For example, the veshti that Periyavar (Sanglili Murugan), the village leader, proudly wears and has colours of both the warring castes, is stained by his faeces. With an acute sensitivity of caste, the film is also replete with several political symbolisms. It signifies that caste is a system solely run and preserved by ‘upper’ caste males, while women and Dalits watch as silent helpless spectators. I deliberately say male caste members because while the said fight takes place, women from both Thekkoru (south) and Vadakkuoru (north), along with Mandela and Giridha, watch from a distance as males fight to ‘protect’ their ‘pride’ and demolish the public toilet. In a hilarious turn of events near the public toilet, males of both sides get into a skirmish as they fail to come to a consensus on who gets to take a dump first. No member of any of the castes wants to use the toilet after a member of another caste is done using it.
Midway through the film, a Vadakkuoran says that this is no time to waste in thought as the pride of the caste is at stake.Īs caste governs every aspect of life in the film, it also hinders people from using the newly installed public toilet. For the male members of these castes, protecting their caste pride is more important than thinking. The audience not only discovers how the village treats the outcast Mandela, but also ridicules the way in which the two rival castes, who are seemingly equal in caste hierarchy, treat each other. His doubts are at last cleared when Giridha says that if he likes the name he can keep it. An example of this can be seen when as he refuses to sit on a chair until told to do so, and keeps asking Giridha and Thenmozhi (Sheela Rajkumar), the postmaster who helps him search for a new name, if Mandela is an upper-caste name. Throughout the film, Mandela is terrified to even slightly disturb the caste hierarchy. This fact is also reinforced when villagers refuse to call him Mandela and continue to verbally abuse him. This symbolises how centuries of oppression and appropriation by privileged castes have not only wiped out Dalit history, but has also compelled Dalits to only accept the perspective through which the oppressor caste views them. Though his assistant-cum-friend Giridha (Sideburn) doesn’t like it, Smile accepts it without a question, as years of shaming and abuses have made him forget his original name. Mandela, before changing his name, is often called Smile, Podhu (commoner), Elichavaayan (jackass) and other abusive slurs. It dives straight into the day-to-day lives of these people.
The film does not explore the conditions that have made Mandela, the protagonist, an outcast or Rathnam (GM Sundar) and Mathi (Kanna Ravi), the respective leaders of Vadakkuoru and Thekkoru, privileged enough to hold clout over fellow caste members in the village of Soorangudi. Here again, the caste of these factions is not mentioned, and it is left for the audience to assume that they belong to two separate castes, both being more privileged than Mandela’s. This is regularly displayed as people from the two rival factions - Thekkoran (southerners) and Vadakkuoran (northerners) - are always threatening to kill each other, as is Mandela (Yogi Babu) either in the name of caste pride or to secure enough votes to win. Caste-based violence in Mandela is communicated through well-written dialogues, which tell us how brutalities are deeply embedded in a caste-segregated society. It is also not naïve enough to not talk about violence, which the former have faced for generations. Mandela, unlike many of the movies that deal with the dynamic between ‘upper’ castes and Dalits, is not a violent movie. This article will discuss how accurately or inaccurately it has managed to show the nuances of the world around us.
Living in a small village in Tamil Nadu, he tries to escape the identity his the village has forced upon him, while simultaneously struggling to create and claim a new one.
#Mandela tamil movie movie#
The movie narrates the story of a poor barber whose caste is not mentioned, but Ashwin expects us to know that he belongs to a Dalit caste. Mandela, a political satire directed by Madone Ashwin, reflects the darkly amusing society we live in, while also being extremely conscious of regressive caste structures and faulty political practices.
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