As a topophiliac I am partial toward movies with place name
titles. Changes in geography shaped and reshaped under the wheels of time interest
me to no end. Madrasapattinam made me
look at the origins of the so-called authentic Tamil name, Chennai which became
Madras’s official name in 1996. Wikipedia says Madrasapatinam and Chennapatinam
were two different but nearby places. Madrasapattinam was a fishing hamlet near
Portuguese fort St. George and Chennapattinam was the settlement which sprang up
near the fort. Both their histories go back to 15th century. Between
the two how did the administration decide which one was more original?
Madrasapattinam, the movie, favors Madrasapattinam over
Chennapattanam. It is sort of like Tamilian’s Titanic cleverly adapted for
pre-independence era Madras. There are telltale signs of Titanic strewn through
out the movie starting with an old lady, a necklace, the old lady’s grand daughter, flash back to a doomed and fleeting love story and a handsome self
sacrificing hero who never gets old. Unlike Titanic – the movie, Madrasapatinam
was created to ride the box-office waves, not to sink without a trace. It has
romance of the most forbidden kind – gori mem falling for a dark skinned dhobi,
in the backdrop of the simmering Indian freedom struggle almost nearing its
date of fruition.
Arya and Amy Jackson play the roles of lovers separated by
class, race and political tensions. One of the positives about this movie is we
do not have Indians in crusty pancake makeup and blond wigs playing the role of
the British. Although 19th century British dialogs sound Dickensian, viewers’
misery due to this strait-jacketed language
is restricted to a few opening scenes.
The city of Madras plays itself. The director had me in his
pocket when he showed the transformation of Coovum river from a scenic serene
waterway to a narrow channel between trash heaps in the present day Chennai. CGI, though not seamless as historic Hollywood movies, is definitely better
than Salman Khan’s Veer a period piece from Bollywood from the same year, with more money and CGI.
Madrasapattinam has a lot of flaws in the script and
story department if you go at it with a magnifying glass. Most of the public who
spend money to watch this movie in Chennai’s cinema halls won’t be having such
a glass in their possession. This is a dreamy movie for the underdog, about
someone who attained the unattainable, with a strong thread of love and related
emotions binding it together. The movie's success at the box office is a proof that Indian audience always fall for that time tested trick.
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