Mani Ratnam’s epic ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ teaser promises mammoth grandeur and authentic storytelling

The wait is over as the teaser of the master filmmaker Mani Ratnam’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ has finally dropped.  At a little over a minute the clip gives glimpses of the mammoth granduer in recreating the Chola history and the authentic storytelling by way of adapting Kalki’s epic novel of the same name.

Tamil audiences who have been awestruck by the ‘Baahubalis’ and ‘KGF’s will be wonderstruck by the visuals of Mani Ratnam showing raging wars on lands and seas that may pale in comparison to the inner conflicts the characters as envisaged by Kalki have. It is no easy task to capture both but that is just what the team has clearly achieved.

The ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ teaser gives fleeting but enough moments of the principle characters of Aditya Karikalan (Vikram), Vanthiyathevan (Karthi), Arulmozhi Varman (Jayam Ravi), Kundavai (Trisha), Nandhini (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), Thirumalaiappan (Jayaram),  Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar (Sarathkumar), Chinna Pazhuvettaraiyar (Parthiban), Sundara Chola (Prakash Raj) and Periya Vellar Boothi Vikramakesari (Prabhu).

The core story of ‘Ponniyin Selvan 1’ aka ‘PS-1’ is summed up by Vikram’s anguished monologue in chaste Tamil “These liqors, songs, blood and battlefield is for forgetting it…forgetting her…forgetting myself”.  The visuals show Aishwarya Rai as Nandini the love interest of Aditya Karikalan who leaves him to marry the old man Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar to fulfill her ambitions.

On the whole the ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ teaser raises the expectations for the film sky high through its camera work by Ravi Varman, the accentuating music by A.R.Rahman, the grand production design and Sreekar Prasad’s editing all coming together for the master story teller Mani Ratnam back in his prime form.