I finally saw Vada Chennai last week when it had already been edged out of theatres by Sarkar and I had the grand choice of exactly one doable show timing.
Quite a film it turned out to be, gangster noir in one of its best Tamil outings yet, although I preferred Aaranya Kaandam , the masterful 2011 Kumararaja film. But Vetri Maaran’s VC is brilliantly shot and slickly directed, so what’s troubling me?
In a significant line in the film, Anbu (Dhanush) says, “If saving ourselves is called rowdyism, then we will indulge in rowdyism.” This line is the bedrock on which the film rests. VC doesn’t just show rowdyism, it wallows in it. It exults in the violence and gang wars, imbuing it all with a kind of fake glory.
You might ask, so what? Cinema takes off from life, and this is a slice of life from the lawless docks of Kasimedu. Usually, I would agree — art for art’s sake etcetera, etcetera. But Tamil Nadu isn’t your usual cinema audience, is it? It’s a crazed, irrational audience that has sold its soul to cinema.
Last week, we saw this played out in a grotesque theatre of the absurd. The State government responded to what it read as veiled criticism of Jayalalitha’s schemes by forcing post-Censor Board cuts on the Vijay film , Sarkar . As if this wasn’t outrageous enough, in response, Vijay fans burnt, broke and smashed TVs, mixies, laptops and table fans — all freebies from the Jayalalitha regime — and posted videos of themselves doing it.
If someone told me people would wilfully burn their own property to express solidarity with a film star, I would have laughed. But this is Tamil Nadu, where people burn themselves to express solidarity with a film star.
In the breaking-laptop videos, the young men strut and threaten in the exact style of their beloved superstar. Harmless, you say, of course fans imitate their heroes. The problem is, it doesn’t stop there. These same fans believe so completely in the onscreen persona of their heroes that they vote them to real power as well. Sarkar is being read as a veiled political statement by Vijay, who has hinted at throwing his hat into the ring in the next elections. If so, he will be the third Tamil superstar, after Rajini and Kamal, to do so.
Hypothetically, thus, it can be a five-pronged battle, where each political party will be either the legacy of, or led by, a hero, heroine, scriptwriter. That’s the extent to which Tamil Nadu allows onscreen charisma to have off-screen power.
To such audiences, offering up pithy adages about the glory of rowdyism is like giving crack to a dopehead. It legitimises violence in exactly the same way that Tamil cinema has long legitimised stalking. VC doesn’t stick to showcasing the gang wars of North Chennai tenements or the brutality of life there. No, by bringing in a highway cutting across the fishing village, it seeks to romanticise the violence as some sort of proto-revolution, an uprising of the poor.
I am all for the poor rising up in revolt. Only, it has to be about more than mere violence. In VC , Rajan (Ameer) is the do-good gangster in 1987, who kidnaps cops, hacks off heads, and stands up for his people. In 2003, Anbu (Dhanush) is doing the hacking and chopping and saving. In the intervening 16 years, there’s not an iota of change in the shantytown. Drains, hovels, water queues, sordid apartment blocks — everything’s the same. So what exactly did people’s hero Rajan achieve for his people? We don’t really know. But they did reject the road. And now, Anbu has too. Maybe the sequels will show tapped water and sewage lines reaching the shantytown?
Of course, it’s hard to make taps and toilets look romantic on screen, so much easier when it’s axe murders and bloodied hands. I totally get it. Only, it’s rather disturbing to see film after film peddle violence not as the means to some visible, achievable end but as a cathartic end in itself. And disturbing to wonder just what dreamy notion of ‘rowdyism’ another generation of loyal laptop-smashers is already adopting to reproduce faithfully in real life.
Where the writer tries to make sense of society with seven hundred words and a bit of snark.
