Thoughts on Ponniyin Selvan (PS) - 1
P onniyin Selvan (PS) – 1 – Ratnam’s eloquently fallible retelling of epic literature. Mani Ratnam ’s unending attempts to create a cinematic rendition of Tamil Literature’s Ponniyin Selvan have finally come to fruition after 2 failed attempts across several decades. I haven’t read the novel which spans 5 books and has its epic heart at the right place by starting off with the line “Let’s go back a century every second and cross a millennium. After 10 seconds, we enter the Chola Dynasty”. Quite recognisably challenging to take this subject to the screen, Mani Ratnam mostly succeeds in the daunting task of cinematically telling the first half of the novel. Why mostly? The intimidating task to bring a novel (which is utterly dense in breadth and depth) to the world of cinema always has an inevitable sacrifice to regress the story. Ratnam said that he would be sticking to the core thread, which is, Vandiyadevan ’s journey as an agent as well as a messenger in reticent...