Periyar

Director: Gnana Rajasekharan
Cast: Satyaraj, Khushboo, Jyothirmayee, Satyanarayana, Manorama, Chandrasekhar, S S Stanley
Genre: Bio pic

The film traces the growth of Periyar from his young age to his death at the age of 93. It attempts to depict how a boy from an affluent family and a school dropout ,and a trader in his own right, gets transformed into a social reformer and a revolutionary who influenced the social and political fabric of his times.

Periyar's interaction with various politicians and other prominent people like Gandhiji and Ambedkar; his long-standing relationship with Rajaji despite their various disagreements; his differences with the Congress party and his walking out of the conference in Kancheepuram; his arrest and being jailed for allegedly propagating Communism through his journal; his public speeches and caustic humour directed at those who stuck staunchly to caste and religious rituals; his Self Respect Movement through which he propagated equality of humans irrespective of caste or gender; his foreign trips to propagate his cause; and his two marriages, all form part of the script.

The director, who, for 'Bharathi', had opted for an actor sans image (Shinde), this time goes for a star-actor. Satyaraj, no doubt, is one of those rare actors who is quite comfortable playing off-beat roles as he is in playing the typical hero in a pot-boiler. But this time he takes his time fitting into the role. In the earlier scenes we get to see the caustic satirical Periyar being played in typical Satyaraj style. It's in the later scenes of the aging Periyar that he gets into his elements and comes across well.

Finally, the director's earlier bio pic on 'Bharathi' was a much better crafted and a more sensitively narrated film, than his take on Periyar, the 20th century revolutionary leader who propagated equality of human beings, and dreamt of a society undivided by caste or religion.