Karthi’s Aayirathil Oruvan may have flopped, but remains an important movie of our times

The story returns to modern India and people have forgotten about the Chola prince, their people and the stolen statue of the Pandyas. Well, it’s only at the beginning of the third act, and we find out that there are a few who still remember.

Aayirathil Oruvan is a story about a group of people who want to correct a historical wrong. They want to dig up skeletons of a lost dynasty and avenge wrongs committed ages ago. The film was, indeed, way ahead of its time. The film’s themes today feel more urgent and relevant than they felt over a decade ago.

Selvaraghavan deals with heavy themes like slavery, bigotry, and genocide in Aayirathil Oruvan. He lays out the geography of the story at the very beginning of the movie before taking the audience on a trippy ride of magical realism.

Karthi’s Muttu and his men are taken on a ship to an island where they are made slaves. The actor delivers one of the best performances of his career as a man burdened with the guilt of having led his men into a deadly trap. “What rights do you have to bring us here and get us killed like this?” Muthu asks Anitha and Ravisekharan, who are leading the archaeological survey on behalf of the Indian government.

Muttu is overcome by grief after narrowly escaping a slaughter mounted by men, whose very existence falls beyond the realm of his grasp and imagination. When Muttu talks about his “rights” as a human, he is under the impression that he is still protected by the law. But, the rules of the modern republic do not apply in this faraway jungle; it’s a world of madness and savagery.

Soon Muttu realizes that there is not much difference between the modern men and these apparitions dressed in a loincloth who bathed fully in dark orange paint, possessed by an uncompromising urge to kill, who looked irrational and unapproachable to sort out differences through dialogues. The only difference between these two groups is that while the former kill with modern weapons, the latter still use a bow and arrow. But, they both occupy the same time capsule, which is far removed from the realities of our times.

Aayirathil Oruvan is streaming on Sun NXT. However, the film has been brutally cut to make it watchable for people of all age groups.