It happened at the SVA theatre in Manhattan, New York. An unknown film, Anima and Persona premiered in the competitive section of SAIFF 2010 (The South Asian International Film Festival). The film had a little-known cast; a dark and grainy preliminary print and the first-time director had used stock music. Yet, at the end of the screening, AaranyaKaandam (the Tamil film had been given an English title for the festival) was feted with a standing ovation, and ended up winning the Grand Jury Prize for the best film.

Director Thiagarajan Kumararaja says he was not particularly elated at winning the coveted prize. “Of course, I was happy,” he says in a matter-of-fact manner that belies the extreme responses the film has generated. In India, censors were shocked by the film’s violence and use of foul language. They refused to clear the film even with adult certification.

The producers of the movie were in for a more rude shock when they approached the revising committee. They recommended that the film be cleared with 52 cuts. The producers were asked to get no-objection certificates from Kamal Hassan and Rajinikanth as a scene involved a character comparing the two stars. “The cuts suggested by the revising committee would have made the film incomplete,” Kumararaja says. “My film is called ‘AaranyaKaandam’ (Jungle Chapter). The language had to represent the wild side of man. It’s not my personal ideology. My characters speak that way. So we decided to approach the Tribunal (The Film Certification Appellate Tribunal, where one can appeal against the Censor Board’s decisions). To their credit, the Tribunal was much more open.” After getting a clearance from the Tribunal, AaranyaKaandam came out this June to favourable reviews.

A college dropout (by choice, he says) and an ad filmmaker, Kumararaja’s short film Becky was awarded the first prize at the NGO Ability Foundation’s one-minute film competition ‘60 Seconds to Fame’. He has also written the dialogue for the movie Oram Po, and the lyrics for a song in the film Va Quarter Cutting. “I started writing AaranyaKaandam after Oram Po. Pushkar-Gayathri (the film-maker pair who made Va Quarter Cutting) told about me to Charan (S.P.B. Charan, who produced AaranyaKaandam), I met Charan and narrated the script and AK happened.”

AaranyaKaandam, set in Chennai, is a gangster flick in which the story takes place in 12 hours. It traces back from the single most decisive moment in the lives of the six protagonists: a gang-leader looking for ways to regain lost control of his business, a trusted ally who becomes a man on the run, the gang lord’s mistress, who is trying to escape the claws of her tormentor (the parallels with Sita in the Ramayana chapter AaranyaKaandam are obvious), a hapless member of the gang lord’s entourage who tries to help the mistress, an innocent villager trying to cash in on an opportunity of a lifetime to salvage lost money and dignity, and his young son, thrust into a very adult situation.

Kumararaja shows remarkable control over the medium in the film. The non-linear style of narration, the ode to Quentin Tarantino (there is a superb scene in which a character narrates the story of Gajendran and the woman with the missing thumb, which may remind Tarantino fans of a scene from the film Four Rooms), the background score, the outstanding performance by the cast, the smart lines, all make AaranyaKaandam a compelling watch.

“But there are many people who did not like the film too,” the director admits. “But none of the scenes were designed to create a shock value. Take the nude scene involving Jackie (Shroff), for instance. This is a guy who once had complete control and then lost it. Things have gone completely wrong for him, he has lost his potency and the other gang has taken control of the business, now he is about to regain that control. And we needed to show this arrogance of the guy who is back to being on top.

On Jackie Shroff’s reputation for being a difficult actor, Kumararaja replies, “I am not aware of Jackie’s reputation,” he says. “On the contrary, he is one of the easiest actors to work with. He obeys the director’s vision completely, just like a child does. ”

The previous film that Kumararaja wrote, Oram Po, has slowly acquired cult status among film lovers in the six years since it came out. AaranyaKaandam looks set for more mainstream success. Producer-director Sanjay Gupta once said that Tarantino watched Kaante (inspired by Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs) and said he was proud of the remake. If Tarantino watches AaranyaKaandam, it is likely he will be envious.

BY Anand