tamil film

I was watching Thevar Magan yesterday and I was surprised by what an excellent film it was. I always thought that no Indian film could attain the intensity or poignancy of Maniratnam’s films, and even though this film was not shot well, it was still extraordinarily fine. I was weeping towards the end of it, when she comes back, to find him married to a village girl, to save the dignity and bloodshed of the village. And he has sacrificed more than her, and she does not know it, she cannot understand what draws him, a previously urbane, scholarly man, to give up everything to save his village, and it was not the man she loved, who has now gone. And then the scene after that, where he has committed to his wife, finally and he takes her hand, and she stops singing because she’s terrified and he lets her hand go and then she says no, and she shyly puts her hand forward, to be held. And of course the final scene where he inadvertently kills his nemesis, his brother, in a version of Cain and Abel and is now banished, to repent, to leave to die. Awesome stuff. Why don’t they make films like that anymore? Or why doesn’t the actor make films like that anymore. The current state of Tamil film is a sorry one.