Ponniyin Selvan- 1: Mani Ratnam delivers a royal dud in this Jackie Chan-styled action mythological

Once A Ponni Time, there lived a movie moghul named Mani Ratnam. The Ratnam we knew from the classics that he made in the early part of his career is no more. In his place, we know have a charlatan .The Mani Ratnam in the last few films is an imposter trying hard to convince us that he is the real one.

Have you seen an old potboiler called Sawan Bhadon, where Navin Nishchol dies and is replaced by a lookalike who tries to fool the dead man’s family into believing he is the real thing? I got the same feeling while sitting through Ponniyin Selvan, a dreadful, dull, disjointed three-hour Mani marathon with a mind numbing plot which I am sure is trying to say something very important about the Chola dynasty in the tenth century. I am sure the original novel by Kalki Krishnamurthy is the classic that it is supposed to be.

The film, tragically, fails to capture the essence of any literary adaptation. It tries to retain the flavour of a bulky epic novel, giving us a chapter by chapter feel to what is essentially a non-visual textual creation. Deepa Mehta tried to film Salman Rushdie’s unfilmable Midnight’s Children. Let’s just say she had more success than this literal literary adaptation, so prosaic and self-important it feels more like a work of failed one-upmanship than a homage.

The craftsmanship is unquestionably fine. The visuals are meant to be a feast for the eyes. And they are. The costumes (by Eka Lakhani) are picture-perfect. The exquisite neck pieces worn by the still-beauteous Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, are the most expressive part of this staid wooden (teak, of course), inarticulate piece of storytelling where the songs and music, in their effort to be true to the period, end up like a mimicry of the actual artistry and royal bearing that accentuated the elegance and pride of the Chola dynasty.

Mani Ratnam constructs a world of puppet-like characters who seem to have inherited an acquired taste for royalty. Apart from Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, no other actor seems to take his or her royal responsibility beyond the lavish costumes and jewelry. Vikram, who plays the prince Aditha from the Chola dynasty, knows how to ride a horse. And full marks for that. But his monologue expressing the anguish of lost love , where Ravi Varman’s camera shakes like a leaf on a windy afternoon, is a an intended laugh riot.

While Vikram spends a lot of time riding his horse, Karthi, who hogs screen space in the first-half, simply horses around, like Jackie Chan in those costumed action capers from Hong Kong set in crowded bazaars where Chan would fall into street-hawker’s goods and plonked into baskets of roosters while being chased by goons. Karthi possesses neither the charm nor the agility of Jackie Chan. He is painfully miscast. And worse, inadequate.

Most of the actors in the vast cast are ships sailing in the night. They seem to have no idea what they are doing or where they are going. We cannot blame them for looking lost. Ponnyin Selvan is a disastrously deluded work of costumed aberration where nothing works, least of all AR Rahman’s music which may be better in Tamil. In Hindi the songs sound like limericks trying desperately to be upbeat.

The narration is unmistakably disembodied. We have no idea why the characters in their silk costumes with the men wearing more gold than Bappi Lahiri, are in a constant huddle speaking of political conspiracies. The women are shown to be wiser than the men. Aishwarya Rai’s two-and-three-timing character must have been revolutionary in 1955 when the novel was written. She is a double-triple crosser with a past that could cloud the sky for the entire monsoon season.

My favourite character and performance are by Aishwarya Lekshmi as a feisty water-babe, named Poornima or Samudra Rani or something like that. She is an aqueous wonder woman with many secret stories to tell. Everyone has a story to tell in this film. I am not sure I want to hear any of it. As for part 2 of Ponnyin Selvan, thanks but no thanks.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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