TEAFF 22: Mr. M wins our hearts

TEAFF 22: Mr. M wins our hearts

On paper, I could have seen all four films on the final day of the Third Eye Asian Film Festival. But, of these four, I had already seen the first, In the Name of Fire/Swaha, so the fare choice was reduced to three. Dahej, a V. Shantaram restored classic, Human Resource, from Thailand, part of the Asian Spectrum, the closing film ad Mr. Manickam, and Indian entry in the competition section. However, it did not go that way. I was invited to review a Hindustani film as a critic, part of my job, which meant that I would have to miss all but Mr. Manickam., considering the show timings and venues far apart. Dahej, I believe, would be available for seeing even after the festival, and Human Resource was scheduled late in the evening, necessitating long distance travel, and dinner at midnight. Rather unhappily, I skipped the two others and decided to watch only Mr. Manickam. And what a treat it was!

Shot in the Tamil language and based in Kerala, the film is directed by Nanda Periyasamy and runs for 122 minutes. It is moral tale, with the sermonising kept to a bare minimum, and elements like a motorcycle chasing a bus, corruption in the police force counter-balanced with honest cops, the evils of dowry, the do good common centre-piece of all religions, the plight of a girl who stammers, the greed of the have-nots to grab an opportunity that will pull them out of their impoverished status, and rare honesty triumphing against all odds, in the end. In Tamil, the title would be Thiru Manickam, with Thiru being the equivalent of the English ‘Mr.”.

This Manickam is a poor man, selling lottery tickets at a make-shift, tiny stall for a living. He is married and has two young daughters, one of whom stammers. He earns enough to make a living, but not much more. One day, an old man, whose daughter is sent back to her parents’ home in a state of advanced pregnancy because he did not give them gold for dowry, comes to his stall, to buy lottery tickets, in the hope that he will strike it big, and pay-off the daughter’s in-laws. He strikes up a conversation with Manickam, as he chooses the tickets from various lottery operators, displayed on a plank. After he has chosen the ones that he thought would be lucky, he looks for money to pay the vendor, in the folds of the lungi/mundu that he is wearing. To his horror, he finds that the money is not there. Unsure where he lost it, he requests Manickam to keep his chosen tickets aside, and tells him to wait for a day, when he will return with the money. Actually, he dropped the money while getting down from a bus, and it was found by a beggar-girl. She shows it to a blind woman, who feels it and realises that it is a currency note of Rs. 500, and thanks God for sending her this much-needed bounty.

The old man does not show up the next day. Just then, Manickam receives a phone call that one of the tickets he was given to sell has won a prize of Rs. 1.25 crore. After much introspection, he decides to trace the old man and give him his ticket to fortune. The only clue he has is the name of a village that he had seen, printed on the bag that the old man was carrying. It is far away, and Manickam’s conscience tells him that the he should not keep the prize for himself, although his family is in dire straits and claiming the jackpot for himself would get him out of financial crisis, and should deliver it to its rightful ‘owner’, and never mind that the buyer has not paid him for the purchase yet. Against all advice and threats from his own family, that they will commit suicide if he does not return home with the ticket, he gets on to a bus and heads for the village of the old man. His family pleads with a Christian Father, who they revere, though they are Hindus, to come to their help. The Father puts them on to a police officer who works in the cyber-crime department. This officer agrees to trace Manickam’s whereabouts with a phone-tracker, and Manickam’s brother-in-law gets on his motor-cycle, to catch-up with him and bring him back.

Except for the introduction of an intrusive Britain-returned, local self-righteous, obnoxious character in the bus, an avoidable lapse of good screenplay (the director himself) there is no other person on screen that seems unreal or unnecessary. The dowry bit is a little overdone, though it might be as real an issue in TamilNadu and Kerala as Periyasamy has projected. Every actor looks his part and sounds convincing. Secularism is neatly woven through, with the Manickam family always looking up to the Father, and, in a flashback, Manickam telling his family how he owed everything he is now to a wandering Muslim lottery seller, whose trade he inherited. It is not just a feel good film. It is more than that. It is a tribute to honesty and uprightness, in an age of rampant corruption, with morals winning over ‘maya’ (greed, illusion), against very heavy odds. Try and catch this film, even if you do not understand Tamil, for there are English sub-titles, and the incidents and plot points are pan-Indian. And don’t miss the compelling performance of Nasser as the Muslim lottery-seller, once again proving his versatility.

Rating: *** ½