Nandhan Movie Review: Era Saravanan’s Nandhan is set in a small village in Tamil Nadu where only people from a single caste have come into power as the village head. The fact that elections have never been held there is considered a matter of pride by the people living in the village, where the oppressors continue to hold complete power in their hands while the oppressed have no say whatsoever.
In such a setting lives Ambedkumar (M Sasikumar), a labourer who is beyond loyal to the village head, Kopulingam (Balaji Sakthivel), for whom he works. Even when Kopulingam mistreats him, Ambedkumar is constantly taking the former’s side and defending him, even against his wife Selvi (Suruthi Periyasamy). But when the single-caste rule of the village is challenged by Dalit reservation and when Kopulingam is compelled to give away his position of Panchayat President to someone from the oppressed caste, things get out of hand.
Kopulingam and the people of his caste are annoyed that those they consider to be beneath them are taking over the post of the president, for which they have had the monopoly for years. But the film glosses over this annoyance rather than delving deeper into it. Immediately after finding out that the Panchayat President’s seat will now be a reserved one, Kopulingam is on the lookout for an ‘ideal candidate’. The subsequent scenes of Kopulingam and those with him picking and talking about who could be the ideal president work well for laughs but also don’t help in establishing the gravity of it all.
Subsequently, he decides that Ambedkumar would be the ‘ideal candidate’, as his definition of the term is someone who will remain fiercely loyal to him. Usually, in a film that calls for change and that has a lead protagonist, the lead character’s arc and their taking on the mantle of change are heavily important. In Nandhan, the placement of the scene when the protagonist truly takes a stand for himself and his community is interesting. But even when he does that, we fail to see the character’s internal transformation, as just two minutes before that, he was ready to do something entirely different. Throughout the film, Ambedkumar acts as per what others tell him, including his wife, his fellow villages, and Kopulingam. The film fails to let us get into his head and make us understand how the words and actions of others are affecting him; this is especially true for the big scene at the end.
Additionally, the scenes where we see a primary character lying on the road after meeting with an accident and another in which a character is mercilessly beaten up naked are disturbing. But the problem with these scenes of inflicting torture is that these moments come across as if they have been curated for a shock value for the audience rather than to fully display the gravity of these characters’ plight.
Coming over to the performances, M Sasikumar and Suruthi Periyasamy are given underwritten characters and there’s hardly anything they could have done to elevate what’s on paper (and the on-the-face brownfacing doesn’t help either). Balaji Sakthivel, who plays a casteist and arrogant man, and Samuthirakani, in a brief appearance, have one-dimensional roles at their disposal.
All in all, Nandhan is a film with good intent made on a serious subject that has its moments, especially on the comedy front. However, the film falls short of effectively portraying the world it is set in and the character that inhabits it. Of course, the film doesn’t make a parody of its characters but with the subject it deals with and the actors who are part of it, the film could have been a much more engaging watch than the forgetful watch it ended up being.