Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan opus ends just as it began: with a war to end all wars. In the final act of PS2, out in theatres today, the Cholas and Rashtrakutas once again meet on the battlefield. Arrows rain from a cloud-covered sky. Fiery canons are lobbed. Blood spatter flies, flags flutter. Men, horses, elephants charge at each other. It is a monumental, momentous clash of metal and flesh.
For a film that isn’t technically about war, both parts of Ponniyin Selvan feature epic battle scenes, which Ratnam, along with production designer Thotta Thiran and cameraperson Ravi Varman, has built meticulously. Like the greatest of battle scene architects in film history–from Akira Kurosawa to Peter Jackson–Ratnam’s war scene isn’t just a clash of worlds. It is a medium to communicate something greater. A god shot, a shift in the rhythm and speed of action, scenes abruptly bled of all colour–except for that one sword doused in bright red–this isn’t just conflict in motion. This is an art piece.
In Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan, as in the legendary novels by Kalki Krishnamurthy that the films are based on, war is but a consequence of a larger political game. The setting is 1,000 years ago, just before the dawn of the golden era of the Chola empire. A powerful “chakravarti” or emperor in southern India lies ailing, his sons are out expanding their kingdom’s borders north and south, and a skulk of chieftains is up to some mischief.
That was the scene set up in PS-1, which released last year to much fanfare.
But Ponniyin Selvan 2 doesn’t quite begin where PS-1 left off. All is revealed in good time, but first, it wants to acquaint you with the history of the star-crossed lovers at its heart: Aditha Kalikaran (Vikram) and Nandini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan). It does this with a lustrous love song, and an opening credits sequence that dives back in time to show the pair falling in adolescent love, capturing the intimacy and burning desire that only the young are capable of–before circumstances rip them apart.
Ratnam quickly switches gears and floors the gas pedal, turning the first half of PS-2 into a breathless blaze of action, machination, fight sequences and scheming as our chief protagonist Vandiyathevan (Karthi)–the soldier who flirts as if he is duty-bound to do so in the company of beautiful women–hops between kingdoms, absorbing many secrets, reveals little, but always serving his king and princes loyally. He continues to be key to proceedings as the Chola kingdom faces a Pandiyan rebellion from within, and a Rashtrakuta assault brewing in the fringes.
If PS-1 pitted Nandini and princess Kundavai’s political wiliness against each other, PS-2 shifts the focus somewhat to the eternal pretzel bind that ties Nandini and Aditha, quite against their will. Meanwhile, Arulmozhi or Ponniyin Selvan (Jayam Ravi) himself, comes back to life from certain death–with the help of the same mysterious woman who saved him from drowning when he was a child–and recuperates in a Buddhist vihara in Nagapattinam–a place that becomes the site of some of the Ponniyin Selvan saga’s most riveting scenes.
Ratnam and co-writers Jeyamohan and Kumaravel have been praised for condensing five massive novels into 6 hours, without losing their essence. In PS-2, they play with pace but incorporate so many twists, turns and blind curveballs, you might get whiplash. It’s a clever ploy to keep an audience engaged even as Ratnam takes the liberty to infuse his film with those artistic quirks that save it from becoming a mainstream masala flick: That indulgent grieving sequence, or those unforgettable visuals of a beloved warrior posing in a Kurosawa-like frame, or monks who hold shivs behind their backs.
A lot of what endeared PS-1 to its viewers is intact in the sequel. The star cast radiates power; their performances, especially Vikram and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s, further elevated in the hands of Ratnam. The gloss and glamour of this universe, these people steeped in tinkling gold, shiny silks, resplendent in rubies and brocades, continues to have a bewitching effect.
The locations–travellers will spot Maheshwar’s Ahilya Fort and Jodhpur’s Mehrangarh Fort–are glorious picks, and the set pieces suitably elaborate.
In fact, much of PS-2 is so engrossing because of the beauty of its frames, the backgrounds they are shot in and the people who inhabit it–all of which work for the high-stakes, high-energy instalment. Varman’s camera work does much to help Ratnam retain Kalki’s poetry on screen. Nandini, forever moist-eyed and dressed in the richest colours, is always accompanied by a beam of light to enhance her extraordinary luminescence.
This is most evident in how Aditha Kalikaran’s body language and screen presence change as he thinks of Nandini. In PS-1, Varman’s camera would not sit still as Kalikaran recounted to his “grandfather” his version of their love story. In PS-2, when Kalikaran sees Nadini in the flesh after decades (and for the first time on screen), the camera becomes Nandini’s eyes, and Kalikaran’s internal hurricane finds an echo in his restless horse.
Ponniyin Selvan 2, like its predecessor, is really more a story of individual politics than a collective one. Kalki’s narrative went deeper into why human beings that live in the vicinity of power and beauty behave the way they do.
What do we find irresistible and what do we really covet? To what end would we go to quench our desire for these? What do just, kind, capable leaders look like–and do we dare to dream of them?
Mani Ratnam’s adaptation is largely faithful and quite timely, but it doesn’t bear the cynicism or baldness of its contemporaries in historical fiction (Game of Thrones) or stories about dynasties (Succession). There’s a certain heart and humaneness to PS-2: No one’s quite a saint but they aren’t heartless monsters either. We are all kinetic beings cast astray in the cause-and-effect orbit.
Which is all to say: Go watch PS-2 in theatres–but brush up on the first film on Amazon Prime Video before you do. Hindi speakers: watch the film in Tamil (with English subtitles if necessary) or it might lose a lot of its flavour. Because rare is the sequel that matches or trumps the hype created by the original. In the film world, these appear as rarely as that fabled comet in the Chola sky–but PS-2 is that extraordinary celestial event.
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