Jigarthanda DoubleX: The Accidental Filmmaker

On Karthik Subbaraj's latest film and saying its quiet part loud

In Satyajit Ray’s Nayak (The Hero, 1966), Uttam Kumar’s Arindam Mukherjee, a celebrated actor and star of commercial cinema, is stalked by demons from his past. Confronted by the straight-talking journalist Aditi Sengupta played by Sharmila Tagore, Arindam begins to reevaluate his life even if during the brief train journey. The pressure to remain a hero in the eyes of the public haunts him and takes different forms—his mentor from village theater days, a senior thespian, and his old friend Biresh. Biresh, an activist fighting for the working class, sees a tool in Arindam’s voice during his inchoate years and later wishes to summon the newfound gravitas of Arindam the star to give voice to the plight of the laborers. Arindam refuses and declares that he cannot come up with a coherent explanation because it’s all too complex. He cannot begin to comprehend the baggage that comes with the tag of a star.

In Karthik Subbaraj’s Jigarthanda DoubleX SJ Suryah introduces himself as Ray Dasan, an assistant to Satyajit Ray. It’s 1975 and Ray, real name Kirubakaran, is an accidental filmmaker. A convict and before that an aspiring policeman, Kiruba is one among four prisoners chosen by the ruthless police officer Rathna to eliminate gangster Alliyus Caesar (Raghava Lawrence) and his cohort. Alliyus Caesar and his cabal around Madurai including Karmegam, a member of the ruling party, is a threat to Jeyakodi (also Rathna’s brother), fellow party man and star actor with huge fan base and chief ministerial ambitions. It is Tamil Nadu. It is the 1970s, the world of Tamil cinema is a thin veil of smoky haze in front of electoral politics. Jeyakodi commands a pull with the people and the party would like to convert that into votes. The timid Kiruba chooses cinema as his weapon of choice to kill Alliyus while he pretends to make the gangster’s biopic and introduce him as the first dark skinned lead actor in Tamil cinema. That gives the film the spiritual sequel status to Karthik’s sophomore work Jigarthanda (2014). Kiruba as director Ray gets Alliyus to reconsider his past like Nayak’s Arindam, and, going a step further, urges the gangster to rewrite his narrative.

This is where form meets Karthik’s story; Jigarthanda DoubleX is a genre bender that moves seamlessly from a gangster saga to a screwball parody to a distinct, melodramatic political film that’s at once autocritical. Yes, it talks about art and its role in larger society but it also questions its authenticity. It parades cinema as a tool to take on authority but before that it wonders aloud about how that authority is captured in the first place. Early in the film, there is a mention of “pan Indian film” that Alliyus jokingly mispronounces as Pandiya film. It’s anachronistic, while states shared studios, productions and there was active exchange of talent between different language industries, the phrase “pan India” did not exist in its present form in 1975. Ubiquitous today, it is the tent-pole film headlined by a male actor, testosterone addled with violent imagery assembled to gather the masses into rooting for that one male star. In the world of DoubleX, the pointedly named Jeyakodi is that star who is looking to gain political mileage using his fans. This is the story of MG Ramachandran and NT Rama Rao and the teasers over several decades from Rajinikanth and, as of today, Kamal Haasan and Vijay. It’s also a time when the “political film” is not only a genre by itself in mainstream cinema but also makes business sense and the anti-caste films, as seminal as they are, require a willing male actor to headline them for the nuanced polemic of the filmmaker to reach a larger audience.

This is not lost on Karthik Subbaraj, and it is apparent from the casting of this film. He has choreographer turned actor Raghava Lawrence play the gangster Alliyus and a director turned actor SJ Suryah play the pretend director. Neither of them is a star but have demonstrated considerable popularity. If Karthik had gone for an A-lister or two, Jigarthanda DoubleX would become a different beast, a film that would require quotes between words like politics and commentary. The baggage that comes with a bonafide star would have weighed the film down heavily and defeated its very purpose, the things it attempts to critique. Having the definition of pan India explained to Alliyus and how that requires a certain kind of hero is not only Karthik commenting on what’s come to define the star vehicle but also his most self-deprecating moment as a filmmaker having made a film with his idol Rajinikanth only a few years prior. Later in the film, Kiruba as Ray tells Alliyus that simply bashing his enemies or fellow gangsters and exacting revenge is not enough for the award worthy cinema that Ray is going for. Still in a bid to somehow arrive at a circumstance where he can kill Alliyus or have the gangster murdered by his own folly, Ray tells Alliyus to raise the bar and realize the power of cinema, one that can change his story as well as those of million others.

Karthik Subbaraj the filmmaker is at his most assured in Jigarthanda DoubleX. With his cinematographer Tirru, he employs every tool at his disposal in this meta-text on cinema. The camera dances around talking faces in a single take as it pulls away to a wide shot revealing a larger conspiracy. He shoots a fight sequence in a desecrated cave of tree roots and trunk and makes it look like we are living inside a camera’s viewfinder. The film recreates the man vs animal conflict both literally and metaphorically. The dolly zooms play with our eyes, complementing the multiple personalities of almost every character—Alliyan and Alliyus Caesar, Kiruba and Ray Dasan, Jeyakodi the actor and the politician, the scheming Chief Minister and Rathna the larger oppressor masquerading as the protector. Like in cinema, nobody here is who they claim to be and every Kiruba discovery is accidental or coincidental. His turn of fate, an SI posting to an accused in quadruple murder. The chance to redeem himself and his ambition. The meeting with Alliyus. Chancing upon what everyone believes to be a killing weapon but is a humble Super 8 camera. The story behind Alliyus’s lack of empathy and eventual return to his roots. Kiruba needed a faceless, one-dimensional villain (for the kind of film Alliyus wanted) and an apolitical storyline for his hero and he finds that in the clay covered, speechless, shapeless Shettani the poacher in Alliyus’s home in the forests, and a threat to his tribe. What he discovers there is a different villain, more powerful with the loudest voice and biggest canvas. His disingenuous claims about cinema and the star bring him to a point where he’s the only active documentarian of an oppressive regime. Karthik follows the quote he begins the film with—art chooses you—and the real-life director becomes the reel hero.

Karthik is self-aware about this point in history where cultural capital of the hero is bargained for returns on the political capital. Kiruba’s film bears witness to a genocide and documents the historicity of Alliyus and his tribe. Jigarthanda DoubleX considers cinema powerful but within its text lies the duplicitous ways of the people who wield this power. The cyclical nature is reflected in how the naive everyman transposes as the main character and is eventually turned into a gangster figure himself. Another Jeyakodi in the future will emerge to assume the role of Alliyus and become the hero to bring an injustice to light. It recalls Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious quote that he sides with police because the police are children of the poor while the protesting students belong to the bourgeoisie. Alliyus and Kiruba ruminate about the futility of killing a few innocent policemen for a seeming greater good, they are after all just another tool of the state. The intangible power that gives orders to the police is unimpeachable unless they chronicle their own destiny and attempt a last stand at restorative justice. The filmmaker then takes the microscope and forceps to the cinema of the state. It is the cinema that made leaders out of its heroes. The leaders under whom and in whose name numerous atrocities and crimes were committed. It is the same cinema that also questions the same leaders using the heroes of today. A politico-film nexus where the producer, creator, exhibitor and profiteer are all in cahoots is a tenuous position. The nexus works towards the preservation of every stakeholder’s image and if possible, turn some of them into crusaders for justice.

In Nayak, Arindam’s mentor rubbishes cinema. Arindam disparages the village plays and remembers the voice of conscience in those plays as nuisance. The conscience hangs heavy in Karthik’s writing here. The line from the trailer about holding the pen tightly echoes long after the film is done. Karthik wants us to grapple with these questions just as he grapples with Tamil mainstream cinema, the disproportionate power it accords the masculine hero and how it’s very nature as a self-fulfilling capitalist force is difficult to reckon with today. The one-man guerilla filmmaking of Ray Dasan, the bare bones Man With a Movie Camera, one that bears witness and does no more, is an unbelievably powerful medium. But what of the mass produced, commercial film that can take all forms at once—pan Indian, political and documentarian? Jigarthanda DoubleX, a commercial film itself and therefore contradictory in nature, leaves us with more questions than answers. But that’s also Karthik Subbaraj’s greatest achievement.