'Death is inevitable and death is a leveler,' are philosophical maxims. But in reality, death carries pains of the dead, and those who carry out the after-death events of the dead. Apart from natural deaths and deaths due to natural disasters, murders massacres, assassinations, genocides and capital punishments happen all around the world. As far as movies are concerned, deaths mostly pass on as flash events, creating scope for thrillers and revenge stories. Death of very old people becomes a celebration in villages, as it was shown in Thirumurugan's film Emptan Magan.
But recently two Tamil films which narrated the long journey of two mortal remains would have created a variety of emotions among the audience, about death and its indescribable link as an ennobling human experience. The two films are Ayothi written and directed by R.Manthira Moorthy released in 2023, and Pogumidam Vegu Thooramillai, written and directed by Micheal K.Raja and released in 2024.
Ayothi became a gripping tale on account of the ritual elements relating to death on religious ground, and the timely intervention and the potentially human factor evinced by a member of another religion in making things happen as per the wishes of the affected family. A Hindu family of four, travelling from Ayothya to Rameswaram on a holy trip, forms the crux of the film. The male head of the family with his orthodoxy, arrogant domination and the dirty habit of chewing pan masala, takes his wife, daughter and son on this pilgrimage. On reaching Madurai, he hires a cab to reach Rameswaram.As he keeps on goading the driver to drive fast, and irritates him badly, the cab driver loses control of the vehicle, resulting in an accident in which the man's wife is seriously injured. The cab driver calls his friend who is a Muslim to help him face the situation. It is the remaining developments of the story that make the film an immortal experience in humanism.
Abdul Malik {remarkably performed by Sasikumar} the Muslim friend of the driver, decides to rush the fatally injured woman to a hospital, but ends up in the police station. After an FIR, the woman is rushed to the hospital, but she dies on the way. The crude husband is not ready for a postmortem of the dead body of his wife. He wants to take his wife's dead body to Ayothi for the final rituals. As postmortem becomes inevitable, he agrees to that, after being vehemently chided by his docile daughter.
After the postmortem, Malik arranges for a coffin as well as for embalming the body, and rushes to Madurai Airport, for sending the family with the dead woman in the coffin. As tickets are available only for the coffined body and the dead woman's daughter, Malik moves beyond his steps to request two of the passengers awaiting to board the flight, to consider the plight of the affected family and finally succeeds in getting the two tickets for the father and son. The bad-mannered father feels totally humbled and apologizes for all his bad manners. The soul of the dead woman is given a passionate send off by Malik.
No other film would have travelled with a dead body almost throughout its narration, and very few films would have made a soul-sustaining link between the body and the mind as Ayothi. Tamil cinema can ever be proud of being endowed with such an exalting creativity.
Pogumidam Vegu Dhooramillai. narrates the ordeals of a mortuary van driver {Vemal} in transporting the dead body of an old man from Chennai to Tirunelveli. On the way a stranger by name Nalinamoorthi {Karunas}asks for a lift to Tirunelveli. He is a street folk dancer, and has no one to look after him. The van driver who had already lost his parents, has to do this arduous task, while his pregnant wife admitted in a hospital is facing severe delivery complications, and he has only his grandfather to support his wife at this juncture. Meanwhile, the dead man with two wives. creates the deadly problem of both the families claiming his dead body for the last rites, purely to inherit his wealth.
The half-brothers are already on a war path, towards grabbing the dead body by hook or by crook. The son of the dead man's first wife has already promised a huge sum to the mortuary van driver for safely delivering his father's dead body at his doorstep. The mortuary van driver is facing a lot of hurdles on the way. He loses his newborn babies and after an unforeseen street fight, to his shock, he finds the dead body missing. The dead man's second wife's son has stolen the body and irritates his half-brother with a mobile phone shot of the corpse.
But Vemal handles the situation by letting Karunas play possum. As both the half-brothers have not seen their father for a long time it becomes easy to manage the situation and the dead man's first wife believes that his father's body is not stolen by his half-brother. However, Vemal needs a dead body to be handed over to the first wife's son. All of a sudden karunas jumps out of the mortuary van against a vehicle coming in the opposite direction and falls dead. As he is not wanted by anyone, he thinks at least his body would help someone to get out of a crisis. Vemal delivers the dead body to the first wife's son who offers him a hefty sum as rewards,
Unlike Ayothi, Pogumidam Vegu Dhooramillai could at the outset be seen, as a silly story depicted in a lighter vein. But the death of Karunas,with its hidden notes of pathos and paramount sacrifice of one's life for solving a conflicting crisis, proves to be an unseen theme blended with the vagaries and values of human life. Both Ayothi and Pogumidam Vegu Dhooramillai are rare kinds of films, dealing with the might of mortality and the magnanimous interiors involved in dealing with a tickling instance of fatality with undeviating faith in the ultimate goal of life. Both the films prove the fact, that emptiness is all.
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