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Manmadhan (film)

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Wikipedia article




'Manmadhan' (spelt onscreen as 'Maanmathaun') is 2004 Indian Tamil-language romantic thriller film directed and written by A. J. Murugan with dialogues by Balakumaran. Silambarasan played dual roles for the first time in his career while Jyothika did the main female lead with, Sindhu Tolani, Santhanam, Atul Kulkarni, and Goundamani played the supporting roles. The film's score and soundtrack are composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja.[https://archive.org/details/kalki2004-11-14/page/72/mode/2up 'Kalki' review]

'Manmadhan' was received favourably and had a blockbuster run at the box office for over 150 days at the time of its release. It was dubbed into Telugu as 'Manmadha' and released on May 27, 2005. It was remade in Kannada as 'Madana' and in Bengali Bangladesh as 'Baje Chele - The Loafer'.

Plot



Madhan Kumar (Silambarasan) is an auditor by profession, who lives in Chennai and also learns music part-time in a college. Mythili (Jyothika), a naive woman, also learns music from the same college. She gets scared upon seeing Madhan Kumar one day because she happens to witness a dream of her getting raped by him. Later on, she realizes his kind nature and they both become friends.

However, Madhan Kumar also has an arrogant and psychotic personality under the pseudonym Manmadhan, through which he hunts and kills morally corrupt girls in the city by seducing them before rendering them unconscious using chloroform. He burns the girls' corpses and stores their ashes in bottles with their respective names. Whenever he intends to kill a girl by seducing her, he suffers a nosebleed. The media attention turns towards the case of missing girls, and Chennai's new ACP Deva (Atul Kulkarni) takes the charge to find the person behind the crimes.

One day, Mythili finds Madhan Kumar riding a bike with a girl as pillion. On the next day, Mythili gets shocked to see the news that the girl whom she spotted with Madhan Kumar has gone missing. Mythili thinks that Madhan Kumar is behind the crimes in the city and informs Deva about Madhan Kumar's whereabouts. Thus, Madhan Kumar gets arrested.

During the investigation, Madhan Kumar reveals that it was none other than his younger twin Madhan Raj (also Silambarasan) responsible for killing erotic and corrupt girls under the pseudonym Manmadhan. The story then moves to a flashback where Madhan Raj and Madhan Kumar were affectionate with each other. They lived with their maternal uncle Puncture Pandiyan (Goundamani) in Madhampatty in the outskirts of Coimbatore district, as both of their parents had died years ago. While Madhan Kumar was brave, intelligent and practical, Madhan Raj was innocent and sentimental. While Madhan Kumar went to study for auditorship in Chennai, Madhan Raj moved to Coimbatore to study in an engineering college. There, he became very close and friendly with his hostel roommate Bobby (Santhanam), and fell in love with his classmate Vaishnavi (Sindhu Tolani), who also reciprocated his feelings upon seeing his good nature. However, Madhan Raj's senior friend Ravi informed him that Vaishnavi was having an illicit affair with her relative Seenu, who also studied in the same college. He did not trust him and in anger he beat Ravi. When Madhan Raj confronted Vaishnavi, she got angry and thought that he did not trust her.

Madhan Raj realised his mistake and went to Vaishnavi's house to apologize, only to find her having sex with Seenu and enjoying the moment. He realized that Ravi was correct right from the beginning. Raj also heard Vaishnavi's conversation with Seenu that she pretended to love him and would like to marry him so that she could take advantage of his innocence and sincere love, which would help her lead life the way she wanted, and have Madhan Raj as a slave for her. Furious, Madhan Raj killed both Vaishnavi and Seenu. He returned to Chennai and arrogantly narrated the whole incident to Kumar. Madhan Raj decided to change his appearance and set out in search of girls cheating in the name of love to kill them and warned Madhan Kumar that if he informed the police of his whereabouts, he would kill him too.

Coming back to the present, the police investigate about Madhan Raj and get solid evidences against him. Madhan Kumar, with the help of Pandiyan, is released from the case. Mythili apologizes to Madhan Kumar and also proposes to him, which he rejects, saying that he does not love her and had treated her as friend. Mythili leaves the place saying that she will wait for Madhan Kumar, believing that he will accept her love someday.

The story again moves to a flashback, where it is shown only to the audience that Madhan Kumar was indeed the real Manmadhan, and Madhan Raj was innocent of the crimes. After killing Seenu and Vaishnavi, Madhan Raj actually met Madhan Kumar but didn't fight him and felt that he regretted killing them and he did it only because he was triggered due to what they were doing and committed suicide in front of Madhan Kumar's eyes, despite the latter's pleas. Madhan Kumar hence decided to avenge Madhan Raj's death by killing girls who cheat in the name of love, under the pseudonym Manmadhan and developed his "nosebleed" from then on. Madhan Kumar has hidden his brother Madhan Raj's death, thereby using his identity as a scapegoat so that he could escape if caught.

It is shown that Madhan Kumar indeed loves Mythili for her innocence and good demeanour, but cannot and will not express his feelings for her. He also exclaims that if his brother had loved a girl like her, he would also have lived happily and he would have married Mythili and be happy. Hence, Madhan Kumar concludes that avenging his brother's death is more important, and only God can judge his actions. The film ends with a message that even if Manmadhan has escaped the clutches of the police, he would answer for his actions before the law someday.

Cast



* Silambarasan as Madhan Kumar (Manmadhan) and Madhan Raj (Mottamadhan)

* Jyothika as Mythili

* Sindhu Tolani as Vaishnavi

* Goundamani as Puncture Pandiyan

* Atul Kulkarni as ACP Deva

* Santhanam as Bobby

* Sathyan as Inspector Shakthi (Deva's assistant)

* Mayuri as Malathi

* Guhan Shanmugam as Madhan Kumar's college rival

* T. P. Gajendran as Village Landlord

* Dr. S.Suresh Kumar as Reporter

* Crane Manohar as Puncture Pandiyan's worker

* Brinda Parekh as Train Passenger (guest appearance)

* Mandira Bedi as Psychiatrist (special appearance)

* Yana Gupta (Item number)

* Arzoo Govitrikar as girl in cafe whom Manmadhan kissed on her lips

Production



Though the story of the film was credited to Silambarasan, it was actually written by A. J. Murugan, himself which is inspired from

Director Bharati raja's cult psychological thriller movie Sigappu Rojakkal and Jamie Blank's film Valentine' (2001). Initially, the movie was planned to be made with Ajith Kumar, in the lead role. Whilst working on 'Nee Varuvai Ena', as an assistant, Murugan met Ajith and narrated the story. Ajith told him that he will listen to the story only after the completion of 'Nee Varuvai Ena'. After a few months, Murugan created a sample poster design for the film, that featured Ajith Kumar's killer look from the film with a red bloody quote written on his forehead, "Everything is driven by fate, he is the cupid that steals the hearts of young women, but there is a beast inside him". Seeing the visual aesthetic of the poster, Ajith was impressed and gave his nod for the film.

He asked Murugan to wait till the completion of 'Kandukondain Kandukondain'. In between, Murugan got an opportunity do a film with Simbhu. He met him and narrated a love story. Instead of that story, Simbhu asked him for the narration of 'Manmadhan'. He was impressed with Murugan after he saw the concept poster of it in the hands of Murugan. As he was a huge fan of Ajith Kumar at the time, as per the 'gentlemen agreement', along with three years of friendship, Murugan narrated the story of Manmadhan to Simbhu. He liked it and requested him that he wanted to do the film. That moment prompted Murugan to do the film with Simbhu, instead of Ajith, as he took a no-objection letter from him. He committed the script for Simbhu. Because of lack of support from the film industry, and to start his debut film, Murugan was forced to sign an agreement, mentioning that the story and screenplay, were written by Simbhu.

After Manmadhan, he did not make his second film till now, as he voluntarily retired from the industry, unable to bare the humiliation of Simbhu and the industry, back then. Simbhu experienced difficulties with Murugan, during the making of the film and was widely reported by the media to have "ghost-directed" the project. Murugan was later demoted and worked in Silambarasan's directorial venture, 'Vallavan' (2006) as an associate director, and was consequently critical of the actor's insistence on interfering with the director's role.

Soundtrack



The soundtrack, composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja, was released on 1 July 2004 and features 6 songs. The lyrics were penned by Vaali, Snehan, Pa. Vijay and Na. Muthukumar. The singers include the film's lead actor Silambarasan, Anushka Manchanda from the girl-pop group Viva! and rapper Blaaze, who all sung for the first time under Yuvan's direction. After the release of the film, several bonus tracks, that featured in the film, but not in the soundtrack, were released again as a soundtrack, which includes pieces of the film score and the earlier released songs. All the tracks were composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja. "En Aasai Mythiliye" sung by Silambarasan is remixed from his father's original song in Mythili Ennai Kaathali.

Telugu version

The lyrics were written by Veturi, Vennalakanti and Buvana Chandra.

Release



Though made on a high budget of 5 crore, 'Manmadhan' was sold at a deficit to distributors. However, the film opened with 140 prints and emerged successful despite facing competition from veterans on Deepavali weekend - Ajith's 'Attagasam', Vijayakanth's 'Neranja Manasu', and Sarathkumar's 'Chatrapathy'.

The film received 'A' certificate from censor board with some cuts.

The film's collection reports from Chennai, Coimbatore and Salem distribution territories indicated that 'Manmadhan' surged ahead of 'Attagasam' in its second week "with the help of strong reviews in the media, music and excellent word of mouth".

The movie's satellite rights were sold to SUN TV and this version carried a V/U Certificate.

Notes



References




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