‘Thandatti’ movie review: Pasupathy shoulders a partly entertaining, mostly inconsistent drama

A still from ‘Thandatti’
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

At its surface, Thandatti is a procedural drama. ‘The Case of the Missing Thandatti’ would’ve made for a lovely title had Arthur Conan Doyle based this story in yesteryear suburbia UK, if they liked South Indian culture’s heavy earrings worn by elderly women instead of the north’s Koh-i-Noor. Instead, director Ram Sangaiah chooses a small village in Theni as the backdrop, where Thangaponnu (Rohini), who has given everything she had for her four daughters and one son, is dead and the siblings are now fighting to get their mother’s final possession, a pair of earrings.

While the conflict seems straightforward, it’s the road to the solution that’s riddled with its own issues. Subramani (Pasupathy) is in the last leg of his career as a cop, and because of being someone who abides by his own rules instead of the ones his contemporaries believe in, one more trouble at work can spell disaster for his post-retirement life. When Thangaponnu’s grandson requests Subramani to help him oversee the final rites, he enters troubled territory, because the people of Kedaripatti don’t believe in the concept of the police being a part of the official purveyors of law and justice.

Only when things can’t really get any worse, Thangaponnu’s thandatti gets pilfered, and Subramani has to battle the odds to get to the bottom of this case. We also witness the equation of four sisters, who are at loggerheads with each other and would go to any lengths to get their mother’s jewel. There’s also their brother Sopaandi (Vivek Prasanna), who is invariably intoxicated and seen intimidating Subramani.

Unlike the usual cop stories we’ve seen where the uniform begets respect, the film follows the trials and tribulations of a small-town cop who is forsaken by his team, but still doesn’t back out from his mission. While it’s no secret that Pasupathy is a fantastic performer, films have rarely tapped into the comedic side of the actor.

Even in films like Mumbai Xpress, Majaa, Kuselan, Vedigundu Murugesan and Idharkuthane Aasaipattai Balakumara, where we got a taste of his humorous antics, the sequences usually involved a fellow star or a comedian. Thandatti lets him have the entire stage for himself and he puts on a brilliant show. Be it the vulnerabilities, the reality of how he’s one among the villagers and not above them, the incessant urge to maintain law and order and the emotional climax sequence, Pasupathy scores well and makes it worth the wait for those who wondered what he’ll do after his stellar performance in Sarpatta Parambarai. Rohini’s film choices have consistently been brilliant, and Thandatti is yet another addition to the recent set of films like Witness, Ante Sundaraniki and the Jiivi films which leaves you wishing she had much more screen time.

What also works in favour of the film is the quirkiness and humour that are unique to the rural backdrop. Be it the smaller conundrums created by the villagers that Subramani has to tackle or the running commentary in the form of oppari the elderly women of the village sing – often taking a dig at Subramani’s investigative skills or the lack thereof – these sequences are hilarious. If Ee.Ma.Yau., which also revolves around a funeral, relies on dark humour, Thandatti plays to its strengths which, in this case, is the innocent actions of the villagers. Only when these sub-plots overstay their welcome do they end up feeling like forced additional layers to an otherwise straightforward film. This is annoyingly visible in scenes involving Vivek Prasanna’s character whose idea of terrorising Subramani is to repeat the same threat again and again.

My biggest grouse with Thandatti are the tonal inconsistencies that don’t let you linger in an emotion, irrespective of whether it’s a comedy or a emotional sequence. Like a rollercoaster with multiple loops that takes you up and down at breakneck speed, the film jumps from one emotion to another and it ruins the previous scene’s momentum of delivering whatever it wanted us to experience.

The cartoonish background score for the gags doesn’t really help either. Given how all the promotional material focuses on Thangaponnu’s death, there’s an unnecessarily long stretch that involves the search for her. In one of the film’s best scenes featuring Subramani and a bigshot who tries to stop the procession, we get to know that Subramani has the brawns to control a situation if required. While it’s a fantastic mass sequence that pops out of nowhere, it nullifies the ones before, where Subramani tries to evade a drunk Sopandi because of the fear of being attacked by him. While it’s obvious that it was just another scene to generate the laughs, it makes you wonder about the selective justice Subramani serves, given he doesn’t do much when Sopandi slices another man’s tongue right in front of him.

The film also showcases the perils of caste, and the purity of love and there’s even a 96-style conversation in the end. Thankfully, filmmaker Ram Sangaiah keeps them all real instead of getting preachy. There’s also a beautiful ‘life comes to a full circle’ angle to the primary cast of the film and the thandatti’s birth and end involving fire is a wonderful allegory to them. The final reveal, in spite of being poignant and heart-touching, opens a new set of questions as the age differences between characters don’t really add up. Despite the film being far from perfect, because of the inconsistent writing, the fewer scenes that work make an impact on us. Thandatti reminded me of Karthi’s line to Narain at the end of Kaithi… “It’s broken, but it’s still gold.”