The Jiggety Jig, Jig

Here the lines between actors and politicians blur and disengage at will. Actors enjoy the patronage of the ruling party so long as they appear to be endorsing its fortunes. When they play truant, which isn’t uncommon, they find their films blocked or blacked out from theatres. Comedian Vadivelu, a fan favourite, was sent to the doghouse after campaigning for the DMK, which lost to J. Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK. After a two-year exile, he only recently surfaced seven months ago with a comedy film. Vijay, a Kollywood superstar, has flirted with politics and has realised that as with everything else, there is a price to pay despite the halo of stardom and, no, you cannot please everyone.

Now the Sri Lankan Tamil issue is a highly emotional one—actors and directors have discovered that much to their peril (and often close to the date of their film’s release). Invariably, the call for withdrawal happens a day before the release. The Vijay-starrer Kaththi (The Knife) is no exception. While the film set the tone with an all-out attack on a rapacious soft-drink major out to grab the lands of hapless villagers and an indifferent media which didn’t see a story in the villagers’ plight, the engaging formula did not cut much ice with Panruti Velmurugan of the Tamilaga Vazhavurimai Katchi (TVK). Velmurugan, incidentally, is often described as a compulsive chaser of causes who had parted ways with the PMK to float his own party.

Kaththi was in his crosshairs and with a Sri Lankan connect it wasn’t difficult to get a spectrum of political parties to unite for the ‘cause’. Lyca Prod­uctions, the TVK alleged, had links to relatives of Sri Lanka president Mah­inda Rajapaksa. Sources in the know say that “we were assured that if we drop the producer’s name, the film would come to no harm”. The producer’s name was dropped and the movie was free to be released. “The ruling AIADMK party in fact helped us reach a solution,” says a source close to the film’s production.

Now Tamil Nadu’s ties with Sri Lanka have always been tenuous. In the past, an IPL match which had Sri Lankan cricketers playing had to be cancelled; an under-15-cricket tournament including the Sri Lanka team was packed off, and the John Abraham starrer, Madras Cafe, was blacked out of theatre halls. Cinematographer-director Santosh Siv­an’s Inam faced an unofficial ban in Tamil Nadu after distributors withdrew it from theatres following pitched protests from Vaiko’s MDMK party. The film was Sivan’s attempt to chronicle the last phase of the Sri Lankan civil war thr­ough the eyes of a child.

Again, here films are the favourite punching bags for fringe political groups who get mileage and attention from picketing theatres and the resultant clashes. The list of films targeted by them are legion. Thalivaa, Tupakki, Vishvarupam and now Kaththi, all in the span of two years or less, making actress Khushboo even wonder whet­her fringe groups were holding filmmakers to ransom in the state. “It is a wonder that just before their release the political parties call for a ban on the film. With crores riding on the films, distributors and directors comply with the demands which is a worrying state of affairs,” she remarked recently on Tamil Nadu. While Khushboo holds that political groups draw mileage from their protests and win immediate support, senior journalist M.R. Venkatesh says political parties and actors have often used each other. “Vijay has openly hobnobbed with political parties like the AIADMK and lent his supp­ort to the movement against cor­r­uption when Anna Hazare led it,” says Venkatesh. It is widely believed that Vijay too would embrace a political career. The annou­ncement hasn’t come but the flirtation with politics continues. That said, Kaththi’s woes are far from over. Tho­ugh the film was released on Diwali last Thursday, now  a public interest litigation has been admitted against the film in Madurai. There are reasons to believe that a political party is behind the PIL which has taken exception to a dialogue in the film which seems to suggest that political parties have made money from thin air (the allusion to the 2G scam is barely concealed)! Does the PIL enjoy the backing of the DMK, whose key politicians figured in the scam? There are no easy answers here.

The film’s co-director Venkat Mohan says, “We decided to remove the producer’s name after a few political groups protested the involvement of those from Sri Lanka in the production of the film. They said a Sri Lankan company should not be allowed to come into the Tamil film industry. We complied with their wishes.” It seems in Kollywood allegiances to a party or a cause make it impossible for the film fraternity to unite against an enemy that threatens its very existence and questions their right to express themselves through  films.

By Anuradha Raman in New Delhi