Virumandi (2004)

Director:

Kamal Hassan

Writer:

Kamal Hassan (writer)

Release Date:

26 February 2004 (Kuwait)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A temperamental farmer gets embroiled in a bloody clan feud in a southern Tamil Nadu village.

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Kamal Hassan	...	Virumandi
Napolean	...	Nallama Naicker
Pasupathy	...	Kotharala Thevar
Abhirami	...	Annalachmi
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Rohini	...	Angela James

Also Known As:

Sandiyar (India: Tamil title) (working title)

Runtime:

UK:175 min

Country:

India

Language:

Tamil

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Certification:

India:A | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Company:

Raajkamal Films International

Trivia:

Extensive sets of rural tamilnadu and prison were erected in Chennai. Bulls from Madurai and nearby districts were transported to Chennai for the bull fight sequences .

This deserved more attention

The intention of the movie is clear from the very first scene and those statements made by V. S. Krishna Iyer, a former judge of the supreme court of India-to gather momentum for the arguments that capital punishment should be abolished in the country.

Virumandi is almost 3 hours long and usually kamalhassan starring movies will be chopped down short after the first day, to a considerable extend, in order to reduce running time and to remove offending scenes. So I went for this on the opening day. I could not understand much of the lines as narration used complex 'Chenthamil' a local dialect of southern Tamil nadu. Few months later I again went for this in a local cinema, and could find that almost 45 minutes of the total running time were deleted by the cinema people. I went to the projector room, scolded the projectionist and left the cinema. On the third time, I caught this, in a indo-German film festival, in an international version with subtitles, and those songs deleted along with Kamal himself explaining why he took the movie and justifying the over violence in this.

The bull fight still happens in villages of Tamil nadu, people are getting killed....it's real!! There was a prison break incident in Chennai a few years back and Kamal used this for the movie too. The narration is Rashomon type; the antihero gives his view of incidents, then the hero and is then followed by a natural conclusion. (Rashomon on the other hand gives 4 or 5 views of narration, and does not provide any answer.) I don't want to make a comparison, as both films are totally different.

Direction is first class compared to other Indian commercial films. This is a plot driven movie and does not contain much of the compromising commercial ingredients. It very well deserved an Oscar nomination (remembering the pathetic movies like Lagaan and Paheli being send for academy competition…its all politics there.) and exposure in international festival circuits. But Kamal failed in marketing it, may be because he concentrated too much on a domestic commercial success, as he was craving for one at that time.