Mani Ratnam builds a glorious world with #PonniyinSelvan !! It’s a magnificent effort at visualising a much loved Tamil novel.. Of course I knew nothing about PS or author Kalki before watching the movie… In fact, thanks to our education system that pretty much ignores the southern kings who aren’t Tipu Sultan, I knew very little about the Chola and Pandya dynasties. But I still loved the plot twists and the author-backed characters.. I was concerned that as PS-1 uses Classical Tamil I’ll be lost in subtitles but I soon got the hang of what was happening. While not knowing the novel wasn’t a detriment, knowing the actors playing the galaxy of characters surely helped. I can’t even pronounce some of the names, let alone remember them! 🙂
Speaking of actors and characters, Karthi pretty much steals the limelight. Second comes Jayam Ravi with some presence post interval.. amongst the actresses, Aishwarya Rai is stellar and looks ethereal! While Trisha has a strong role that will probably flourish more in part 2.
Sure, the gratuitous war sequences have pretty shoddy VFX, but the sets designed by Thota Tharani more than make up for it! Every scene is beautifully framed by Ravi Varman and set to tune by maestro AR Rahman. I just wish that the songs had some more screen time in the movie.. would have loved to experience Devaralam Aatam and Chola Chola with Dolby 7.1.
All in all, Ponniyin Selvan is a worthy addition to the canon of Mani Ratnam.
Baroda Talkies 