MANDELA- A QUICK GLIMPSE

Mandela, the Tamil Political satire that got released in the Netflix platform has been garnering attention for all the right reasons.  This Yogi Babu starring film throws light on the socio-political experiments that have always been put into practice by our Political parties at the time of elections. Set in the backdrop of a village that is earmarked by a culturally caste conscious population, the movie tries to portray how such a state of mind among its people could be manipulated and wooed to settle down for freebies and petty politics.

Yogi Babu’s character is the thread bearer of the movie. Ignorant and unaware about his constitutional rights, he is portrayed as someone who neither remembers his birth name nor cared enough to think about it. However, his identity/ Caste is revealed to the viewer through the job he practices and thereby his place in the lower rungs of that society is point blankly revealed in the very beginning of the movie itself. Therefore, it’s an irony that he gets to decide in which direction he needs to pull the thread. Whether he pulls the thread in the right direction or not is something that is left for the audience to watch.

The movie stands out because of the fact that it doesn’t try to preach for a social reformation or make a political statement. There are several scenes in the movie that simply reflects how things work in our society. One among those being the scene where the character runs around from one office to another to apply for his Aadhar Card. The film has got everything power packed in it to make any sensible person realize how political parties make use of Caste, culture and Identity of an individual as their trump card. If you are to take the movie for a serious discussion, it does have a lot to tell you. But the satirical approach adopted by the film maker, makes it more appealing to watch without making its viewer get overtly hurt or disturbed by violence or bloodshed, which are otherwise quite common in any movie that deals with politics of caste or identity.

Mandela is a simple yet thought provoking movie by Madonne Ashwin. The film brilliantly reflects how deeply caste and identity of an individual is intertwined in our society and how precisely the elite political class makes use of it for their gain. The movie has hit the floor at the right time, when the General election Hungama wafted in the Covid hit atmosphere. Now, if you are looking for something worth enough to watch for two hours, then Mandela is a Promising satirical ride. It neither sermonizes by promising to clean the dirty politics nor sounds cliché in its theme. It simply is plain and direct like a mirror that reflects the society in its true essence.