In Tamil cinema, it’s been a century-old fixture to see the superstar breaking the fourth wall to speak directly to his audience. MGR has done this, and so has Rajinikanth, with dialogues and songs all pointing to a possible political entry and what it would entail. Naturally, Thalapathy Vijay too became a part of this sub-culture in the last decade, and it became common for his films to speak of matters that are bigger than the scope of the film he’s speaking through.
Yet it’s impossible to recall another film that pushes the star-audience dialogue to such an extent that you fail to make out where the film ends and where the manifesto begins. In Jana Nayagan (The People’s Leader) we see this push towards politics right from scene one. When Vetri (Vijay) helps “uplift” an old man who has fallen on the ground, he doesn’t use his arms alone. He uses a copy of The Constitution of India to help up the old man. Minutes later, Vijay’s intro scene ends with one half of the frame being filled with a flaming graffiti of MGR nonetheless, forcing us to see Vijay as his lone moral successor. There is no subtlety in Jana Nayagan’s symbolism, but to be fair, that’s what makes it fun as well.
The film is narrated using two flashbacks with one following the other. It’s told from the point of view of a police officer who is trying to inspire a set of fearful villagers to get out and vote. What he’s narrating is a story of courage and of a man named Thalapathy, and the parallels between truth and fiction simply write themselves from thereon.
At least in the first half, Jana Nayagan feels like a faithful remake of Bhagavanth Kesari, its source text, spending a big chunk of its runtime establishing the bond between Vetri and Viji (Mamitha Baiju) and why he wants her to join the army. There’s a softness in these scenes, and you also see the film use this time to create real characters and the interpersonal relationships between them that make them people we want to care for.
But a moving drama about a man and his adopted daughter doesn’t seem to be the creative brief given to filmmaker H Vinoth. Just when you allow yourself to start caring, the film switches gears and returns to making the dozen political points it wants to. From an intimate drama about women’s safety and the need for women to fight their own battles, the film’s scope is widened to start talking about much bigger matters.
Jana Nayagan goes from being a film about Vetri and Viji into one about Vetri's fight to take on two bad guys. There’s nothing accidental about the writing that has gone into either of these two villains. First, we meet the “local bad guy” with Prakash Raj playing a corrupt politician. Vetri’s issues with him are said to be age-old in a dialogue; we see Prakash Raj’s character Roja taking pride in claiming that his family has a 50-year-old history in the state’s politics.
But as the film progresses, Vetri too moves on to a bigger, more international villain with a name that sounds hilariously close to Hitler. Naturally, a man named Himmler (Bobby Deol) does not believe in democracy, and he can’t wait for the day India's democracy turns into a dictatorship. It is also this bad guy that creates communal issues within the State of Tamil Nadu, something Vetri and a group of supporters must counter.
These parallels are hilariously over-the-top, but it is also unapologetic as a stage for the film’s lead actor to deliver his biggest campaign speech yet. At this point, one wonders if it’s even possible to look at it simply as a film. What if Jana Nayagan wasn’t Vijay’s final film? Would we be tempted to remain this kind in our reading of the film? Maybe not, and that’s also because it’s an overstuffed and overambitious film that wants to solve every single issue on earth.
Unlike Bhagavanth Kesari, which focused on one or two themes, in Jana Nayagan, we see a film grappling with everything in its star’s manifesto and a struggle to figure out a cohesive way to say it all. Which means that apart from women’s safety, we get a rushed speech about good touch and bad touch. We also get a speech about corrupt politicians and another about the importance of democracy. We then get a bizarre army of robots attacking Vetri as though it is a warning about the future of AI. Somewhere in there is a sub-plot about how greedy politicians use religion and communalism and how we must all come together to counter it.
None of this adds to a compelling film that’s trying to tell you things you haven’t yet heard before. But the film itself feels so aware of the bigger things it’s being used to say that its cohesiveness or its entertainment value feels less important. Anirudh’s music and Sathyan Sooryan’s visuals too feel strictly in service of the film’s messaging, rather than finding a clever new way to convey what it’s trying to. What matters finally is the surreal experience of watching one of our cinema’s biggest superstars perform on screen for one last time — seeing him walk away, even while he’s at the top of his game.