Virumaandi

A lawyer preparing a documentary against the death penalty interviews two prisoners in Madras Central Jail. Both describe the same events and the accounts do not match. In one, Virumaandi is the instigator of a bloodbath. In the other, he is a man marked out because he happens to own land with water on it. Kamal Haasan wrote, directed, produced and starred. The structure comes from Kurosawa's Rashomon and is applied here to village feuds and blood vengeance, but the real subject is capital punishment, because a court unable to establish which account is true is still going to hang somebody. The production has a story of its own. The film was originally called Sandiyar, and Dalit political groups objected that the title glorified caste violence. Shooting was halted and the name was changed. Its flaws are length and the amount of violence, at close to three hours with long stretches of fighting. Who it is for: viewers who like ambitious Tamil cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who avoids hard violence.