Ponniyin Selvan: 1, a refresher (and looking ahead to Part 2)

(Wrote this about Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan: 1 for Money Control; not really an analytical piece or a critique, just a sort of primer keeping in mind that a few viewers were confused by the multiple goings-on in the first film)
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The uninitiated viewer may have gone into Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan: 1 with the vague idea that this was going to be a lavish action-adventure film about the Chola empire. That is true, in a broad sense, but if you’re armed with only this knowledge you may easily be left confused by the tangle of characters, places, dramatic episodes, and intrigues in the story. Especially since Mani Ratnam doesn’t try to spoon-feed those who know nothing about Chola history – or, equally important, about the source text, which is one of the most beloved books in modern Tamil literature.

Ponniyin Selvan: 1 is adapted from Kalki Krishnamurthy’s sprawling historical fiction which was serialised and published in final form in 1955. This was nothing like a history textbook – it used a key period in Chola history as a starting point for an imaginative, multi-strand narrative where real figures (or dramatized versions of real figures) rubbed shoulders with fully invented characters, and the personal was inseparable from the political.

So, here’s a Ponniyin Selvan primer – a look back at the first film, in anticipation of the second one coming out this month:

The setting, the period and the political situation

It is the second half of the 10th century (probably around 970 CE), and as the film’s poetic opening narration informs us, a comet has appeared over the Chola sky, signalling peril. The future of the dynasty is uncertain: the current king is the ailing Parantaka Chola II, also known as Sundara Chola (and played here by Prakash Raj), father to two sons and a daughter, all gifted and intelligent. But given the complicated recent history of the Cholas, it is by no means clear that the line of succession will continue with Parantaka II’s family. A rival branch of the clan is plotting to get the king’s cousin Madhuranthaka on the throne. Adding to the sense of urgency within the main family is that the king’s offspring are all in different locations as the story begins.

The principal characters

Of Sundara Chola’s children – the three scions of the Chola Empire as it stands – the eldest is Aditha Karikalan (played by Vikram). He is a resourceful warrior and a crown prince in waiting, but also – in Kalki’s version of the story – a tormented lover obsessed with a woman named Nandini, whom he had once hoped to marry. “Everything I do is a struggle to forget,” Aditha laments to a confidant; he bellows like a wounded animal when he remembers the day “I died my second death”, having approached a hut in the forest to capture an enemy king – only to discover the wounded man being tended to by his love. Aditha’s slaying of this Pandya king, Veerpandian, in front of the stricken Nandini, becomes a catalyst for future events.

Which also means that of the fictional characters Kalki used to propel his story forward, Nandini (played by Aishwarya Rai in the films) is the most important and central. Depending on your perspective, she can be a tragic, wronged figure or a femme fatale – but either way she is Aditha’s great nemesis.

Keeping an eye on their love-hate story from the sidelines is Aditha’s sister Kundavai Devi (played by Trisha Krishnan), a wise and perceptive princess who is very aware of the political machinations going on in the kingdom, and of the dangers to her family. Kundavai is suspicious of Nandini, now married to a minister who is part of the conspiracy against Sundara Chola; their meeting, described in a song’s lyrics as a clash between “lightning and roaring thunder”, is one of the big dramatic moments in Mani Ratnam’s film.

The Ponniyin Selvan of the title

Aditha and Kundavai’s younger brother is Arunmozhi Varman (played by Jayam Ravi). Those who have brushed up on their history may know that this is the future Rajaraja I, who would become among the most celebrated of Indian rulers. But for the purposes of this story, another of Arunmozhi’s names is more relevant: he is also the titular Ponniyin Selvan (“child of the river Kaveri”), because of a legend that says he was saved by the river goddess from drowning as a child. As the film opens we learn that he is leading an expedition in Lanka; this is where he stays for the entirety of the first film, and we are properly acquainted with him only around halfway through the narrative – in terms of screen time and focus, he isn’t quite the protagonist of the story.

So, who is?

The adventurer who links all these people

The first time we see Vallavaraiyan Vandiyadevan (played by Karthi) in the film, he gets a heroic entrance with an action-scene cliché – appearing on horseback to intercept and kill someone who is about to attack prince Aditha – followed by a triumphant close-up. But the character is much more than an action man: his versatility will be revealed in the scenes that follow. When Aditha sends him on a series of missions (including keeping his eyes and ears peeled for conspiracies, and passing on this information to Princess Kundavai), Vallavaraiyan becomes the story’s great adventurer who facilitates the forward movement of the plot. The three Chola siblings must be brought together at some point to face the threats to their family, and Vallavaraiyan is the binding thread. We accompany him on his travels from one palace to another, see the other characters through his eyes, watch as he uncovers intrigues. Wide-eyed clown, chorus, wandering knight, and efficient strategist all at once, he manages an impish smile even while on a serious errand for the royals – play-acting, flirting, boasting (“I never turn my back in battle, or to a woman. I am fearless”), or just taking a breather with his horse to appreciate a beautiful landscape. Little wonder that many readers over the decades have seen him as the book’s real hero.

It is perhaps also because Vallavaraiyan is such a likable character (in both book and film) that we come to think of the main branch of ruling Cholas – Parantaka II and his three children – as the figures to root for. Otherwise, the motivations of those who are targeting the Cholas are justified too: there is realpolitik, there is perceived historical injustice as well as personal vendetta. The Kali-worshipping Pandyas want revenge for the beheading of their king; Nandini wants revenge for her personal trauma and lost dignity; the conspirators who are trying to get Madhuranthaka (the future Uttama Chola) on the throne believe it is rightly his since his father was once king.

What to look out for in PS 2

What Mani Ratnam has done with Kalki’s sprawling material is to convey the sense of a lavish epic with all the setpieces you’d expect – including a climactic battle at sea during a storm – but to also operate at ground level. There are scenes that are inevitably in the grand meter – the sort of tone that many viewers who fancy themselves “sophisticated” tend to be dismissive of – but if you accept the innate grandeur of the premise on its own terms, there is plenty of humanising of the characters even when they express larger-than-life emotions: for instance, the scene where Aditha first reminisces about Nandini and then throws himself like a madman into a celebratory song and dance (but still can’t keep a fatal vision out of his head). Expect a continuation of the same in the second film, and also expect AR Rahman to find just the right musical equivalent for the changing tones and shifts in canvas.

Ponniyin Selvan: 1 ended with a cliff-hanger around the watery fate of Arunmozhi. Of course, even if we didn’t know about Rajaraja I’s reign, it’s easy to work out that Ponniyin Selvan isn’t really dead. We can anticipate a more fleshed-out role for this character, who was cut off from his siblings and parents for the entirety of the first film. Once he is back home, he will be more directly caught up in the many narrative strands that will lead to the death of his elder brother (and heighten the antagonisms). Of course, Arunmozhi’s potential romance with the boat-woman Poonguzhali (another fictional character, played by Aishwarya Lekshmi) may be on hold for a while; meanwhile Kundavai’s friend, the princess Vaanathi (Sobhita Dhulipala) also hopes to marry him. And what of the mysterious old woman who repeatedly shows up to save him when he is in trouble – who is she, and why does she resemble Nandini?

A first dramatic confrontation between Aditha Karikalan and Nandini is something else to be looked forward to (since the news of Arunmozhi’s death is likely to send Aditha rushing to Thanjuvar, where he had earlier sworn not to go). There will also be the playing out of the romance between Princess Kundavai and Vallavaraiyan. The real-life Vallavaraiyan Vandiyadevan, incidentally, was a commander who married Kundavai – though it’s a safe bet that he wasn’t as central to the story of the Chola dynasty as the character invented by Kalki is!