The tale of a superstar that was not!

Kaantha (Tamil, 2025)

Director: Selvamani Selvaraj

https://www.myvue.com/film/kaantha-tamil

The film marketed itself as a fictionalised account of the life of the first Tamil cinema superstar, MK Thyagaraja Bhagavathar (MKTB). However, when I watched it, I realised it had nothing to do with MKTB, his downfall, the crime, or the tragedy that befallen him. 

Just to clarify, MKTB was the first Tamil megastar at a Beatles level. In the conservative Indian society of the time, women would gape and faint at his first appearance in a film. During the curtain raiser of a particular film, he is said to have winked at the camera, causing a row of enamoured young women to faint. One of the qualities many prospective brides listed was for the groom to have long hair and a cropped MKTB-style cut. One of his films, 'Haridas' (1944), was screened for over three years, spanning three Deepavalis and filling the cinema to capacity. It holds the record for the second-longest-running Tamil film after Chandramukhi (2005), at 784 vs 890 days respectively.

As MKTB was riding high, he, along with NS Krishnan and Sriramulu Naidu, a renowned director, was charged with the murder of a notorious tabloid owner, Lakshmikanthan, in 1944. Lakshmikanthan specialised in publishing sleazy half-truths about movie stars, and many enemies sought his downfall. The trio faced trial in India, and Naidu was acquitted. MKTB and NSK appealed to the Privy Council in London, which is equivalent to the present-day Supreme Court of India, and were acquitted in 1947.

 

The multiple trials drained most of MKTB's finances. To add insult to injury, he was ostracised as a criminal, even after the courts cleared him. His popularity plummeted. Even his singing performances were shunned. The public felt that he was too tainted to sing the divine songs, and his music was fit for Goddess Sarasvathi. He died a broken man at 49 due to complications of diabetes.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245145/

On the other hand, Kaantha's story, undoubtedly set during the golden days of Tamil cinema, depicts the ego clashes between a popular actor and his mentor, the director who introduced him to the screen. Caught in the middle is a new actress, brought in by the director to complete his long-overdue project. She is torn between following the director's instructions and her growing feelings for the main actor, who is, however, married. The actress is shot dead, the police move in, and the rest of the story revolves around discovering who the killer is.

The film is quite enjoyable, nonetheless. One should not, however, ask absurd questions like what a 1970s transistor radio is doing in the set of a 1940s period drama. For the record, the first transistor was invented in late 1947 at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. The first transistor radio was released in 1954.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Social awareness or agitation?

Period. End of a Sentence (Documentary; 2018)

Arunachalam Muruganantham was seen in a TedTalk a few years ago with his low-cost locally made sanitary napkins and how he tried to make a change in the life of the average Indian woman. This is some kind of a showcase of what actually happens at the ground level - getting the ladies to express their issues about this social taboo, making them feel comfortable discussing this physiological phenomenon, to remove the stigma associated with its discussion, discussing the health risks related to their current unsanitary menstrual practices and promoting their homegrown self-generating pad making simple machine with local produce. 

At the end of this 20-minute documentary, the women are happy. The promoters are satisfied to have infiltrated into the sanitary business, creating a demand for something not there before. The users feel empowered for being able to control their body, to avoid embarrassment associated with menstruation. For the first time in their life, they had their voices being heard. This could the start of many steps towards woman empowerment. After all, society has long accepted that women maketh society.

Economist Muhamad Yunus, the Nobel Prize winner from Bangladesh, understood the role of women in the community when he came up with the idea of setting up his successful village-centric Grameen Bank.

But wait!

Isn't it funny that, at the time when the Supreme Court decision and the palpable public dissatisfaction over the lifting of the ban of the entrance of women of reproductive age to Sabarimala Temple, that a documentary about menstruation and ladies of India receives an Academy award? Is it a smear campaign to put the ruling party (which is pro-Hindu in its stand) and Hinduism in a bad light? Is it an anarchist or the leftist agenda to create mayhem and irreligiosity?

[N.B. Interesting title. Period as full stop which ends a sentence and the ending the sentencing of social restrictions imposed upon menstruating women]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.