As I sit to write this post at 11:30pm in the night of Diwali eve 2023 (Happy Diwali Peeps!), I start to think of the genesys of this post. I have after all not written anything for the past 2 years and been just paying this WordPress subscription without using it for anything.
But today morning this post’s idea came to life.
Let’s go back exactly 9 years, 3 months and 8 days.
It is 3rd August 2014, a normal Sunday in Trichy. It is sweltering hot in Agate hostel of NIT Trichy. Lying in that hostel, there is a message written by my friend Nirmal at 7am that the new movie Jigarthanda is getting glowing reviews and we could probably catch it for the morning 10.30am show at Ramba Theatre near Chatram Bus stand.
To give context, we have just started our first year at college and our fresher orientation is still going on. According to the rules, we are not supposed to go out of college till orientation ends owing ragging scare and other security issues, but Nirmal being Nirmal always finds a way :p.
He helps us sneak past the security gate giving the pretext that we are second years and are just going for a movie. Nirmal and 8 more of us We caught the usual stainless bus attached below to Chatram Bus Stand :p.
These stainless buses are the norm for any NITT student to travel to and from the city to college!
Finally we sat down at the theatre and started watching the movie. Karthik Subburaj the director of the movie had already delivered a hit movie called Pizza, so there was considerable expectation on the movie as well.
Starting from the first scene we knew Jigarthanda was not ordinary movie by any means. The extraordinary OST from SaNa was something unheard of till now and way the story moved was unpredictable by any stretch of imagination to a normal tamil movie audience back then.
The story of Jigarthanda put in simple words is about an aspiring director who goes to madurai to get to know about a gangster and make his life as a movie. But as fate would have it, the gangster himself would end acting in the movie and what happens when cinema enters both their lives.
Image courtesy: Google
Bobby Simha as Assault Sethu landed his lifetime role as a gangster who owns a theatre in Madurai and runs all the illegal activities in the city.
The first half of the movie is a proper gangster movie with introductions setup and some crazy twists happening near the interval. The ‘Sounderuh, sketchuh unakku dhan’ scene still gives me the chills while watching in YT or Hotstar. Tension keeps building 20 mins before the interval and by the time the iconic interval scene arrives with SaNa’s earth shattering background score, all of us had goosebumps.
The second half of the movie shifts completely it’s tone and turns into a dark comedy with absolutely ridiculous stretches happening. By the end of the movie, the director character ends up making the movie and Assault sethu gives up his profession as a goon and takes up acting full time.
My first thought when I look back at the movie is how well the character of Assault sethu was designed and how it evolved into a completely different person by the end of the movie.
More than the characters and everything, the below photo of us taken during the interval brings back some tear inducing memories.
Back to 2023
Karthik Subburaj has taken 5 movies since Jigarthanda 1 and done a bunch of other stuff as well. To KS’s credit, he did discover the amazing actor in SJ Suryah with Iraivi and Tamil Cinema owes KS big time for that.
But his last 2 movies received overwhelmingly mixed reviews and there was no hype to Jigarthanda 2 as it released yesterday on Nov 10th. Reviews started coming out yesterday morning and they were surprisingly favoring the movie. Everyone seemed to believe that this was KS’s best works in years and this prompted our gang to go see the movie today.Seeing the reviews, we decided to go catch the movie today.
The sequel has the same one line wherein a filmmaker and a gangster make a movie about the latter’s life but the overall storyline and presentation is completely different.
The sequel has both SJ Suryah and Raghava Lawrence as it’s leads. Whatever you saw as the trailer is just the tip of the iceberg and I highly recommend anyone who’s reading this to go watch the movie in theatres.
It is easily the best tamil movie of 2023 in my opinion and the last 40 minutes will surely make Vetrimaaran proud of how his works have inspired a whole bunch of directors to write amazing content. Honestly the last 40 minutes of the movie in itself gives bang for your buck.
Raghava Lawrence has delivered his best performance after Kanchana 1 and SJ Suryah is just inches away from getting a national award for his acting. I hope this movie gives him that recognition.
There is everything in the movie ranging from comedy, action, twists, gore and tears. I am sure there will be atleast 3-4 moments in the movie where you will have a lump in your throat or slightly well up.
BGM as usual is amazing from SaNa and the last 40 minutes are just unimaginable by any stretch. KS has proven his mettle as a great director once again and I hope he continues this streak to make some great movies.
Why write this post anyway?
When I look back to Jigarthanda 1, it not only represents my favorite work of Karthik Subburaj, but it was also the first time I had gone out as an adult and watched a movie without having anyone to protect me incase something goes wrong.
Jigarthanda represented my leap from a boy to a man and how I can no longer depend on my parents or relatives to help me out. It was me starting a new phase in my life where I had to take care of myself and find out ways to survive.
Everytime I hear the BGM played in the climax with gibberish lyrics, I picture how much I have grown up from there and how I have met so many people in my life over the last 9 years. Almost all of them have helped me become the person I am today and I cannot but thank each and everyone of them enough.
I have failed a bunch of friends, lost touch with them and messed up a few friendships along the way. But I hope this post serves as the starting point of me trying to mend some of those friendships and try to be a better person.
All of this would not have been possible if Jigarthanda 2 turned out to be an damp squib though lol :p. So the biggest thank you goes to our own Karthik Tarantino for making a worthy sequel that can stand tall infront of it’s prequel.
Like how Karthik Subburaj has become a better filmmaker in the last 10 years, I too have changed a lot and honestly I don’t know if the 2014 DJ would even identify with today’s version of me lol. Thank you KS for helping me jog this memory and realise how much I have grown in the past 10 years.
I feel like I have not even started in my life but there’s so much story to tell already. Hopefully all these memoirs don’t go down as a mid life crisis but serve as an interesting account of my thoughts and their change over the years.
Summing up
Once again, Happy Diwali Peeps!. Do yourself a favour and go watch both Jigarthanda 1,2 when you get time. You won’t get disappointed by them at all.
Jigarthanda 1 is streaming in Hotstar and it’s free now! (Do yourself a favour and not watch it’s remakes like Bacchan pandey etc, they are absolute trash)
Disclaimer: Except for the selfie and the bus photo, the other photos are not owned by me and I have taken them from Google search. So credit to the creators for those images.
மௌனம் 