We all hear voices!

Maaveeran (2023)

Written & Directed by Madonne Ashwin 

"I am not doing it; it is the voice in my head. It is telling me all the time to do things. I am sorry!" says the hero. 

"You are telling me someone is telling you things," says the crooked badass politician as he slid the throat of his political manager. "This guy (pointing to dead man) has been nagging for 22 years. Don't do this, do this, not like that..."

That pretty much gave a perspective to the message hidden behind the movie's story. 

We are inundated with commands all the time. As toddlers, voices told us to watch our steps, be careful. As school children, we were warned not to forget to finish our homework. As teenagers, we got an earful for lazing around. Then we were told to get our lives together. Yet another forewarning that we are marrying the wrong person, and it goes on. Not to forget the inner voice that keeps harassing us that we would be punished for wilfully doing something 'against our conscience'. 

Then we sometimes must listen to both sides of equally compelling arguments to make a final decision. It takes work. 

Remember the other (they say better) half who constantly reminds you that we are forgetting this and failing that and are not good enough. As if the constant voices from your mother are not gruelling enough, in adulthood, we have to deal with our spouses, bosses and contemporaries. This and that, and the inner soul tickles every now and then. The constant battle between your heart and brain is quite deafening. 

Still, we are all left lonely. 

So, when somebody without form just appears out of the blue to talk to us, gives direction on what to do and goes to the extent of predicting what will happen next in your life, would it not be a welcomed godsend? Sadly, most people do not think so. We want agency over our lives. We rather experience life, the thrills, the spills, the falls, warts and all.  

This 2023 movie is a sci-fi Tamil comedy. It is interesting that these days, a family-fare movie can be so violent and still be accepted as normal. Violence is mainstream, and a machete or knife is always lying around. Pacifism is no longer a virtue. It no longer brings back the status quo. One must fight to claim and reclaim what is his. This is the new Hindu teaching, which was proposed by Subash Chandra Bose when he opposed Gandhi's Satyagraha and established INA. Godse justified Gandhi's assassination by suggesting that nature is violent and that there must be cataclysmic violent events for change to happen.

Sathya, an unassuming young man, is a cartoonist contributing to a local newspaper. He likes to keep his nose clean from controversies after seeing his father fight the unwinnable war against the establishment and losing his life. Unlike the character in his cartoon, who fights for justice, Sathya likes to avoid confrontations.

When his family is relocated to a shoddy low-cost apartment built by corrupt politicians, the dwellers of the flats fight back. Sathya tries to pacify everyone. 

After a lot of family melodrama about his cowardice, Sathya attempts suicide. He escapes death but somehow hears the character of his cartoon, Maaveeran, speaking and guiding him to bash up and defeat the politicians and his goons. An entertaining movie.

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