Madhubaanakadai(மதுபான கடை )

I really enjoyed watching this movie,this film tops avant-garde movies in recent times. The story unfurls on the eve of Gandhi jayanthi.There is no hero or villain. The bar is the hero and the people drinking there are the realistic heroes.There is no storyline or plot , the characters and environment takes the center stage.

The director Kamalkannan spent two and half months visiting different bars and studying different people visiting there.This study really helped him to portray the characters realistically.Petition money is one such character- he is everywhere and he is nowhere. Apparently the actor who played the Petition Mani role, Rajkumar , is a Tamil poet and had written seven books which were translated into French,English, Malayalam,Hindi,Kannada and some other languages.He is from Nagerkovil.

Petition Mani

Art director Vino Mirdad had recreated the TASMAC setting realistically in a Marriage hall at Pethaampalayam near Perundurai, in fact while shootingg many people enter into it and started asking for drinks.Well done!It seems the team struggled to find the drinks combinations to make the liquor looks perfect at last they settled with Kesari powder mixed with coconut leaves soaked water combination.Music by Vedshankar was good and his re-recording made the bar alive.He is one of the first batch student from A.R Rahman's  music school. Bhaskar's camera works wonders inside the bar specially night sequences.

There are some memorable characters which will remains with me for a long time -Petition Mani with his one liners ,Ramu as old singer with his songs,the educated man who always sits head down and the two guys who dressed up like gods.

The director also highlights the adulteration of alcohol and cleaners/sweepers needs of alcohol for their work. The good thing about the movie is that the director is not teaching that drinking is wrong or evil, he is not teaching anything, he leaves all those things to viewer .And there is also a beautiful story of love,jealousy and friendship.

I remembered these words of Mads Nipper when i watched this movie :

“Children are fantastic little creatures,because next to drunk people, they are the only truly honest people on earth.” 

The witty one-liners  and beautiful performance by the drunkards make this movie a special one.