REVIEW: Tamil Padam

AN AUTHENTIC SPOOF

by Joyojeet Pal

A few years ago, I sat across from a film producer trying to peddle a script. It was a spoof of a typical Tamil film set in Vaniyambadi. The producer, who fell asleep almost immediately as I started the reading confessed a spoof was not a saleable genre in South Indian cinema.. In the neighbourhood of ‘mass films’ populated by testosterone-peppered fans frothing at savage beatings, the spoof offers temporal relief in the comic sequence peppered with mimicry of film stars, nameless politicians, and other easy targets like municipal services. But moving from interludes to an entire film based on comic satire was, in his now discredited opinion, untenable. In the past year, three money-making films in Tamil have been straight-out spoofs – Quick Gun Murugan, Irumbukottai Murattu Singham, and Tamil Padam. Of these, the first two are cowboy westerns, the third, Tamil Padam, is quite simply what its name translates to -- ‘Tamil Film.’

Like Quick Gun, Tamil Padam is a straight-up spoof of Tamil and more broadly south Indian cinema. Now here is the difference between Tamil Padam and Quick Gun: Think of a Hollywood blockbuster’s take on Indian cinema – that’s Quick Gun, a patchwork of skits about clichés twisted around a flimsy plotline. Tamil Padam is a patchwork of skits about clichés twisted around a flimsy plotline, but is made by someone who understands and loves Tamil cinema. The difference is in the choice of clichés. In Quick Gun, each cliché is how a non-Tamilian sees Tamil cinema. Tamil Padam has neither the exciting colours nor the toothless grin of MTV.

Tamil Padam bears no aroma of FabIndia either. Unlike the intellectual spoof Imsai Arasan Pulakesi 23rd from two years ago, there is no stadium for caste wars here. Instead, what you have is a clever collection of sketches that an untrained viewer will find mildly amusing, and that the regulars who grew up on Kodambakkam presentations will repeatedly relate to, and frequently find, hilarious.

The plot is such: A young boy (a sage-faced Shiva) is born in a village where all male children are to be disposed of, since otherwise the village chief finds they move to Chennai to become film stars and/or politicians. The grandmother of the to-be-disposed cherub decides to save it (incidentally a jibe at Karuthamma, a Tamil classic on female infanticide), since the somewhat precocious infant delivers superstar-style punchlines. He is smuggled out to a city, where he grows up in a swift spin of a bicycle wheel to be a saviour of the oppressed. He spends most of his time with three wastrel college mates, until he finds a purpose in life over and above being saviour: to relocate his lost parents and defeat a mysterious arch-villain.

Typical? Of course. That’s the point. The college mates are all venerable stalwart actors in late arthritis, the arch-villain is a retiree in a saree and a trenchcoat, the hero’s ultimate clue in finding his parents is a woman who chalks messages to her lost love, his father, at the backs of train bogies, and his eventual clue to finding his parents is a family song by Britpop band ‘Michael Learns to Rock,’ which he sings aloud traipsing through verdant sugarcane fields and crowded bus stations.

What is refreshing about Tamil Padam is that despite intending to stay in the realm of the typical, the film pulls several clever and accessible surprises. At times, the film does feel like an extended set of comedy show shorts and slows a bit around the middle. But the film is cleanly shot, well edited, and has what Quick Gun lacks most starkly – an affable, ham-devoid cast that you are reasonably happy to relate to. It is not surprising that Facebook geeks have already started listing specific jokes and their screen antecedents. Half the pleasure of watching the film with Tamil cinema aficionados is playing the spot-the-connection-first game.

Tamil Padam spoofs both specific films and clichés. While the easily satired types of Rajnikant, Vijay, Ajithkumar, and Kamal Haasan bear the brunt of many digs, writer-director CS Amudhan also picks on little gems – cheesy lines from films that went unnoticed and silly lyrics from popular songs (an entire song is made up of idiosyncratic ‘invented words’ featured on superhit songs).

In a land where an inappropriate reference to a reigning superstar can lead to a broken skull, a good laugh at oneself is refreshing on multiple levels. Here, I can indeed take refuge in the thought that the soporific producer had nightmares of his effigies burning outside the Madurai temple as weekend timepass for Rajnikant fan club as he dozed through my script. It took the weight of the DMK first family, a Karunanidhi’s grandchild, Dayanidhi Azhagiri, to make the first big spoof without real bones broken. But the floodgates are hopefully now inaugurated.

The parting words from the hero walking into the sunset are a fitting sign of things to come. "The path tread by him may be full of stones and thorns. But he will not stop walking...because...walking helps to reduce cholesterol, 'B.P' would come down, and that is good for health.”

Joyojeet Pal is a faculty member at the New York University Polytechnic Institute where he teaches Technology and Economic development.