The Scent of Betryal: Subramaniyapuram

Stories infused with the scent of betrayal make us so ambivalent that they provoke us to inhale more of that intoxicating scent, yet suffocate. The midnight wind swirling in our dark and empty streets smuggle that scent into our backyards whispering a thousand legends that could make the kiss of Judas, the bloody hands of Lady Macbeth and the coldness of Brutus sound like bedtime stories. Only a master storyteller can infuse the hollowness of the betrayed heart, into us. Producer-Director Sasi Kumar does that with ease.

Discovering skeletons in your closet gives more creeps than reading about a ‘ghost long long ago in a distant place’.  A betrayal story unearthed from one of our very own small towns guarantees a pulsating thriller. The movie opens with Kaasi, a released convict, being stabbed to death. The vendetta originates twenty years back in Subramaniyapuram, a semi-fictitious neighbourhood in Madurai.

The most surprising thing in this movie, at least for the modern day Tamil audience, is that there is no protagonist in the story. As the past unfolds, it is the Judas “Kaasi” who guides us into the streets of Subramaniyapuram. Though an obsolete technique, it quickly draws us into the heat and dust of the streets. The camera takes a long yet brisk walk into the past, into the plot, along with Kaasi who is rushing to meet his friends at their usual joint. From there, the movie slowly introduces the audience to the characters, and their interplay and conflicts.
Subramaniyapuram beautifully captures the 80’s timeline and projects it on the screen. The voice of Saroj Narayanswami on Radio raising and fading away as Kaasi passes a tea shop, fanatic children dancing around a Dhandora Man’s procession as he unveils the poster of a new movie coming soon to town [touring talkies], the advent of television, costumes, hair styling... all crafted to perfection. The efforts go a step further, in paying extensive attention to details like accent and body language of the characters. One can hardly explain in words how different would be the walking style of a present-day young man wearing low waist pencil-fit denim trousers, from that of the way someone in the yesteryears would have walked wearing a bell-bottom trouser. You need to see it. That’s how movies can justify their existence as an independent art form but not an extended adaptation of prose.

Tamil cinema needs to mature in exposing the true colour of blood. The colour of blood on screen has constantly been maturing in Hollywood since the time of Alfred Hitchcock. It started with tomato ketchup and into the more realistic 'dark red' colour used in No Country for Old Men. The gore here is a bloody treat that it reminds us of the slitting of a goat’s throat in an altar during village festivals. The camera is so brilliant as if we are a co-passenger witnessing the brutality.

[Spoilers!!!] The sequence where Paraman gets butchered, Kaasi walks out of the scene while the chopping, stabbing and groaning sounds fade away as he walks. Kaasi guides us into the timeline and leads us out of it. A method originating from the Citizen Kane where the camera crosses the ‘No Entry fence’ into the story, and exits at the same point. In a way, Subramaniyapuram is a complex labyrinth of snakes and ladders. Ironically, it is the snake Kaasi who leads us in and out.
All the technicians, especially the Cinematographer (S.S.Kadhir), the Editor (Raja Mohammad) and the Music Director (James Vasanthan) unleash their best, once the story becomes bloody.

Fresh flowers, incense sticks and sandalwood are used extensively in Tamil funerals. These pleasant fragrances penetrate into the gloomy atmosphere of the funeral and create a “discord effect”. The background score makes exactly the same impact. An old trick from Hollywood, where a classic symphony can create a discord effect in gore scenes. I do not appreciate the standalone quality of the soundtrack of Subramaniyapuram but its amplifying effect to the visuals. 

However ripe the harvest is, there will undoubtedly be some weeds in the paddy field. Cliched song sequences, playing too many 80’s Ilayaraja songs in the background to remind us of the timeline (yes! yes! we know this is the '80s).

Despite the flaws, Subramaniyapuram is a modern day classic in Tamil Cinema.

In the Greek mythology of ‘Pandora’s Box of Troubles’, at the beginning of mankind, there were no evils in the world. God gave a box to Pandora and asked her not to open it as it would unleash the evils (like lust, greed...) into the world. Out of curiosity, she opened the box from which all the evils dawned on mankind. As a provision for survival, as a tool to overcome these evils, God kept a remedy at the bottom of the box of evils. That gift keeps the mankind surviving... it keeps the system running... it is called ‘hope’.

After being plagued by a series of evils (the last one being Dasavatharam), new attempts like Subramaniyapuram, are trying to break these conventions and are installing ‘hope’ in the hearts of Tamil cinema audiences.