Ponniyin Selvan review: This Mani Ratnam film steamrolls on muscle power but falls short on heart

Mani Ratnam's 'Ponniyin Selvan' has Vikram, Karthi, Jayam Ravi, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (above), Shobita Dhulipala, Trisha, Sarath Kumar and Parthiban in the main roles. (Image: Screen grab/Lyca Productions)

It’s always difficult creating a film on the scale of Ponniyin Selvan, especially because the source material is something much loved and celebrated over the decades. The comparisons are inevitable. And so, I’d decided to strictly see Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan 1 as a film, and not as a book adaptation.

The film has it all — great locales, a brilliant tech team, dialogues that are on point (Jeyamohan), a popular cast with some exceptional performers — but it lacks the one thing that helps a well put together movie transcend from being good to great, and that’s soul. It is this mythical soul that ensures the film stays in the hearts of the audience, long after the grandeur on screen (a fabulous Ravi Varman at work with his play of light and shade and his aesthetics) fades out. Their pain ought to be your pain, their love, yours.

And so, while one looks on with awe as set piece after set piece appears on screen — a spectacular battle there, a scene of palace intrigue here, a game of two spies in another place and songs in quick succession — none of it really lingers beyond a point, because, soul…

(Image source: Twitter/MadrasTalkies)

Ponniyin Selvan’s women might be beauties, but it is not just that beauty that spoke — it was also their guile and their keen sense of politics and duty to the kingdom — for me, Trisha's Kundavai scored over Aishwarya Rai’s Nandini. She rocks the scene where she gently walks into a meeting of rebels, leaves them confused with just a single line of possibility and walks out, grace intact. Fleeting expressions have always been her forte, and she’s in fine form here, her head tilted to the side, her chin slightly upturned, very regal. Nandini is beguiling as she is expected to be, keeping an important person under her thumb using her beauty, but something about Aishwarya’s performance did not strike a chord.

The lifeblood of the first half are Vikram as Aditya Karikaalan (finally, he’s back owning the screen after a break, his tired face a mirror of his broken, now-cold heart. His introduction shot is poetry) and Karthi (who does the playful, smart and deeply dutiful Vanthiyathevan well). He’s ably supported by the fabulous Jayaram, who is just what you always imagined Azhwarkadiyan Nambi to be.

Sarathkumar is majestic as Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar, the man who works with the smaller kings in Chozhanaadu to ensure Aditya Karikaalan or his brother Arulmozhi Varman aka Ponniyin Selvan (there’s lots to love in Jayam Ravi’s performance in the second half) do not ascend the throne after Sundara Chozhar (Prakash Raj). Parthiban is menacing as Chinna Pazhuvettaraiyar.

A.R. Rahman’s background score worked for me, but the songs, though nice, felt more like speedbreakers than as connecting links. Could they have made way for more interactions among the various characters that make up the chessboard called Ponniyin Selvan, and, in turn, added more heft to the screenplay? Or, would that have gone against commercial considerations?

One thing I liked about the writing was that it did not beat about the bush when it came to discussing anything controversial — especially, the Shaivite-Vaishnavite debate. Sparkles of Jeyamohan and Kumaravel here. Incidentally, Kumaravel also wrote the lovely stage adaptation of Ponniyin Selvan more than a decade ago.

The first half lags quite a bit, because you’re still getting introduced to people, with a brief arc for them, but the pace picks up in the second half, and once the ship sails to Ilangai (present-day Sri Lanka; it is a sight to behold), the film does not find itself all at sea. The coins move quickly thereon and quick bonds are forged. What remained merely a well-choreographed set sequence of battle in the first half becomes a thrilling fight in the river here, a fight to the finish in the forest and two men taking on Nature in the middle of the raging ocean.

It is unfair to review a film’s first part when it is clear there are two parts. This is more an introduction to the world of the Chozhas, before they became great. And so, I will still wait for Part 2, possibly not with bated breath, but with the knowledge that while it might not be great, it is still an honest effort by Mani Ratnam. I’ll wait for Part 2 to see that vintage Mani Ratnam touch — where just two people can make up an entire universe, where the human element scores over everything else.

Honestly, S.S. Rajamouli has spoilt us with his magnificently put together historicals, and thanks to that first mover advantage, we are all perennially going to compare every other historical to that. But, Ponniyin Selvan, while being about geographical largeness and a landscape that extends till the eye can see, is also about intrigue and deceit and what the human mind is capable of. It is as distant as it is intimate. I just wish they’d focused on the latter a bit more.

I won’t blame the book for that — after all, it was possible to compress it for the stage, without taking away anything from the story.

Mani Ratnam's Ponniyin Selvan-1 released in theatres on September 30, 2022.