This is a fiasco, brothers! A gallop through Europe. In this vein, Mani Ratnam decided to end his epic saga about the great ruler of Cholov Rajaraja I, aka Ponniin Selvan. The fact that the director prudently divided the film into two halves initially caused a positive response due to the scale of the literary work on which it was shot. Ratnam, in a literal sense, playfully managed to recreate a difficult historical plot in the first part, and even immediately get the maximum of praise, flavored with large box office fees. The filming of both films went without interruption, as it was originally planned to fit the whole story into one whole picture. However, the division of episodes into two separate projects turned out to be unequal, which did not affect the second half in the best way.
Characteristic of Mani Ratnam & #39; greed & #39; on actors involved simultaneously in the same project, also spilled over to the adaptation of historical prose, where the eventuality is not only off the scale, but also complicated by military battles. Ratnam was close to a perfect narrative structure in his first film due to a competent editing under the guidance of Akkineni Srikar Prasad himself, who worked on the grandiose & #39;RPP'. And the more striking is the episodic clumsiness of the second film, which not only worsens the artistic perception of the story, but also adversely affects its characters. Starts ' PS2' about the same as the previous part - a slow description of the past of Nandini (Aishwarya Rai) and Aditya (Vikram). This, by the way, is one of the few episodes in the film where we manage to catch at least some emotion. Another such episode was the second meeting of Vallavarayana (Kartik) and Kundavai (Trisha). The only scene in the whole film where a sensual spark really jumps between the lovers (of all existing couples). The rest of the events rush by, leaving nothing intelligible behind.
One of the critics noted that the director in the process of adapting the book for the script went far to the side. This is obvious because the author could not pay so ungodly little attention to his key characters. You can still accept the fact that the character of Ponniin Selvan does not appear on the screen as often, but what about the rest of the characters? Let’s go back to the first movie. There immediately appeared the three ' Musketeers' on behalf of which the story was to be conducted: Aditya Karikalan, his brother - Ponniin Selwan (Jayam Ravi) and their friend and faithful companion - Vallavarayan Vandiyadevan. Despite the fact that the name of Ponniin adorns the poster and in scientific history bears the imprint of the great ruler who revived the Cholov dynasty, it becomes clear from the film that his greatness owes not to his uniqueness, but to a greater extent to the courage, resourcefulness and spirit of his closest friends. Therefore, on the screen he appears mainly in episodes related to Vallavarayan. The same adventure in the first part was a lot to see. One of the most interesting and active characters. Against his background, Aditya stands a bit apart, although the director focused on the fact that because of him the whole fight with revenge broke out, which almost destroyed the entire Cholov state. In fact, Aditya had to have the most powerful storyline, because against him put the first beauty, who hated him terribly and loved him at the same time. This is to describe briefly who we are dealing with.
Throughout ' PS1' sound beautiful in the spirit of the time soundtracks Rahman, sprawling around chic scenery, and natural, and palace, intrigue and everywhere there are dizzying chases, fights that on land and sea. The film concludes on a promising note that the next installment will begin a massive battle for power and love. And what a disappointment it was to see how the battle was cramped to ten minutes of screen time, and love fell only to the hero Kartik in a small episode. Solid boltology and childishly stupid scenes enveloped all ' PS2'. What we managed to get away from in the previous film - from the total boredom, there reigned hopelessly. Ponniin was glorified everywhere and everywhere, and we were not even shown what he deserved. Especially strange was the love of the Sankians, when the story says that the Cholas mercilessly plundered their island and not very humanely treated the locals. Here, of course, there is room for artistic fiction, the Tamils will not revile their ruler. But also heroic deeds from the prince you will not wait, except there on the elephant rode, here a couple of times waved the sword and held the crown, that’s all.
What about the ubiquitous Vallavarayan? The pace of his adventure slowed down. He was constantly knocked out by anyone who was not lazy. He moved like Aladdin on a carpet, now he is here and now he is there. This style of movement applies to all characters, and also creates temporary confusion. When someone says, 'How many years have we not seen each other' it seems that they communicated only yesterday. Going back to poor Valli, who in the second part was extremely unlucky in all matters, I will say that romance did not particularly touch him. One single episode with Kundawai, and he cut off the harmful operator. However, the worst was done with Aditya and Nandini. We were waiting for the stupidest ending of their seemingly grand enmity. At least in the film, that’s how it was presented to us. All literary drama was destroyed. The tragedy of love didn't happen. Aishwarya also had a second personality in this story. This character kept the intrigue from the first film, but with the same success and she was mediocrely destroyed. If you tried to play drama, it was at zero. In order for the drama to work, the viewer must feel all the pain of the character, not just see him in pieces.
Mani Ratnam still overtook the problem when ' a lot does not mean quality ' Previously, he was somehow lucky that the scripts were not so large-scale, and even with an abundance of actors, he managed not to hurt anyone, but here it turned out that the story itself suffered because of the incorrect, in my opinion, distribution of events. In one movie, the characters are revealed, and in another, they become uninteresting because too much had to be stuffed into one movie. We would have divided it into three parts. The audience was clearly interested, so I wouldn't protest. Even Rahman’s magical music is so lost in the midst of it that no soundtrack can be remembered. In general, this historical epic succeeded exactly halfway. Although the film eventually became a hit, collecting an impressive box office, its artistic level is much lower than the first part. It cannot be perceived as an independent project, which means that, unfortunately, it reduces the cinematic value of the whole story.