Letting out a spoiler during the film Maamannan’s audio launch, Tamil filmmaker Mari Selvaraj said that his anti-caste film with Vadivelu and Udhayanidhi Stalin in the lead roles was “inspired” by the cult classic 1992 film Thevar Magan. Mari said that the powerful character of ‘Maamannan’, his film’s protagonist, is a reimagination of ‘Esaki’, a subservient character in Thevar Magan who is willing to sacrifice his life for his master ‘Sakthivelu’, played by Kamal Haasan. It is no coincidence, according to Mari, that he chose Vadivelu, who plays Esaki in Thevar Magan, to now play the reimagined character of Maamannan.

Mari establishes the politics of Maamannan from the very first shot, just like Thevar Magan (1992). The older film opens with the shot of a portrait of Subhas Chandra Bose; the camera then slowly pans and lingers on a portrait of Muthuramalinga Thevar, who was the Tamil Nadu chief of Bose’s Forward Bloc party in the 1950s. Thevar was also a leader of the Mukkalathor people, a powerful group of land-owning castes that are bound by politics and kinship in the southern and central districts of Tamil Nadu. Thevar is revered to this day by the Mukkalathor and reviled by Dalits who see him as a symbol of caste-Hindu pride and as the principal instigator of the Ramanathapuram riots of 1957 between Dalits and Thevars that broke out after the murder of Dalit leader Immanuel Sekaran.

Still from Thevar Magan, showing the portrait of Muthuramalinga Thevar

The establishment shot is used to set up the character of ‘Periya Thevar’, played by Sivaji Ganesan, a feudal landlord who practically rules the fictional village of Thoovalur. Mari Selvaraj uses a similar frame to establish the politics of Vadivelu as Maamannan, a Dalit leader. In his film, the camera focuses on a portrait of Dr BR Ambedkar.

While Thevar Magan is a film about rivalry between cousins from the same community, Maamannan is entirely inspired by the relationship between the Thevar patriarch, Sakthivelu, and his loyal servants such as Esaki. Mari explores what happens if a character like Esaki becomes ‘equal’ to their landlords politically.

Esaki is from the same community as his master in Thevar Magan but from a lower class. Mari reinterprets him as a Dalit man and turns the class difference between Periya Thevar and Esaki into caste difference between Maamannan and the landlords.

Still from Thevar Magan: Esaki (Vadivelu) standing with folded hands next to Periya Thevar (Sivaji) 

In Thevar Magan, Sakthivelu is a well-educated young man who returns from London. He does not appreciate his father’s ways of dealing with issues. He is a modern man who approaches the police and the court to resolve crises, unlike his father. He also protests against the practice of retributional violence and promotes peace. But he never protests the way his father struts around with authority or against how everybody is expected to stand up to show their respect when he passes by. He never tries to preach equality in his house. Is that not violence?

Even after Periya Thevar dies, Sakthivelu does not put an end to this practice. In fact, he turns into the same man that his father was. This is what Mari Selvaraj tries to address in Maamannan where the feudal lord ‘Rathnavelu’, played by Fahadh Faasil, is the villain as opposed to ‘Sakthivelu’ in Thevar Magan who is the hero. In Maamannan, the feudal patriarch ‘Salem Sundaram’ (Azhagam Perumal) passes away leaving behind a legacy of caste pride constructed by acts of dominance over marginalised communities. In a telling scene, Sundaram advises his son, Rathnavelu, to never lose a challenge to those who are beneath them in the caste ladder.

Mari Selvaraj’s Maamannan (meaning Emperor) is a Dalit MLA from a reserved constituency, who is conscious of his humble roots. Instead of showing his power like Periya Thevar in Thevar Magan, Maamannan asks everyone who comes to his house to sit equally with him and preaches equality, as opposed to Periya Thevar.

The other ways that Mari makes a case against Thevar Magan is the way he shows the love and respect between father and son. Being a patriarch of the house, nobody is allowed to sit on the furniture in the presence of Periya Thevar, and Sakthivelu is no exception to this unsaid rule.

One of the reasons why Thevar Magan works is because of the beautiful relationship between the father and son. As Periya Thevar, Sivaji delivers a phenomenal performance. He is a man who asserts authority over others but is vulnerable around his son, showing the love he has for him. Both Kamal and Sivaji create magic with their spectacular performances.

Mari interprets this love and respect between the father and son in his own way in Maamannan. Maamannan addresses his son Athiveeran (Udhayanidhi) as ‘avar’ (a respectful way of addressing someone). In the dramatic scene, Rathnavelu’s goons come to attack Maamannan’s house and he decides to make a stand. In preparation for the attack, Maamannan makes sure his son is seated before he sits next to him.

This scene is an immediate callback to a crucial scene in Thevar Magan where a dispute over a thoroughfare being blocked leads to a ‘panchayat’ of village elders. The camera tilts from above and shows Sakthivelu standing next to his father with folded hands showing his respect, while Periya Thevar is seated. A still from this scene was used as the poster for Thevar Magan, and Mari also used the same image in his posters.

Still from Thevar Magan

Undeniably this was Mari Selvaraj’s brilliant way of subverting the narrative set by a classic film like Thevar Magan. As an anti-caste filmmaker from a Dalit community, Mari has given a perspective of how oppressed communities were presented earlier in films and how he reinterprets them giving them lost dignity.

You can hear Mari’s voice against the stereotypes and portrayal of Dalits in Tamil cinema who were either caricaturised or shown in poor light when Vadivelu in a stunning rousing scene says, “Naan palaya Mannu kedaiyadhu. Em Magan uruvaakuna Maamannan” (I am not the old dirt, but an emperor).

And this is not the first time that Mari has made a commentary on other films from his perspective as a Dalit filmmaker. In his second film Karnan, the director seemingly makes an assertion against Mani Ratnam’s Thalapathi, which stars actors Rajinikanth, Mammootty, Arvind Swami, Shobana, and others. Thalapathi is based on the story of Karnan from the Hindu mythology Mahabharata. Except for contemporising the story, Thalapathi does not deviate much from the original story and perpetuates the casteist notion of lineage and merit by birth.

In the original story, Karnan is a Kshatriya but grows as a Shudra, but Mani Ratnam turns this character into a Brahmin who does not know his real identity. In Mari Selvaraj’s Karnan, the filmmaker creates a counter-narrative by asserting that the hero of his film is not a god from heaven but a man from the Dalit community, without any backstory of belonging to an upper caste community. This is evident when the film opens with the title song with the lines, ‘Suriyanum pekkavila... Chandiranum saakchiyilla…’ (He is not a god but a man who was born in poverty). Further, Karnan (Dhanush) is seen wearing a t-shirt of Rajinikanth from the movie Thalapathi.

Mari Selvaraj’s speech at the Maamannan audio launch expressing how distressed he was after watching Thevar Magan and how it inspired him to make Maamannan became a huge controversy, what with Kamal Haasan seated in the front row as the chief guest of the event. The emotional speech was slammed by many who either misunderstood his intent or were openly casteist. The heavy backlash led to Red Giant Movies, Maamannan’s production house, removing the speech video from their YouTube channel. While they could censor Mari’s speech, Tamil cinema is now forever changed by a film that presents a progressive counter-narrative against one of the greatest Tamil films of all time.

Whether Maamannan attains cult classic status like Thevar Magan or not, the film will remain an important milestone in the history of Tamil cinema.