Is It All In A Name?

Prem Kumar’s Tamil film Meiyazhagan is not just a film about human relationships retrieved from the past. It reminds one of the old fairy tale Rumplestilstkin whose name forms the fulcrum of the story not because it is a strange name but more because it is a name quite easily forgotten even by people who knew him. Of course in the original fairy tale, his name holds the secret to an imprisoned girl’s strange story.

The story of Rumpelstiltskin – albeit under a different name – is thought to be some 4,000 years old. In the fairy tale, Rumplestiltzkin is not a human but a fairy tale goblin who helps a girl imprisoned by the greedy king when her father tells the king that his daughter can spin gold out of straw which, of course, is a lie.

The greedy king locks the girl up in a room and commands her to spin straw into gold. Just as the poor girl is beginning to despair, the door opens and a little man enters the chamber. She explains her predicament to him, and he says he will spin the straw into gold for her, if she gives him a gift. She takes off her necklace and the little man takes it, and, true to his word, spins all of the straw in the chamber into gold, and then leaves.

This goes on for several times and the girl, now confident about the king making her his queen, promises the goblin to give away her first-born to him. She forgets her promise and the little goblin stomps out angrily telling her that he will leave for good if she can remember his name within three days. She accidentally hears his name while he sings a song with his name in it. When the goblin appears on the third day, and she tells him his name, he again stomps off angrily and is never seen or heard of again.

This fairy tale is a critique on a man’s terrible greed. The miller is greedy to please the king enough so that he finally marries his daughter and weaves an impossible lie. The king is greedy because he holds the girl captive when he hears she can spin straw into gold and his greed increases when he sees this actually happening. The girl is greedy because she knows that the king will marry her if she can turn straw into gold without letting her secret out all this while. And Rumplestiltskin is greedy because he does not help the girl for nothing but always keeps asking her for something tangible including her first child!

The only common factor between Rumplestiltskin and Meizhagan is the name, easy to forget and difficult to remember. One has no idea whether director Prem Kumar who wrote and directed the film knew this fairy tale. The way he turned the story into a journey film, both physical and emotional, into a beautiful bonding that gets renewed quite strangely, between Arul (Arvind Swamy), a forty-ish, married and successful young man and a strange young man (Kaarti) whose name Arul cannot recall and even cannot remember who this man really is, how he is/was related to Arul, when they met in the past and why he cannot remember his name.

The story begins when Arulmozhi is invited to his cousin sister Bhuvana’s wedding to his hometown Needamangalam near Thanjavur, 22 years after his father and his side of the family had quit the ancestral home because of a property dispute between two brothers whose children, however, were very close.

We are given a few glimpses into Arul’s boyhood and his pain when he is compelled to part with his pet elephant and his little cousins. So, he decides to just attend a wedding and take the bus back soon afterwards. The wife can understand his conflict but consoles him and encourages him to go. Arul had left his village in 1996 and returned only in 2018 after 22 years.

He reaches the marriage venue and is happily greeted by his relatives, including the young bride who is thrilled to meet her cousin for the first time as an adult. Among the jovial group is a young man who is too overbearing with his overfriendly approach. Arul, a man of few words, still bears the pain of the dispute in his boyhood that forced them to leave their ancestral village. Arul desperately tries to brush him off but without success.

This young stranger sticks to Arul like a leech and acts as if he is the host. He treats him with a familiarity the dignified Arul finds very uncomfortable. But this man goes on till Arul misses his bus and is almost dragged by the young man to his home further into the village where he has a happily pregnant wife.

Arul goes along quite reluctantly because the next bus is due only the next morning and he reaches the stranger’s home. The home is spacious, its walls decorated with old photographs of old school alumni, and forefathers. Arul tries to look for the young man’s name from these photographs and pulls the drawers if he can get the name. But he just cannot recall the guy’s name who says that he was just a gangly kid when Arul went away with his family to the city. Arul remains blank. His charming and pregnantg wife Hema does not tire of repeatedly telling Arul about how devoted her husband is to Arul.

However, Arul’s perspective towards the young man begins to change when he steps into their home. He realizes that the young man is quite affluent with a regular ‘forest’ behind with lots of greenery and water spaces where the two completely contrasting friends dip their feet, compete about who will come out after taking a bath first, mistakenly exchanging each other’s slippers, getting drunk together on a mat spread out in the compound behind the bungalow, including a wild bull, and so on.

The film warms up between the two most unlikely friends till the young man demands his new friend Arul, address him by his name. What is his name? Arul wracks his memory but fails to come out with the young man’s name and even attempts to run away in the middle of the night and cries himself hoarse in frustration for his failure to remember this wonderful young man’s name. He is compelled to get back and finally, he gets the connection when the young man throws up small bits of memories of the past.

The journey from the marriage pandal to the young man’s home within the country, the conversations with his charming and affectionate wife, Hema with halts at street tea corners, defines the journey of Arul with an anonymous old friend that becomes a warm friendship. The young man’s name is difficult to pronounce but Arul had given him a nickname – “potato” when he was just a boy. Even when Arul is back home, he is filled with the guilt of having ignored the young man and even tried to shrug him off several times, in vain.

Some scenes from Arul’s past come up at the marriage reception which offer glimpses into his past and are richly emotional. Govind Vasantha’s music weaves itself beautifully to the ambience of the film. Deserving special mention is the song sung by Kamal Haasan, Yaaro Ivan Yaaro, the back ground score is created fittingly to meld into the scenario.

Mahendiran Jayaraju’s cinematography offers us a glimpse into the rural roadways and people of Tamil Nadu and the dimly-lit scenes in the young man’s home when the two are getting drunk together has captured the nuances of village life aptly, especially the quiet night scenes, are captivating. What prevents the 178-minute long film from reducing to boredom with actions concentrated between these two men is the award-worthy performances of Arvind Swamy and Kaarthi which lifts the film to a different level altogether. The supporting characters who function like punctuation marks in the long narrative also melt into the story as if they were born into it.

The film raises an important philosophical question – does a name actually stand for the identity of a man? Or does his nature, his friendliness, his charm and his groundedness spell out his real identity which takes away the identity trapped just in a name?

Forget Rumplestiltskin for the time being. Remember Meiyazhagan, which is difficult to forget easily once you have watched the film.