Nayagan Vanthanadi Novel Pdf Free Download

[Alysa Guillama]

Thisis a very ambitious structure for a film where you want to retell the most beloved epic of the country even as you are analyzing the character of the most influential and popular person in its history and his brutal assassination. Here is where the film earns its 200 min running time. Kamal uses every minute of it. Each and every moment every shot, dialogue and scene is used in the service of the film to put these themes across and keep the story moving forward. The film is a pure cinematic experience where scenes without dialogues convey a hundred ideas. Every shot is so dense in detail and layers that even a European art film will pale in comparison. Even when dialogues are used, its to deepen character and situations. In short, Kamal as writer and director does a tremendous job with the difficult subject material

As the film follows Ramayana, each act of the film is structured on the lines of each Kandam of the epic. Sometimes 2 Kandams are squeezed together into a single act and not as linearly as the episodes in Ramayana. As I see it

Sita is split into Aparna and Maithili. Maithili being another name of Sita

Bharatha is Amjad Khan, Ram even calls him Bharath in one of the scenes

Hanuman is Abhayankar. He is a Hanuman Bakth and a brahmachari. The person who takes Saket across the seas to meet Raavana

Sugreeva, the monkey king from Kishkinda Kandam is the Maharaja who plans the assassination of Gandhi. Sugreeva helps Rama by providing him with his Army to kill Ravana, just like the Maharaja does here.

Its noticeable how he seems to have only a platonic relationship with his second wife in the initial days of his marriage. He repeatedly refers to her as a child and refuses to treat her as an equal. there is a scene where Maithili walks in to the bed room and Ram is seen to be zipping up his pants in away shutting out his sexual desire for her. Killing Gandhi becomes his solution for regaining his manhood. it could be noted that after he is recruited for the assassination of Gandhi, he becomes more virile and with the mixture of somarasam his sexual desire for his second wife is inflamed. He consummates the relationship with her more as as an act of violent aggression than an act of love

The plot to kill Gandhi is given a racial and caste angle. The participants are all either Brahmin or Kshathriya. The secret den where the conspirators meet have pictures of Hitler and Veer Savarkar on the walls. The ideology is made clear by the Maharaja, who is head of the conspirators, in his address, that if he have to keep the hindu soul alive, then this great soul (Mahatma) will have to die, because non violence is a feminine concept according to the ideals of the hindu culture and masculine valor based on violence has always been its hallmark .

Coming back to the narrative structure of the film, Kamal sets up the film with a series of brilliant echoes. To showcase the mindset of the Saket in two different stages of his life where he is alternatively the hunted and hunter. He has two wives and there are two love making scenes with each of them that bring out his mental state and the nature of relationship he shares with his spouse. In the case of Aparna it is she who takes the upper hand in the love making. He likes being subservient to her in everything. While in his relationship with Maithili, he is the dominant partner. He ignores her, becomes aggressively sexual towards her and then abandons her.

Two scenes of riots, first one in which Ram loses his wife and thereby losing his humanity followed by his befriending by Abhayankar. then the second one near the end of the film where he meets up with Amjad again. Amjad coming back in to his life is a signifier of his conscious and reason returning to him.

Hey Ram did not have an auspicious beginning. Kamal had started his magnum opus Marudunayagan. It was launched with great fanfare with queen Elizabeth being the VVIP guest. But soon enough the film ran in to financial troubles, after the foreign financiers backed out of the project. A devastated Kamal shelved the film after he had invested. some 10 crores of his own money in to the project. So to recover from the situation he immediately started his new project which turned out to be Hey Ram. Kamal should be commended that Instead of making a quickie commercial film to recover the money, he decided to embark on a project which was perhaps even more risky and artistically ambitious than marudunayagam. The film was very controversial for its time and he had to fight the censor board tooth and nail for protecting the integrity of the film. He also ran in to political opposition and finally when the film was released, it opened to mixed reviews and disastrous box office. Kamal who was already reeling from the shelving of marudunayagam suffered severe financial setbacks after Hey Ram, which was a very expensive film for its time. He had to fall back on doing safe commercial films for a while after that with mixed box office results until he would break the mold with the brilliant Virumandi, which happened to be his sophomore directorial venture.

Kamal is not as titanic a talent as Mozart or Van Gogh, nor does he live his life in abject penury or disillusionment. He has amassed wealth and fame living his life on his own terms. I always felt that he is more of a businessman than an artist or perfect mix of both . But there is nothing calculated or business like as far as Hey Ram is concerned. It is very much a work of great artistic integrity and one of the best films made in the county as far as mainstream commercial cinema is concerned. And like a great piece of music, or a great painting or a great novel that one can re read any number of times. I am sure that this film will continue to enrich and enthrall audiences for generations to come.

This was the first serious post i started writing for the readers write in after she instigated me to. But this fell apart as it became too big for me. But with time i found a way to shape this into a cohesive piece. i am still not fully happy with this.

Vivek narain, i think it will. even though, its not an entertainer like JMN or Junglee, the way our socio political scene is changing, People will marvel at the fact that a film like this was ever made. its very difficult to make a film like this today because of all the socio political pressures and it will be impossible, say in 10 years. at least not as a motion picture. perhaps possible only as a web series

And i feel that Tevar Magan, Hey Ram and Virumandi are 3 of the greatest screenplays ever written. If it was in Hollywood, Kamal would have got an oscar only for his screen writing. Kamal has benefited immensely from the workshops he attended in Hollywood. That Hollywodish technique, of moving the plot forward at any cost without being bogged down by any subplots or tangents even while keeping things dramatic is very much evident in his writing.

Even a film like Viswaroopam worked so well because he was directing. i dont think any other director could have pulled it off as well as he did. Makes me sad at his abandoned projects. one can only imagine the magic he would have created with Marudunayagam or Marmayogi

Big time fan of Hey Ram here. Along with Satya, I consider HR as one of the very few mainstream movies which are good for repeat viewing. I have seen both theTamil and Hindi version multiple times and I think they both excelled at different parts of the movie.

Here are the portions of the movie where one was better than the other:

The production quality of HR was very good. To recreate India of 1946-48 time-frame was not an easy task. Those Direct action days in Calcutta were particularly shot well. In another scene, even the right cover of Ananda Vikatan was shown (VD reading it in the plane).

Finally, finally, a post on one of the greatest films ever made in our country, brilliantly written and explained despite the fact no article can do possible justice to this gem of cinema. While the Ramayana aspect of the film is well evident, your reading of the film in terms of Julius Caesar is surprising and accurate as well.

Regarding the failure of the movie in the box office, I have a few points to add. There was a old article about Kamal Hassan written by Prem Panicker where he states that the movie, which was being made as a bilingual was being recorded with live sound, and some of the actors in the movie knew only one language like Shah Rukh Khan. Given the perfectionist that Kamal was, it was apparently a nightmare to shoot the movie due to the extraneous sounds popping up on the soundtrack, the wrong intonation by actors and so forth, One can only wonder how much these obsessions drove up the budget, especially for a movie of this unique nature, it was bound to fail. Later, Kamal too accepted that he should have made the movie at a lower budget

Thanks Aman, yes the film cost some 13 crs or so at the time which was more expensive than Indian But i dont know how he could have made the film on a lower budget. the epic scope of the film is one of the reasons why the film is so effective. the period details, the riot scenes,the special effects,.. you cant achieve that on a lowe budget

Beautiful piece. There is so much one can talk about the music of this film. i loved the way thirrupaavai was used so beautifully in the film. Also wanted to share a small slice of personal history. Many months before the movie got released, I was in my eighth grade, and learning Mridangam in Mylapore, where I was born.

Kamal Haasan did explain this feat in great detail in the written series he penned (for Thamizh weekly Ananda Vikatan) for several weeks until before he seriously ventured into politics earlier this year.

Thanks everybody again. I really appreciate it that a lot of people liked this piece. i never got so many likes and re tweets before. it feels really good as this one was very close to my heart. i never thought i could properly finish this

3a8082e126