At its core- the story theme is the same as Mahabharatha, Baahubali & Game of thrones, if you will.
One king is retiring. Who is going to become the next king?
The fight is for the Chola throne. The period is 968 AD according to Kalki.
Also, according to history!
A quick history lesson:
Parantaka-1 has 3 sons - the elder son died early in a war.
The middle son Gandaraditya became the next king. His son Madhurantaka was 1 year old when he dies.
So, Gandaraditya asks his younger brother Arinjaya to succeed him.
Fate played a game here!
Arinjaya died in a year after becoming king.
We have 2 choices for the next king here:
1. The 3rd brother and current king's son - Sundara Chola of age 20 (played by Prakshraj)
2. The 2nd brother and ex-king's son - Madhurantaka, of age 2 (played by Rahman)
They went with #1
24 years later, after Sundara Chola, who should become king?
1. Madhurantaka, age 26 2. Sundara Chola's 1st son Aditya Karikala (played by Vikram), age 25
Should the son of the older brother, or the grandson of the younger, be crowned?
A conflict as old as the Mahabharatha!
After multiple conspiracies, betrayals, battles, natural disasters,
The answer to this question is provided at the end of the book-5. (Part-2 movie!)
You are in for a delightful treat of a journey! A tale for the ages!
A historic moment for TN today as a non-DMK/ADMK CM will be sworn in after 50 years. Even expert pollsters missed reading the Vijay tsunami. This is no overnight success. He had carefully and consciously planned his politics in his films.
An unbiased 🧵on how Vijay won TN (1/n)
Vijay's rise starts with his father, SA Chandrasekhar, famous director who had observed MGR from close quarters. Infact, MGR as CM met SAC and said he'd watched his "Needhiku Dhandanai" (Punishment to Justice) film 5 times, offering him advance for his own MGR films productions.
SAC realised the power of cinema in capturing public imagination, as he'd seen MGR's charismatic image of a do-gooder. MGR was partly inspired by Hollywood actor and Democratic political activist Gregory Peck who often portrayed protagonists with ‘fiber’ within a moral setting.
If any of you feel disappointed with TN results, please read this thread that may change your mood:
You feel fearful or uncertain or confused about Vijay's TVK, which is understandable for multiple reasons - his having EVR as a leader, his Jan 14 Tamil New Year wish, his opposition to Parandur, promise of freebies, general lack of serious policies etc. But look historically.
DMK was built on a foundation of hate, with decades of toxic articles, cartoons, speeches, rallies which culminated with the anti-Hindi protests that finally catapulted them to power. As early as 1948, poet and Mahatma Ramalingam Pillai worried about our beautiful Tamil being polluted with such disgusting discourse.
You are mistaken if you think Dravidawood detests all Brahmins equally. It despises only the men. But it loves the Brahmin women so much that it wants to liberate them.
An important thread that deconstructs this "Give your daughter to us" theme from 12 films since the 80s:
The template is simple:
- A fair, innocent, spirited but 0ppressed TB heroine "Mami"
- Her family is a cage that cuts her wings
- Her fiance/family are regressive, passive, weak, beta males
- Her savior is a progressive, strong, alpha Dstock man who liberates her from her cage
Nat'l award winning Sethu (1999) illustrates this template precisely.
- Heroine: Abitha Kuchalambal (called Agragaarathu mami by hero's friends), daughter of a temple priest
- She is a innocent, temple-going, murukku-making trad girl
-Her fiance is a beta, fearful temple priest
Should you have children of spirit or children of blood? Are humans overpopulating our way into extinction?
Is demography destiny or is it a Hindutva hype?
What does history & science tell us?
How should Hindus think about these civilizational existential questions? (1/14) 🧵
In 1798, Malthus predicted that population would outgrow food. He was spectacularly wrong. The Green Revolution, technology, and human ingenuity turned scarcity into surplus. Credible economists have mathematically established this.
Yet, this Thanos-ish thinking is popular.
Civilizations don't collapse from too many people. They collapse from too few.
Global fertility is already below replacement in most of the developed world. Without using fancy words, lets understand the math with simple numbers. Then we will know the true risk staring at us.
Anbe Sivam is one of the finest films ever made. Kamal's performance. Vidyasagar's music. Vairamuthu's lyrics. It earns every tear. It also deserves a full ideological deconstruction, cuz you missed most of 'em!
A thread decoding the greatest leftist film in Dravidawood history:
There are 2 ways to push ideology through cinema. 1. Ranjith style in Kaala: loud, brazen, obvious. You see the propaganda clearly.
2. Kamal style in Anbe Sivam: seductive, warm, beautiful. You don't even realize u're being sold an ideology.
Exactly why we need to decode it.
Inspired by Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), AS is a road movie featuring 2 strangers with different worldviews, forced to travel together. A capitalist Maddy & a commie Kamal, stuck in a cyclone hit Bhubaneshwar, must find ways to reach Chennai urgently - that’s the plot.
Read this thread to fundamentally understand why leftists are completely rattled by Dhurandhar and what the non-left should learn from this reaction and what Dharmics must do to sustain this momentum (1/12)
Leftists usually mock and move on when amateurishly made non-left films like Samrat Prithviraj, Ram Setu, Razakar etc. get released. Infact, they even eagerly anticipate such films.
Because the amateurish filmmaking gives them a chance to mock the idea behind the film itself.
But whenever a well-made RRR/Kantara/Amaran/Chaava comes out, they get mildly anxious.
They know that the best way to spread an idea amongst masses is cinema, which is why leftists absolutely hate well-made films that don't align with their ideologies.