Two of a kind

To be honest I was more scared than thrilled at the prospect of watching Paradesi given the pedigree of its director. Bala is the master of pathos, whose films have a heart-wrenching portrayal of the not-so-ordinary people of the society. If Sethu dealt with the transformation of a college student into a mentally retarded person, then Nandha was about a protagonist who gets killed by his mother. If Pithamagan revolved around a grave digger, then Nan Kadavul dealt with the lives of Aghoris and the travails of beggars. I enjoyed (though with a heavy heart) his first three creations, but Nan Kadavul didn't impress me and hence skipped his penultimate offering Avan Ivan. So here I was re-entering the world of Bala after a break of one movie and hence all the trepidation. You might ask why force myself to do something when I am not so comfortable doing it. That's because deep down I have lot of respect for Bala, who has the rare ability to create unconventional characters that get completely assimilated into the narrative without disrupting its flow. And added to it there were all the rave reviews floating on the internet.

The milieu is a rural village in Madras Presidency during the British Raj. The first half is focused on establishing the lead characters and providing a glimpse into the social dynamics of the village. There is the protagonist Rasa raised by his harsh yet doting grandmother, whose sole purpose of existence is to fill the stomach. Then there is his uncle who is always drunk and seems to have lost count of the women he had impregnated. And we have Angamma, an effervescent village damsel who engages in lighthearted banter with Rasa. A major highlight of the first half is the marriage sequence which brings to the fore the interplay between different characters. There is also the sidetrack on the booming romance between the Rasa and Angamma. And just when you were on the verge of forgetting this is a Bala movie, there comes the first reminder in the form of the 'Kangani' (slave recruiter). From then on it is a one way descent into agony and suffering.

The Kangani on the pretext of providing better wages along with food and shelter, convinces the villagers to work in the tea plantations owned by the British. But once they reach there, they realize they have been duped into working in absymal conditions and there is no way out of this hell. Right from the British to their fellow countrymen, they are betrayed and exploited till they give up and surrender to the futility of the situation. You can't help but wonder if there is any other species on this earth which so shamelessly exploits members of its own kind just for its own betterment. Kudos to Bala for exploring a relatively unknown dark  episode of our own country in such a gritty and poigant manner without any commercial compromises. And he is ably supported by his cinematographer and music director who capture the mood through their sepia visuals and melancholic sounds.

But when you are watching such movies where the innocent are just free-falling into more and more suffering, the viewer becomes disillusioned and gets submerged in a sea of grief. So for all those distraught souls who want to indulge in some vicarious pleasure of good bashing the evil, I would suggest watching the English movie 'Django Unchained' directed by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is a maverick genius known for his unconventional but highly gripping narratives, which have complete disregard for both history and geography. In Django, he choses a theme very similar to that of Paradesi, the era of black slavery and racism in the United States of America. But in his own inimitable style, he uses slavery as a running leitmotif and unleashes an improbable chain of events through some strange concoction of characters. 

The movie begins with a German bounty hunter releasing a black slave from his white masters and together they indulge in bounty hunting, with the final goal of freeing the black man's wife from a notorious white plantation owner. True to its intended Western Spaghetti style, we see the protagonists riding on horses with cowboy hats, drawing guns at the speed of light and shooting anything that is white and mean. Then there are the Tarantino regulars like the insane shootouts where blood becomes spray-paint and internal organs get splattered all around. Amidst all this there are the occasional glimpses of racial segregation and the inhuman treatment meted out to the blacks, which have striking similarities to scenes in Paradesi.

The movie becomes more engaging when the protagonists meet the plantation owner to rescue the black man's wife from him. From then on there is a palpable tension in the air as to how the events will turn out to be. The sequence at the dinner table in particular keeps you at the edge of the seat and it is made all the more gripping due to the stellar cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Christopher Waltz and Samuel L.Jackson. And the roller coaster ride comes to an end with an incendiary climax, that is befitting of the outlandish yet enjoyable narrative that preceded it. So for those feeling very heavy after having Paradesi as a main course, you can try a light dessert named Django Unchained.