Ponniyin Selvan - 1

There are some books which are very difficult to adapt to a film because of various reasons. One which makes Ponniyin Selvan a hard one to convert is its brilliant epic scale writing. Having read the book PS-1, this is one of the historical fiction, regardless of the language it is penned, should be rated much higher when it comes to this genre. The book is so fantabulous that you tend to think how a film could be possibly taken within a 6 hour span ( including both the parts) confining to an engaging screenplay.

We know the craftmanship which Maniratnam as a director brings to the table. One of the greatest directors which the Indian film industry has seen, he has a knack of adapting to the growing film making technology. During the recent past we have seen a lot of period film which haven't hit the right chord with the viewers. But one should look at PS-1 and say this is the template that we should follow. From the art direction, music ( Ar Rahman) costumes, cast and much more, PS-1 ticks all the departments.

With a star studded cast including the likes of Vikram, Aishwarya Rai, Trisha, and Jayam Ravi, Karthi playes the most prominent role in the first part and undoubtedly nailing it in his own style. The performance of every characters elevates the film even though it is written differently from the original book. It is also important to add a cinematic essense to the screenplay while not going overboard. And Maniratnam succeeds in doing that which makes this film engaging in most of its runtime. The language used in the film is ancient Tamil and most of the normal film goers would find it difficult to understand. And the other thing which goes along with this is the characters and their relationships in the film. It would take some time to understand the heirarchical structure of every families. Barring the above minor flaws, the team has pulled off nothing short of an epic.

The film ends on a well crafted cliff hanger which keeps all of us awaited for the second part. Let us all hope Maniratnam comes off with another epic which should potentially be rated higher than the first part!