This blog already carries a post on two devoted sons depicted in the Tamil films, 'Emtan Magan'{2006} and 'Santosh Subramaniam' {2008}.Life is a blessing if all human relationships are in the best possible order, both within and outside each one's family. Love plays a pivotal role in family relationships, especially between parents and children. There are erring parents as there are ill tempered children. But in every case of parental and filial link, there is always a sustained hope for reform from wrong routes of attitudes and behaviour.
Dominating parents understand the aspirations of their submissive sons, at one point of time and misbehaving children get retrieved from the bad clutches, by the long rope given by understanding parents. But in rare cases, children especially sons, never get reformed and are bent upon their reaching their ruining destination and doom. Two such sons occupy the centre space of this post. They are picked up from two Tamil films. One was the epoch-making film Thanga Padhakkam released in 1974 and the other is the brand-new film GOAT {2024} reputed for the effective use of AI too.
Interestingly, the gap between these two films is a matter of five decades and in both the films the dads are police officers, one as the Superintendent of Police and the other as the head of the Special Anti-Terrorism Squad.{SATS}.While the chevalier donned the role of the majestic SP Choudhry in Thanga Padhakkam, Vijay appeared in dual roles as M.S.Gandhi heading SATS and his son Jeevan aka Akilan. Whereas in Thangapadhakkam, late Srikanth did the role of Jagan, the incorrigible son of Sivaji Ganesan. Incidentally, both the names Jagan and Akilan, refer to the ruler of the universe.
Both the films focus on the theme of sons becoming an irredeemable curse imposed on the parents. But the significant difference between the two sons is that in the former, the mother- pampered son falls into a bad company of gamblers and thugs, and in the latter the son as a young boy is kidnapped by a dare-devil terrorist and groomed with a craving and unquenchable thirst for blood. Thangapadhakkam shows events leading to the marriage of the murderous son with the girl whom he loved, under the fond hope that the son might get reformed after marriage. But GOAT enlarges the demonized profile of the gangster son, with new generation designs.
In Thangapadhakkam there was a lot of thrust on the emotional pangs of a proud, duty-bound father falling from the height of his professional glory, into the pit of pathos caused by the tragic climax of the father himself shooting down his terrorist son. He had to take that extreme step because the bragging son went to the extent of selling sensitive army documents to foreign agents. The son fell dead in the hands of his lovelorn but never loved, father. Thangapadhakkam which was earlier staged as a play, was filmed into an effective family drama, powerfully pictured by P.Madhavan, one of the most popular directors of the last century. Both Sivaji Ganesan and K.R.Vijaya excelled in their roles as the unfortunate parents of Srikanth, who did a wonderful role play as the notorious Jagan.
GOAT became an action-packed film, with Vijay brilliantly reflecting the attitudinal difference between the father and son through his remarkable role play in dual roles, facilitated by very impressive dynamics in the makeover of the two profiles. GOAT also ends with a clueless shoot out drama involving the exchange of gun shots and leading to a surmise if the terrorist son is killed or not. Vijay's loud cries in a previous scene that shows his son as a boy presumably getting unidentifiably charred to death, would last long in the memories of his fans, as one of the mega hit scenes of his acting potential. Venkat Prabhu could certainly take credit for presenting an action thriller with a great deal of technology fillers.
P S:-The comparison of these two films came to the blogger's mind with striking similarities in theme between them and the character portrayal of sons turning into notoriously irredeemable and inhuman characters. The comparison should end here, because Thangapadhakkam will ever remain as one of the epic-like films of Sivaji Ganesan.
==============0===============