Aayirathil Oruvan | The Philosophy Behind the Film | Video Essay Script

Hi my name is Kishor and this is MOVING IMAGES. The 2010 Selvaraghavan film Aayirathil Oruvan is an action-adventure film that was an ambitious attempt in Tamil cinema. Although a cult hit in recent times, the film was not received well during its time of release; partially due to the budget constraints that led to bad looking CGI and the tone of the film jumping from a fun adventure to serious war crimes and many things in between. To me it felt like two films clashing with each other.

The film is about an unlikely group of people that go on a perilous journey in search of a lost scientist based on clues left behind by him. The journey is filled with traps and perils. The group eventually finds a secret hideout only to discover an ancient civilization long thought to be dead. The hero is aided by the chief priest and he brings a change to the civilization. Although the story I narrated has been inspired from various sources, Aayirathil Oruvan differs in one key aspect and that is its philosophy. Today we are going to talk about a topic that hasn’t been explored much about the film. We are going to dive deep into the philosophy of Aayirathil Oruvan, and try to uncover the meaning behind the prophecy of the chosen one and how it was fulfilled.

To understand the philosophy behind Aayirathil Oruvan, let’s turn to Plato. In his work, Republic, Plato tries to compare the effect of education and the lack of it in nature. He explains it with a thought experiment. Imagine a group of people chained up in a cave. They have been chained since childhood in such a way that they can’t turn their heads. They are made to face a wall and behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners is a raised platform where puppeteers hold up various objects that cast a shadow on the cave’s wall. The prisoners have never seen fire, or the real objects. All they ever saw were the shadows of the objects. Such prisoners would mistake appearance for reality. They would think the things they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real causes of the shadows. They would hear voices echo off the walls of the cave and think that the shadows are the ones making the noise.

Plato continues, what if one prisoner somehow finds a way to escape the chains? He will see the fire for the first time and it will blind his eyes. Once his eyes have adjusted to the light, he will notice the real objects. A reality that is above the one he lived in all his life. Eventually he will make his way out of the cave and face the real world. He will look at the trees, the animals, and finally the sun. Plato argues that the sun is a representation of true knowledge here. The prisoner now learns about a whole new reality. Having received this knowledge, the prisoner will return to the cave to share it with his fellow prisoners and liberate them both from the cave and from their ignorance. But the minute he steps back into the cave, he wouldn’t be able to see in the dark, as he has grown accustomed to living in the light. He will stumble. The fellow prisoners seeing this will start to think that going out of the cave will harm them too. They will refuse to let go of their reality. If they get a chance, they will even try to kill the escaped prisoner so that he doesn’t challenge their reality.

Now the ancient chola kingdom hidden away deep inside Vietnam could be paralleled to the prisoners of the cave. They do not know anything of the real world and live in the shadow of a long gone era. The escaped prisoner is the thuthuvan or the chosen one, who returns to the cave with the promise of liberation to the fellow prisoners. As Plato said, the fellow cave dwellers do not accept his reality and even try to kill him. But eventually they accept his reality and learn from him. The liberation of the chola people promised in the prophecy is not their return to their now long gone motherland, but the liberation of their mind. The knowledge of how the real world is. This is shown when the king and his men learn how to tackle modern warfare from the chosen one. They put up a brave fight in a losing battle. Even towards the end, the king asks why didn’t the chosen one share more knowledge with them about the bombs and laughs. This shows that the cave dwellers have accepted the new reality. They do not ask the chosen one for the promise of returning to their homeland, but freedom of the mind. Even the last request of the king to the chosen one is freedom. He sees the shadow of his previous reality one last time before he dies. His people realize their place in the present world and sacrifice themselves. Although the cave dwellers were right to fear the real world for it did harm them in the end, they were enlightened before they died. A bitter-sweet ending to a great empire.

Now this by itself would have been an interesting study, but where Aayirathil Oruvan shines is showing another instance to Plato’s cave allegory. The Pandyas. The descendants of the pandyas were raised looking at the shadow or a phantom of the statue that was stolen from them by the cholas. They too are cave dwellers but the difference is their total rejection of reality and knowledge. In a way, Anitha too is a chosen one for her people, but instead of bringing back knowledge and a better reality after seeing the defeated cholas, she remains ignorant. The pandyas are people in high positions in the government and yet they wage war against a primitive and starved population. Their rejection of reality is evident in this scene where they wear ancient war armour and wield swords even when surrounded by modern soldiers. The pandyas get a chance to get out of their cave but remain ignorant and seclude themselves to their cave oblivious to what is happening outside it. They obtain the object that casted the shadow but use that only to replace the shadow. In the end, the pandyas thrive but never get to see the sun.

With Aayirathil Oruvan, Selvaraghavan shows us two sides of a prophecy and points out the dichotomy between the descendants of two great empires. The story also takes Plato’s thought experiment and shows possibilities to it. Until next time, this is Kishor signing off saying…