Papanasam

Papanasam takes its own sweet time in taking off. Almost the entire first half goes in setting up the character of Suyambulingam, a fourth-grade dropout, film fanatic and local cable operator who has risen up the ladder, from washing dishes to running his own small business. For Suyambu, his wife and two daughters are the world. They live in Papanasam (literally meaning ‘the place to wash off your sins’) in Tirunelveli district, a place where nothing much happens other than people gathering at the tea shop over vadai and kaapi or facing petty harassment at the hands of the cops. The big enterprise is the impending construction of a police station.

There’s a long ode to films—from Cinema Paithiyam to Deiva Thirumagal—obviously pleasurable for the core audience that would have grown up watching them. But for an outsider, what grabs one is how ingeniously movies help establish Suyambu—the guy who has educated himself through them, who knows cinema enough to figure that a chase can get an added dash of tension if you show a tight close-up in the middle of it, who knows how to set up scenes, whose entire knowledge of crime, punishment and the legal system derives rather impeccably from the movies. The pivot is Suyambu and the little details  of him—obsession with talcum powder and second-hand goods, Shivaji Ganesan curls and women’s magazines and a strong belief in compost manure rather than  chemical fertiliser. All this might seem entirely superfluous, to be needlessly lengthening the film. At times, you wish it could hurry up and come to the point quickly. But eventually, in the light of all the action and crime that follows, it all adds up well.

It also sets it apart from The Devotion of Suspect X, from which the film and its Malayalam original are said to have taken the basic premise—of an unknowingly committed crime and its clever cover-up, the perfect alibis, the confusing evidence, the mind games and what they all hide and reveal. The foundation in the world of films is the key, so is the overt emotional tug, the family angle, how children are a priority for parents. The devotion to an individual becomes familial loyalty. In fact, it goes further, becomes about one family against another. About a father against father, a mother against mother, about one’s loss and another’s guilt. A scene of confrontation and a final reveal are delicious, tho­ugh emotionally over the top. Kamalahaasan, with his epic histrionics, holds the drama toget­her. It’s his film all the way and he digs into the role with relish, with Gautami giving him graceful company. The surprise is the genteel, suffering Anant Mahadevan. Ajay Devgan has quite a task ahead as he heads the cast for the Hindi version.