Gautham Karthik in a nonetheless from ‘August 16 1947’
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
In August 16, 1947, debutant director NS Ponkumar needs you to suppose rather a lot out of your coronary heart. He is assured in how his screenplay’s emotional beats transfer and engages you and that confidence stems from the spectacular baseline he has: In 1947, when communication wasn’t superior and also you couldn’t make films on TikTookay, the information of India’s independence from the colonial authorities might need had some delays in reaching each nook and nook of such an unlimited nation, and that’s what occurred on August 14 to Sengadu, a village in Southern Tamil Nadu sandwiched by mighty mountains and snarly woods. The village is thought for its high-quality cotton yield that’s hand-made by the villagers who’re handled as slaves by British General Robert Clive (Richard Ashton). This towering animal is seemingly one of many officers who suggested General Dyre to bloodbath hundreds at Jallianwala Bagh, after which he was despatched to Sengadu on punishment responsibility. Basically, he’s an animal that feasts on worry and flesh, and Sengadu is his land of slaves.
You pause to drink water, and you’re whipped. Want to take a leak? Remember that the whip has spikes. If you get harm whereas working, you’re gifted with extra ache as medication; for worse or higher, you generally catch a fast bullet from Robert. To make issues worse, the villagers should disguise their daughters or kill them to forestall Robert’s pervert son Justin (Jason Shah) from laying his fingers on them — as sinister as his father, he even makes use of the statue of the villager’s deity for bodily pleasure. On the day earlier than independence, all makes an attempt by the British to tell Robert of the information and summon him for a high-level assembly fail as the one phone in his property is underneath restore. The males who had been assigned to bodily ship the message get killed by a tiger. But even when the information reaches Robert, it’s futile, as we study ultimately, as the person needs his ‘slaves’ to recollect the worry of the British till they reside.
August 16, 1947 (Tamil)
Director: NS Ponkumar
Cast: Gautham Karthik, Revathy Sharma, Pugazh, Richard Ashton
Runtime: 143 minutes
Storyline: In August 1947, a village cut-off from any communication with the remainder of the nation has to combat by itself for independence from the British
If you get flashes of a Django Unchained or a Lagaan, it’s as a result of that is an intriguing storyline stuffed with potential, and it will get massacred slowly over two hours. Chiefly, NS Ponkumar is hell-bent on spoon-feeding — no, drowning — us with melodrama and repeated shows of baseless brutality to take advantage of each drop of emotion out of us. From the start, when Robert’s monstrosity is repeatedly established, Ponkumar prolongs and stretches every part he needs to inform and do.
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Melodrama can nonetheless work if staged and executed effectively, and I say this as a result of the core of August 16, 1947 does have a powerful emotional pulse. It’s a love story between a younger orphan Paraman (Gautham Karthik) and Thenmozhi (Revathy Sharma), the daughter of Sengadu’s Zamindar who, in worry of Justin, has locked her up inside his bungalow for years after telling the villagers that she died of a illness as a toddler. And the roots of Paraman, what he means to the village and the way that ties as much as Thenmozhi are all pretty concepts. But at common intervals, like a weird flashback scene in a hut that makes you roll your eyes, one thing or the opposite retains asking you to not take this movie significantly.
Adding Justin into the combo, the love story ought to have appeared extra gripping, however what follows is extra predictable that something one can think about. At each level, you’re met with a cliche flip of occasions or an infuriating motion by a personality. I imply, Thenmozhi, hiding from the lads of her father, shakes a leg in the course of the road throughout an pointless music. The means some behave within the presence of the antagonists could make you eat the rubber of your seats.
The movie by no means redeems itself from these points and that’s the most important drawback with August 16, 1947: the freedom combat that’s meant to be the very function of this story is nothing however the results of one man’s superb clarion name of a speech, and the plan of action that they do isn’t intelligent sufficient both. Making issues worse is how even Robert finally ends up being a caricaturish dull-witted villain. The story is perhaps set in 1947 however the audiences are in 2023!
It’s a no brainer that August 16, 1947 would have appeared like next-big-hit on paper. But the abysmal execution and enhancing fail the fabric and go away nothing memorable. You solely want somebody instructed the staff that they don’t should shoot every part written or retain every part that’s shot.
August 16, 1947 is presently operating in theatres