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balladedutempsjadis · 11 months

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Ponniyin Selvan (The Book vs. Movie edition)

I've just today finished the five volumes of Kalki Krishnamurthy's epic historical novel Ponniyin Selvan, which was the basis for the two-movie series of the same name which I ADORED after I watched the first movie for the first time a couple of weeks ago. And ... I have some thoughts on the books and on the adaptation of the books. First of all, some general thoughts about the books:

I really wish I could read this in the original Tamil. In my understanding, these books are a beloved modern classic of Tamil literature, and the English translation, though perfectly fine and serviceable in terms of explicating the plot, rarely has memorable language.

Perhaps this is a function of the translation, or a different literary tradition, or the author's style (and I'll never really know which), but there is a lot of stuff that I can best describe as static. Actions and events are often described after they occur so as a reader, I felt distanced from what was going on in several scenes.

There are a LOT of coincidences (the entire Sembian Amuthan plotline is heavily based on coincidences) and repetition.

Even if I didn't know this was serialized, I would have guessed because of the repetition mentioned above, frequent flashbacks, and the padding out of some of the scenes. This isn't necessarily a bad thing (it reminds me of Dickens' novels, which I happen to be quite fond of) but it's definitely a hallmark of the novels.

I felt sometimes that Kalki was having a bit of a struggle with the historical characters having to do what they did in history versus his fictional characters like Nandini being able to do what they wanted. So sometimes I felt the characterizations were a bit lacking (and I definitely skipped some of Sembian Mahadevi's musings, SORRY!)

Now for the differences between the books and film versions (SPOILERS FOR THE BOOKS AND BOTH FILMS BELOW).

In general, with one exception I'll talk about later, I think the scriptwriters did an amazing job of adapting this immense series to film. In fact, for a number of things, I think they improved the pacing of the narrative and cut out extraneous stuff that detracted from the momentum of the main story - these were things that may have worked in a serialized novel but would have drowned even a gigantic six hour film series. All that follows is just my opinion, of course!

First of all, a fair number of characters were just cut out of the story, which I thought tightened up the narrative. (For example, Manimeghalai was completely unnecessary IMO for the story to proceed and she really detracted from the scene between Aditha Karikalan and Nandini when Karikalan dies; the intensity of that scene would have suffered from having anyone else observe it.) Poonghuzhali's brother and father (her sister-in-law Rakkamal is still there but not related) are gone in the film version. And that's all fine, I think it would have made things more confusing and I don't even think a tv series would have been able to use ALL these characters. (Also, I think I like that Poonghzhali seems more stable in the movie.)

I also liked that they cut out the astrologer. I thought the book relied way too heavily on the astrologer's predictions and while that may have been an accurate portrayal of 10th century Chola society, it also removed the jeopardy from the characters. If Arulmozhi Varman's sister would be confident that nothing terrible could happen to him because of the lines on his palm, then it was really hard to generate suspense about him within the story. (I mean obviously as readers/moviegoers we might know that he became Rajaraja Chola and therefore survived the assassination attempts, but his contemporaries and the fictional characters in-universe didn't know that he would end up being a great king.)

For me, it was more powerful to see how much the kingdom mourned him and his family mourned him than to have his sister shrug and be like "oh well, the stars don't say he dies so he's probably alive." And the way that they mourned him also helped develop their characters (To be fair, I also can't figure out what Kalki believed re:astrology either, because occasionally the author's voice is very skeptical about the astrologer as well.)

More controversially, I think they were right to cut out the whole Senthan Amuthan storyline about being the real son of Sembian Mahadevi and the previous king etc. etc. The hidden identity heir business was just way too melodramatic for me even in the book, and I don't think it would have worked at all for me in the movies. I mean, SA doesn't really even have much characterization in the book anyway (he's there a lot and helps out when he can but other than the fact that he loves Poonguzhali and has a nice voice, I couldn't tell you much about him.) Plus that would necessitate that Fake!Madhurantaka be Nandini's twin etc. and that would also have not been believable.

Now ... onto the main characters books vs. movie:

Aditha Karikalan: I honestly liked him much more in the movies than in the books. He was the tragic hero of the movie, with a clear arc, and Vikram brought oodles of charisma to his role. But in the books, he was a lot more opaque to me (his love for Nandini is not his focus - so he maybe falls in love with Manimegalai? - and that moment where he chooses to die isn't as crystal clear.) Also, Book!Aditha is a bit of an asshole towards all of his friends, frankly, which movie Aditha is not.

His chief faults in the movie are that he's ruled by his emotions (which is both why he sins against Nandini by beheading an unarmed man - Veera Pandyan - in a fit of rage that Nandini is pleading for his life AND why he tries to atone for that sin by committing suicide, which of course doesn't actually solve anything and in fact embroils innocent people like Vandiyathevan in a horrible situation).I still think he wouldn't have made a good king, not least because he would not listen to ANYONE'S advice, whether that someone was his grandfather, his friend, or his brother or his sister.

Book!Aditha might have made a better King - he actually goes to Kadambur not just to see Nandini, but partly in order to find out and allay the different Chola clans and possibly cement one of their loyalties by marriage to MM, so I thought that made for an interesting contrast. Even in the books, though, Kalki compares how the people mourned Aditha (as a great warrior whose absence threatened their kingdom's survival) and how they mourned Arulmozhi when he was believed to be dead (as a beloved son/brother even if they didn't know him personally.) The book (and movie though to a lesser degree because it's so preoccupied with Nandini/Aditha) has a lot to say about power and responsibility (so there are constant contrasts between not just Aditha and Arulmozhi but between the Pazhuvettarayar brothers and Arulmozhi - for example, over whether the Chola kingdom should supply the army in Elangai or whether they should live off the land. AMV is much more farsighted and knows how important it is to not make a conquered populace feel subjugated because they will rebel.)

Nandini: I feel like she was a lot more fleshed out in the film than Book!Nandini, and as she and Aditha were the emotional focal point of the movies, it makes more sense. Her motivations seemed clearer to me, and I also appreciated that we actually found out what happened to her, and she didn't just disappear off the page. I also liked, as mentioned above, that they didn't bother with the False!Madhuranthakan who was actually Nandini's twin etc. I liked that they fleshed out the love story between her and Aditha and gave Kundavai a role and also showed how it was Aditha's impulsive declaration that she would be THE Chola Queen that directly led to Nandini - who had done nothing wrong - being unceremoniously bundled off to wherever. (Would I also have liked a little more of how Aditha reacted to his family's banishment of Nandini? I think I would. Like we got a little bit of that in PS1 when he blames Kundavai for being jealous but not much more than that?)

Kundavai was very awesome in both book and film, but she had a lot less to do in the second movie. As I mentioned above, I loved that she actually believed her beloved younger brother to be dead so we got to see her reaction compared to Aditha's. (Aditha basically goes into beast mode and is like “I can fight whoever to avenge my little brother” and Kundavai is, as usual, a lot more rational even in the depths of grief.) I also really liked that brief scene the film gave us with all three siblings together which was a nice addition to the story. I felt there were not very many differences between Book! and Movie!Kundavai - although the book definitely played up her influence over her younger brother a bit more. She is the mirror to Nandini and maybe Nandini would have been like Kundavai if she had not had such struggles in her early life? I do like that in both books and movie, the female characters are so strong (I mean, well-characterized) and different from one another.

Vandiyadevan is just a great character! His resemblance to D'Artagnan was even stronger in the books (he had time for even more adventures) and his verbal sparring with Nambi was great and nicely translated to screen, I thought. I did think his presence in Kadambur and his (partial) witnessing of Aditha's death and aftermath was handled with more pace and worked better for me in the film (again, no Manimegalai was a great decision. And the picnic that Nandini goes on with Aditha and Vandiyadevan and MM and others (I think?) It was late at night when I was reading and I was like WTF so I might be misremembering it) dilutes the Aditha/Nandini meeting a lot. Anyway, back to Vandiyadevan - still sooooo charming. I loved Karthi in this role and am going to watch Kaatru Velliyadai (although I understand he's very different in that one!) sometime this week. But I found Book!Vandiyadevan lovely as well. I think his character translated perfectly from book to screen.

Arulmozhi Varman - I thought the books would focus more on him than they did, given that he's the title character. And I was a little surprised that he still wasn't the main focus of the books (though there's more focus on him in the later volumes), but there were some nice little character moments that I wish could have come into the movie. (Though there were a couple of things in the movie that I also really liked which showed his character beautifully.)

I read Kalki's afterword about how the pivotal scene in all of the books is Arulmozhi Varman's sacrifice of his crown, because that is an amazing thing for any ruler to do, to voluntarily give up his own power and step back. The books talk about the Chola ancestor Sibi, who was willing to give up his own life to protect a pigeon from an eagle because the pigeon was under his protection. I believe we are meant to understand Arulmozhi's sacrifice in a similar light. He is all about protecting the realm, even if it means sacrificing his own ambitions and that makes him Sibi's worthy heir. (In the Mahabharata, Arjuna is the peerless warrior prince, but his brother Yudhishtira is the Dharmaraja - the best of all; and I think we are meant to see echoes of Arjuna (and his son Abhimanyu, alone in the midst of his enemies) in Aditha and echoes of Yudhishtira in Arulmozhi.)

The books and the movie handle this immense sacrifice a little differently; in the book, we get a lot more motivation for that action: AMV is steeped in the history of the Singhalese kingdom and horrified by how bloody their succession battles were (he references fathers killing sons and vice versa more than once) and he is super clear that he doesn't want to bring that mess to the Chola kingdom or cause a civil war or anything like that. But there are two more elements as well, that I mostly got from the book: he truly loves Vanathi and she has sworn an oath that she doesn't want to be empress, so he can't have both Vanathi and the throne (but it's also a political decision, since if he's King, and marries Vanathi, then he'll be seen as privileging her clan above all others unless he marries a bunch of other girls as well). I also genuinely think he also wants to go hang out with Vandiyadevan and have adventures (while also doing the necessary jobs of fighting pirates and expanding trade and all that other stuff.)

The movies don't make that explanation as explicit, but there is this golden thread of self-sacrifice that runs through Arulmozhi's scenes in the movies as well: first of all, he refuses to take the throne of Elangai, though it is offered to him by the monks who crowned all the kings of the island. (This happens in both the books and the movie, but the books make this a more political decision - AMV says Elangai is too small for the scope of his vision, and that he doesn't want it to look like he's setting up a parallel second kingdom to the Cholas in opposition to his brother - whereas in the movies, it is clearly a matter of dharma. And the movie really sells that.)

Then Arulmozhi jumps into a stormy sea to swim to a ship full of people who want to kill him, in order to save Vandiyadevan. (I mean also some breathtaking confidence in himself that he and Vandiyadevan by themselves can defeat the Pandya rebels. He definitely does not lack for confidence :)) I cannot believe I actually forgot about this and had to come back and edit this post.I guess I am too used for Arulmozhi being awesome for this even to register on the scale?

The third self-sacrifice is when Arulmozhi is recovering from his life-threatening fever amidst the Buddhist monks at Nagapattinam. In the movie, somehow the Pandya assassins find out he's there and rile up the crowd which threatens to destroy the monastery which they claim is hiding their beloved prince from them. Although AMV is encouraged to slip away to escape the Pandya assassins, he refuses to repay his hosts by allowing their monastery to be destroyed. So he goes out to face the crowd, despite knowing that he's putting his life in danger by doing this. In the movie, he makes a choice to reveal himself and once again we see that Arulmozhi will always privilege the good of the people under his protection (the people of Elangai, Vandiyadevan, the monks, and ultimately the whole populace of the Chola Kingdom) over his own desires, and even his own life if need be. Over and over again, he shows himself to be the true heir of Sibi. (I also thought the elephant-goad plot was REALLY well done in the movie; even knowing obviously that AMV survived this, I was SO tense during that entire sequence. The book version just wasn’t as tense. Anyway …) So in the movie we keep seeing WHY Arulmozhi will be the great king he becomes but also why he will not take the crown at the end - and by not taking it, he makes himself all the more worthy of it.

In the book, in contrast, he leaves the monastery because there's about to be a devastating cyclone and it's not safe there any more. His disguise is revealed against his will by Rakammal hailing him as the prince; he's not given any choice in the matter. And he has very good and valid reasons for not wanting to reveal who he is which are also an excellent lead-up to his giving up the throne. Book!Arulmozhi wants to avoid a civil war over the succession at all possible costs. And he knows the public is fickle and easily swayed (there’s a whole subplot about there are rumors that HE had Vandiyadevan kill Aditha Karikalan so he - AMV - could be crowned, which only one character says in the film and everyone ELSE is like “Arulmozhi would NEVER!” But in the books more people seem like they are could be swayed by that thought - and giving up the throne to his father’s cousin is one spectacular way to give the lie to those rumors. And here’s also me, getting so angry on behalf of a fictional /historical character ;))

I think the movie version and the book version of this event both work really well for their respective media in terms of establishing who this man is, and what his character is, which lead up to his ultimate sacrifice.

The last sacrifice is, of course, that he give up the kingdom that *everyone* wants him to have. I think in both the books and the films, it's clear that the weird succession situation from his great-uncle Gandaraditha's day (where the throne when to the younger brothers of the king, and then to Sundara Chola - AMV's father - Gandarathia's nephew - rather than to Gandaraditha's own son) was bound to create a locus for discontent and coups egged on by the enemies of the Chola Kingdom. And that internecine strife is, from Kundavai's and AMV's perspective, what killed their brother and even put AMV in line to the throne at all. (They don't know all the backstory about Nandini and Aditha's guilt and his essential suicide. Also, I think it’s an interesting contrast between Aditha Karikalan who offers to give up the throne - once to the council of plotters where he says he’d do it if he had an army to go get himself another kingdom, and once when he proposes to Nandini that they just run off together. Arulmozhi had his chance at a kingdom won by force of arms - Elangai - and said no, and when he gives up the throne at the end of the books/movies it’s for love of the country he was expected to rule, not for love of an individual.)

The one thing I wish the movies had done was flesh out the Kundavai/Vandiyadevan and Vanathi/Arulmozhi connections. The actors did a lovely job with what they were given just from facial expressions and eyes (Vandiyadevan looks hopeless in love in the course of a single conversation when he's dressed as Krishna's uncle) and I bought into Vanathi and Arulmozhi's love for each other with nothing more than him reading her message in PS1 and a couple of times they looked at each other (so much love for Jayam Ravi and Shobita Dhulipala's facial expressions which sold the connection), but IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE FOR BOTH THESE COUPLES TO HAVE A CONVERSATION! But I realize I've seen a couple of Mani Ratnam's Hindi films (Dil Se, and Raavan - though I really want to watch the Tamil version of that) and he does doomed romance very adroitly. (Although from reading the plots of his several other films, apparently he also does do happy endings sometimes and I sort of wish we could have shifted the focus from Nandini/Aditha A LITTLE BIT to maybe just get a tiny conversation between these two other couples the I also loved. But at least I got some crumbs in terms of the full videos of the songs of "Veera Raja Veera" (for AMV/Vanathi) and "Aga Naga" (for Kundavai/Vandiyadevan. (FYI, the Veera Raja Veera video song is super hot - Rajaraja Chola is looking at his beloved while she dances as though she is an extremely tasty snack he can't wait to sample :P)

ALSO, if anyone wants to make PS3 with these actors I WOULD LOVE YOU FOREVER. In my head, it would be about Vandiyadevan doing wild stuff and flirting with EVERYBODY while Arunmozhi Varman sort of sighs and goes along with him to try and exercise some control over him* because Kundavai will kill him if anything happens to her boo, and they keep getting embroiled in weirder stuff and getting hit on the head (Vandiyadevan) and chilling out looking at Buddhist cave art and talking to elephants (AMV) and Kundavai just sits back and continues to run the kingdom (because she knows that AMV will not let anything happen to her boo). And of course, Nambi would be keeping an eye on both of them as well. Meanwhile, Vanathi is doing lots of dancing and going on some of the art tours with her husband, and also hanging out with Kundavai and rolling their eyes over their husbands. That would be totally fine!

*one of the things I loved in the books was that Vandiyadevan is influenced by Arulmozhi to be more truthful and upstanding, while Arulmozhi gets more devious after he meets Vandiyadevan. I feel this dynamic (along with the real-life bromance of Karthi and Jayam Ravi - every interview I've seen with them is the two of them having a great time!) would be AWESOME.

OK, this is insanely LONG again but I really enjoyed the novels and the movies - each medium enhanced the other for me, and in my head, the version of Ponniyin Selvan is what takes the parts I liked the best in movies and film. So Movie!Aditha and Movie!Nandini, BOTH the Vandiyadevans, Kundavais, Arulmozhi Varmans and Vanathis live in my heart :D

And I've also acquired Anirudh Kanisetti's Lords of the Deccan (which is more about the Cholas' predecessors and opponents like the Rashtrakutas and the Chalukyas) and Kamini Dandapani's Rajaraja Chola, which is about Ponniyin Selvan (but also about his predecessors and successors.)

#ponniyin selvan #Ponniyin Selvan 2 #aditha karikalan #arulmozhi varman #kundavai #vandiyadevan #vanathi #aishwarya rai bachchan #vikram #trisha #jayam ravi #shobita dhulipala #mani ratnam

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