1) The film 'Sethumaan' is based on the book 'Varagari' and depicts complex social issues and caste hierarchies in rural Tamil Nadu villages.
2) It follows the character Poochi and his grandson as they navigate their community and tensions that arise from minor disputes that are taken to the local panchayat.
3) The film aims to observe rural caste systems without judgement and uses unknown actors and authentic locations and sounds to immerse viewers in the landscape and social issues of 2017 Tamil Nadu.
1) The film 'Sethumaan' is based on the book 'Varagari' and depicts complex social issues and caste hierarchies in rural Tamil Nadu villages.
2) It follows the character Poochi and his grandson as they navigate their community and tensions that arise from minor disputes that are taken to the local panchayat.
3) The film aims to observe rural caste systems without judgement and uses unknown actors and authentic locations and sounds to immerse viewers in the landscape and social issues of 2017 Tamil Nadu.
1) The film 'Sethumaan' is based on the book 'Varagari' and depicts complex social issues and caste hierarchies in rural Tamil Nadu villages.
2) It follows the character Poochi and his grandson as they navigate their community and tensions that arise from minor disputes that are taken to the local panchayat.
3) The film aims to observe rural caste systems without judgement and uses unknown actors and authentic locations and sounds to immerse viewers in the landscape and social issues of 2017 Tamil Nadu.
1) The film 'Sethumaan' is based on the book 'Varagari' and depicts complex social issues and caste hierarchies in rural Tamil Nadu villages.
2) It follows the character Poochi and his grandson as they navigate their community and tensions that arise from minor disputes that are taken to the local panchayat.
3) The film aims to observe rural caste systems without judgement and uses unknown actors and authentic locations and sounds to immerse viewers in the landscape and social issues of 2017 Tamil Nadu.
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Sethumaan
And what an amazing coincidence for
new Tamil cinema. Three cinemas in a row, all dealing with complex social issues in the hinterlands of Tamil Nadu’s villages. To start, we had Arun Matheswaran’s ‘Saani Kayidham’ followed by Arunraja Kamaraj’s ‘Nenjuku Nidhi’ and now we have director Thamizh’s ‘Seththumaan’. All these three films do not deal with the stereotypes of caste hierarchies where we see good and bad guys or locate issues of the rich and poor in moralistic terms. They help us, especially, the disconnected urban middle class to get a glimpse into the underbelly of our Tamil rural landscape. ‘Seththumaan’ starts off with an inherent advantage by basing the story on a book called ‘Varagari’, written by the amazing Perumal Murugan. Quite often you see the film trying to be a bit too authentic with the book’s narration, especially in the beginning when it introduces the character of Poochi, the grandfather, played by Manickam, taking his grandson Kumaresan, played by Ashwin walking through the arid landscapes to his primary school. This sequence virtually sets off the slow, leisurely pace beseeching the viewer not to be rushed into the usual conflict zones as mostly shown in the first act. The hyper-emotional clashes that take place in the first act are extremely localized, demanding the viewers to imagine e.g. , how could a simple chopping off a few branches from a neem tree in the fields could cause so much anguish between two cousins. This complaint is taken to the village panchayat level where some elders are asked to pronounce a judgment. And they charge a fine of rs 2000 which should be given to the local temple. What we are asked to witness the multi-layered ways that caste differences are treated in the rural hinterlands of Tamil Nadu. The ways that people are slotted into upper and lower strata of their caste system are complex and vary sharply from one area to another. Because of situating inequality from such a perspective, the viewer is asked to desist from deciding what is right and what is wrong but instead watch and observe them with complete mindfulness. To make such perception possible, Seththumaan does not have a single actor who is even slightly known to our audiences. Nobody carries any baggage from their previous films. And to add more authenticity I could clearly make out the usage of ‘live’ location sound by Pandian and the very subdued music track by Bindu Malini creating a sound design which lets us immerse into this landscape of the year 2017. The year 2017 is given a separate layer in this narration by focusing on the election of India’s second President coming from the ‘dalit’ castes, namely Sri Ram Nath Kovind. The first president from the dalit community was K R Narayanan. By projecting such a layer we get to understand that the subject of Dalit oppression needs a different lens now. Seththumaan literally means, the deer in the sludge, and in this backdrop it refers to a young pig which promises to be very tasty when cooked. Generally speaking, across most of small town and rural India, whenever we witness a colony of pigs we deduce that a dalit hamlet is in the neighbourhood. Is that why pork meat is almost never served in our non-vegetarian restaurants? Such an imagination of pork and a delicious one at that, is indeed an ironic metaphor of the ways in which the writer Perumal Murugan and director Thamizh would like us to comprehend the film. E.g. one has heard that dalits are served tea in separate mud pots or paper cops at roadside hotels. But in this film we have Poochi’s friend demanding to be served in a regular glass tumbler and the shopkeeper obliges; in another scene Poochi is seen selling his bamboo baskets to a slightly upper caste lady who wants to bargain by slashing the price in a rude manner. But Poochi is unruffled and argues back saying that she can keep it free. On that tone, she decides to pay the original price. The film finally gravitates to a long climax where all these menfolk from a variety of caste hierarchies choose to get Poochi and his friend to get them a succulent pig and have it cooked so that they can all have a delicious party to the accompaniment of local booze. Cinematographer Pratheep Kaliraja is at his best here, choreographing the entire sequence, from acquiring the pig till the ugly fight out at the end between the cousins, with mindful detachment, without getting into the melodrama of their family stories or the social narratives that have stereotyped dalit oppression and violence across the media. What stands out in this amazing debutant work by Thamizh and Kalairaj’s second venture is their original style. They seem to have the poise and grace which they have absorbed studying great global filmmakers who are grabbing eyeballs across the new wave film circuits. This film was screened at IFFK 2021, the Indian film festival at Los Angeles and though it has been receiving a lot of acclaim so far, distributors seem to be wary of testing it out in the regular film theatrical circuit. I would strongly recommend watching ‘Seththumaan’, currently streaming on sonyliv, for it taught me the importance how not to get into hateful expressions but choose to restrain oneself amidst the mindless violence we witness today. Such restraint should not be confused with stepping back in cowardly manners but as a statement of preparedness to launch oneself into corrective action