Director: Jyothi Pandian; Writer: Vali; Producer: S. Rangarajan; Cinematographer: Ranga; Cast: Laxmi, Poornam Vishwanathan, Delhi Ganesh, Arundhati, Nizhalgal Ravi, Beena Chakravarthy, V.K. Ramaswamy, Senthil Charlie
Summary: Controversial anti-government film in the
tradition of the DMK propaganda melodrama,
evoked e.g. in the opening cyclone scenes
recalling Thyagabhoomi (1939). Produced in
association with the publishers of Madras’s
mainstream daily The Hindu, the film
anticipates the attacks on the government’s
positive discrimination policy in favour of
‘scheduled’ castes, better known as Mandal
Commission Recommendations, which helped
bring down the Janata Dal government (1990).
The impoverished upper-caste Brahmin
woman Karupayi (Laxmi) masquerades as a
low-caste Harijan in order to receive a good
education and a good job. She is blackmailed
by a tramp-like figure and eventually arrested
and brought to court. As in the DMK genre, the
trial becomes the place to expound the pros
and cons of the policy and for the heroine to
make her fervent plea that it is unfair to ask
talented upper-caste people to suffer so that
low-caste people may get decent jobs. In
addition, the script places feminist ideas in its
heroine’s speech to bolster its elitist message.
The film uses several folk-music tunes as part
of the rural drama and has a convincing
performance by Laxmi. It was briefly banned
but the Supreme Court eventually cleared it for
public screening.
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