Karuppasamy (Charlie), his wife Valliammal (Ishwari Rao) and daughter Mallika (Varalakshmi Sarathkumar) live in a secluded house in a village in Dharmapuri district. They sell their land due to debt and work as laborers on the same land. Malli is also nostalgic that she did not get married due to poverty. In this environment, Arjunan (Sandosh Pratap), who quits his job as a journalist and wanders from town to town, asks permission to stay at their house for one night.
After initial hesitation, they agree. Mallika knows that Arjuna has a lot of money and jewels and plans to kill him and take them. She also gets her parents to agree to this decision. Who is Arjuna? Was he killed or escaped? What happens to Malli’s family in the end? The rest is the story.
Written in 1915 by Rupert Brooke, the English Orang play was staged in Kannada in the 1980s. Dayal Padmanabhan, who adapted it and directed the Kannada film ‘Aa Karala Ratri’ in 2018, brought it to Tamil. This is the first Tamil film for Dayal, a Tamilian who has directed 18 Kannada films.
Director Dayal Padmanabhan has recorded the reality that desire cannot be avoided in human life but the danger of his life turning upside down due to that desire with less characters, natural story environment and realistic scenes in a compelling way.
The success of the screenplay is that the main characters of the film decide to do a great harm, but it is poverty, debt and contempt of the village that drives them to do so. At the same time, it is also worth noting that evil thoughts and actions are not justified in any way.
The first half moves very slowly despite being just under two hours long. The story seems to lack the density required for a full-length film.
The village, the houses, the setting of the story, the characters, their dialect, style, dress and manners all take us to the village of Dharmapuri district in the 1980s. Actors like Varalakshmi, Charlie, Iswari Rao, Santhosh who play the main roles, but also the actors who appear only for a couple of scenes like Gangayan who becomes blind, Kavita Bharathi who becomes a policeman, Subramania Siva who is the owner of the liquor store have transformed themselves into characters.
Cheliyan’s stunning cinematography transports us to the time and place in which the story takes place. Sam CSS’s background music helps add the necessary tension in the second half. The songs that play in the course of the story attract attention.
This film is heartily welcomed as it records the inevitable realities of human life and the social environment where ordinary people are torn apart without prioritizing entertainment.