Aaranya Kaandam | More than meets the eye | Video Essay Script | Moving Images
Hi, I’m Kishor and this is MOVING IMAGES. Every once in a while a movie has a trailer that piques your interest, so much so to make you watch it, and maybe even love it. But it is rare for a movie to make you do the two and also make you feel proud. Proud that the culture and language you love has produced such a masterpiece. One such film is “Aaranya Kaandam”. So what makes this movie of a first-time director Thyagaraja Kumararaja so great? Apart from inspiring countless quirky black comedies, that changed the face of Tamil cinema in the recent years, this film even after over 5 years of its release still remains significant.
And since Thyagaraja both directed and wrote this movie, I would like to talk about the three defining aspects of his writing. The screenplay, dialogues, and the story.
The screenplay of Aaranya Kaandam is one of the well-structured screenplays I’ve seen on-screen with the editing adding to its beauty. It follows three stories all put into motion by an aging gangster Singaperumal aka Ayya. He beats up Subbu as a way to vent out the frustration at his own inability to perform in bed, he tries to get his right-hand man Pasupathy killed after Pasupathy questions Ayya on his balls to take on a risky transaction with a bag of cocaine, and we have the father and son duo Kaalayan and Kodukapuli whose only possession and livelihood, a rooster, is killed by Ayya when Kaalayan on winning a cock fight gets cocky and teases Ayya as an old cock, questioning his power, victory, and sexual stamina. If you are seeing a common theme here, then I’ve got a surprise for you later in this video. The actions of Ayya leads to Subbu getting close with Sappai, Pasupathy to run for his life while also trying to save his wife from Ayya’s men, and Kaalayan coming into possession of a bag of cocaine that Ayya, his rival gang the Gaja brothers, and Pasupathy are after. This is where the first half of the movie ends and the second half picks up without losing a beat and ends in a racy climax. The second half is a mirror image of the first and serves as a cause and effect, resolving the stories in the same order it started. The screenplay is structured in such a way that it gives equal importance to all three stories and jump between them in an organic fashion that the audience never lose their interest. The scenes are interspersed with excellent BGM and an amazing sound design that has soundtracks from various movies playing in the background as part of the ambience that tells us what the scene is about.
These are only a few examples of the many gems and Easter eggs in the movie.
Such little details don’t take us away from the story but only adds to the experience. Which brings us to the second part of our video. Every line spoken has a purpose and it will come back in some way. Not a single scene or dialogue is wasted and they were all conceived with the sole purpose of moving the story forward.
And that brings us to the final part of this video. On the surface Aaranya Kaandam might seem like a gangster flick and the various animal related names of the main characters’ tie in with the name of the film which means Jungle chapter. But dig deeper and you’ll see that the story is actually about male impotency. How you ask? Let me explain. The impotency in this context is the lack of qualities that defines a man. First we have Ayya with literal impotency and his frustration on ageing and losing power and significance causing him to set things in motion for all three stories in this film. Then we have Pasupathy who is figuratively impotent or powerless against Ayya and his rival gang Gajendran and Gajapathy. The Gaja brothers’ impotency is … Kaalayan is a loser who lost everything to gambling and drinking. And finally we have Sappai, a coward who gets manipulated easily and is just. The story revolves on the impotency of all the animals in the jungle while a cunning lady fox manipulates her way to a better life. As Subbu eloquently puts it.
That concludes my analysis of this movie. I am sure there will be more things to discover as I re-watch this movie over the years and I encourage you to watch this movie too if you haven’t already. Until next time, this is Kishor signing off saying…
