Dharani Rasendran’s impressive ‘Yaathisai’ is a richly imagined slice of historical fiction about brutal wars and the male psyche

Spoilers ahead…

The broad storyline of , set in the 7th century, is as narrow as possible – I mean, as tightly focused as possible. The Cheras, Cholas and Pandiyas are fighting. The wars go on and on until the Pandiyas drive the Cholas into hiding, a plot point that gave birth to Selvaraghavan’s . The Cheras, meanwhile, are sold off as slaves, and they remain mostly off-screen – the few shots of them hint at a sequel. So with the Pandiyas on top, you expect the Cholas to regroup and fight back, but what happens is something very interesting: the first half of the film sets us amidst a completely different people, a sub-clan, a tribe named the “Ainar”. They live an aboriginal, nomadic, almost hunter-gatherer kind of life in the drylands, and at least one man, Kothi (Seyon), dreams of bigger, better things.  His birth is described by a narrator as something momentous, as though Nature herself willed this human being into existence.

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