides, it neither applauds nor denounces toxic masculinity. Just shows the way it is.
Even with limited budget Yathisai does a good job in staging the fights and war scenes. Don’t expect a Baahubali or 300. But the action scenes are meticulously crafted and executed. They look stunning. The brutality, and savagery in those fights hits us. Pretty much every actor in the fight is drenched in blood and you can feel the rage and the gritty will to survive in them. Yathisai effectively deploys bird’s eye view shots, close-ups, and cuts to plunge us in the action – whether it is initial wresting bout, surprise attack on the Pandyan army, scaling the walls of the palace, slaying of an Ainan warrior, or the final showdown between Kothi and Ranatheeran. Music and sound effects elevate the feel. A big round of applause to the director, actors, and the team.
Yathisai stands out on the amount of detailing that has gone in – costumes, tamil they spoke, weapons used by the fighters in those times, survival techniques, and rituals. Yes, the rituals. Olai Chuvadi as Thali in marriage. Sacrifice to Kotravai and Navakandam (a ritual where few men make eight cuts in their body and slit their throat with the ninth one) rituals before the kings go to war are shown elaborately. You get to see how the makeup, the beats, the dance, and the frenzied crowd bring out the inner Tyler Durden in people. Don’t know how close there are to historical facts. But they take us to a different time period and place.
Hats-off to Dharani Rajendran, the director, for his vision and putting out a good cinema.