Visaranai

Pandi and three friends work as migrant labourers in Andhra Pradesh. They speak Tamil and are strangers in the city. One night the police pick them up. They have nothing to do with what they are accused of; but a theft file has to be closed and four men will do. They are beaten at the station. The purpose is a confession. Days pass and none of them knows what to admit, because they do not know the case. Then an official intervenes and the file is dropped. But it is not over. The four find themselves inside another file, and this time the matter is larger. Vetrimaaran directs. Dinesh Ravi, Samuthirakani, Anandhi and Aadukalam Murugadoss are in the cast. The language is Tamil. The source is M. Chandrakumar's book; the writer described what happened to him and the events took place in the seventies. The film was shown at the Venice Film Festival and won a prize there; it was submitted as India's entry for the Oscar. The matter it treats is custody; the film shows torture as a method rather than an exception. The narrative is in two parts; the first half the station, the second a political file, and the two are joined. The film does not make the violence stylish; the scenes are long and there is little cutting. The narrative does not show the police as one dimensional either; some of them are caught inside the order. Its limit is the watching; the narrative gives relief nowhere and the ending is merciless. Who it is for: viewers who like Tamil cinema and hard realist drama. Who it is not for: the violence is very explicit, the subject heavy, and there is no hope.