Sethumaan

And what an amazing coincidence for

new Tamil cinema. Three cinemas in a
row, all dealing with complex social
issues in the hinterlands of Tamil
Nadu’s villages. To start, we had Arun
Matheswaran’s ‘Saani Kayidham’
followed by Arunraja Kamaraj’s
‘Nenjuku Nidhi’ and now we have
director Thamizh’s ‘Seththumaan’. All
these three films do not deal with the
stereotypes of caste hierarchies where
we see good and bad guys or locate
issues of the rich and poor in moralistic
terms. They help us, especially, the
disconnected urban middle class to get
a glimpse into the underbelly of our
Tamil rural landscape.
‘Seththumaan’ starts off with an
inherent advantage by basing the story
on a book called ‘Varagari’, written by
the amazing Perumal Murugan. Quite
often you see the film trying to be a bit
too authentic with the book’s
narration, especially in the beginning
when it introduces the character of
Poochi, the grandfather, played by
Manickam, taking his grandson
Kumaresan, played by Ashwin walking
through the arid landscapes to his
primary school. This sequence virtually
sets off the slow, leisurely pace
beseeching the viewer not to be
rushed into the usual conflict zones as
mostly shown in the first act.
The hyper-emotional clashes that take
place in the first act are extremely
localized, demanding the viewers to
imagine e.g. , how could a simple
chopping off a few branches from a
neem tree in the fields could cause so
much anguish between two cousins.
This complaint is taken to the village
panchayat level where some elders are
asked to pronounce a judgment. And
they charge a fine of rs 2000 which
should be given to the local temple.
What we are asked to witness the
multi-layered ways that caste
differences are treated in the rural
hinterlands of Tamil Nadu. The ways
that people are slotted into upper and
lower strata of their caste system are
complex and vary sharply from one
area to another. Because of situating
inequality from such a perspective, the
viewer is asked to desist from deciding
what is right and what is wrong but
instead watch and observe them with
complete mindfulness.
To make such perception possible,
Seththumaan does not have a single
actor who is even slightly known to our
audiences. Nobody carries any baggage
from their previous films. And to add
more authenticity I could clearly make
out the usage of ‘live’ location sound
by Pandian and the very subdued
music track by Bindu Malini creating a
sound design which lets us immerse
into this landscape of the year 2017.
The year 2017 is given a separate layer
in this narration by focusing on the
election of India’s second President
coming from the ‘dalit’ castes, namely
Sri Ram Nath Kovind. The first
president from the dalit community
was K R Narayanan. By projecting such
a layer we get to understand that the
subject of Dalit oppression needs a
different lens now.
Seththumaan literally means, the deer
in the sludge, and in this backdrop it
refers to a young pig which promises to
be very tasty when cooked. Generally
speaking, across most of small town
and rural India, whenever we witness a
colony of pigs we deduce that a dalit
hamlet is in the neighbourhood. Is that
why pork meat is almost never served
in our non-vegetarian restaurants?
Such an imagination of pork and a
delicious one at that, is indeed an
ironic metaphor of the ways in which
the writer Perumal Murugan and
director Thamizh would like us to
comprehend the film.
E.g. one has heard that dalits are
served tea in separate mud pots or
paper cops at roadside hotels. But in
this film we have Poochi’s friend
demanding to be served in a regular
glass tumbler and the shopkeeper
obliges; in another scene Poochi is seen
selling his bamboo baskets to a slightly
upper caste lady who wants to bargain
by slashing the price in a rude manner.
But Poochi is unruffled and argues back
saying that she can keep it free. On
that tone, she decides to pay the
original price. The film finally gravitates
to a long climax where all these
menfolk from a variety of caste
hierarchies choose to get Poochi and
his friend to get them a succulent pig
and have it cooked so that they can all
have a delicious party to the
accompaniment of local booze.
Cinematographer Pratheep Kaliraja is
at his best here, choreographing the
entire sequence, from acquiring the pig
till the ugly fight out at the end
between the cousins, with mindful
detachment, without getting into the
melodrama of their family stories or
the social narratives that have
stereotyped dalit oppression and
violence across the media. What stands
out in this amazing debutant work by
Thamizh and Kalairaj’s second venture
is their original style. They seem to
have the poise and grace which they
have absorbed studying great global
filmmakers who are grabbing eyeballs
across the new wave film circuits. This
film was screened at IFFK 2021, the
Indian film festival at Los Angeles and
though it has been receiving a lot of
acclaim so far, distributors seem to be
wary of testing it out in the regular film
theatrical circuit.
I would strongly recommend watching
‘Seththumaan’, currently streaming on
sonyliv, for it taught me the
importance how not to get into hateful
expressions but choose to restrain
oneself amidst the mindless violence
we witness today. Such restraint
should not be confused with stepping
back in cowardly manners but as a
statement of preparedness to launch
oneself into corrective action