Paandi (Dinesh) is the leader of a band of migrant Tamil workers operating a food stand in the Telugu city of Guntur. Like Joesf K in Franz Kafka's The Trial, he is taken off to prison one morning without knowing any of the accusations made against him.
His friends also turn up there, and they are put through hell. They are beaten and asked to confess without knowing the charges against them. We quickly learn that the police are not interested in finding the real criminals, but "clearing the case", as a "big shot" has been robbed and they need answers fast. The Tamil guys, isolated and with limited Telugu language skills, will have to do.
They escape this predicament, only to find that their rescuer, Inspector Muthuvel (Samuthirakani), is himself a duplicitous government agent looking to use them as pawns in an even more sordid scheme.
The style of this film complements this ghastly scenario, and will leave your stomach feeling uneasy. It's shot in the objective style of a documentary, from the perspective of a clearly observing, emotionally detached 3rd party. The flagrant immorality and constant lies of government officers are shown in the same factual way as the workout routine of a reality TV star. These are normal people, and they are willing to destroy innocents to maintain their positions.
The stark realism of this extremely exploitative behavior demands that the viewer, lost in the trance of the cinematic illusion, continually supply the moral commentary in this nightmare made real. Are these people and these scenarios all that implausible? What would I do as any these characters? How could I resolve this nightmare, or would I merely rationalize it, as most of them seem to choose?
Perhaps this realism stems from the fact that this film is based on the written account of a Tamil auto rickshaw driver, Auto Chandran, who survived two weeks of being coerced into a false confession.
Director Vetrimaaran also does a very admirable job of weaving in small reminders of the background and human context of everybody locked in this madness. Maybe you couldn't answer your sweetheart's call because you were in police custody being driven off to a black site...
The struggle of innocence in desperate circumstances very much reminds me of the De Sica classic Bicycle Theives. In a brutal social context, desperation grows and spreads until everybody is conflicted between their humanity and the orders they must execute with a zombie stoicism. Like in the worst crimes of the 20th century, everybody in the system must diminish their vision and moral compass to preserve the Big Lie until there is nothing left but an indifferent cruelty.
Perhaps this comparison to Bicycle Thieves is fitting in another indirect way, as the film was awarded by the Italian branch of Amnesty International. It certainly won't get much viewing in America, where we share the corruption but lack the capacity for open discussion of it. I doubt any of these guys will be getting book/movie deals soon...
Final Word: Good luck having faith in humanity after this one...
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ToI Review
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