August 16, 1947 (Prime Video)
Rating: 0 stars
This is not a film. It is a series of randomly strung out-takes from an amateur film on ‘How Not To Take Cinema’, espousing an anti-colonial hatred so pungent, puerile and vile that it makes RRR look like a love note to the Britishers.
There is no style and no substance in the presentation as two Caucasian actors named Richard Ashton and Jason Shah sneer, abuse and whip their way through hordes of junior artistes who wail whine shriek as they are tortured.So are we,for the record.
This is not barbarism. It is burlesque. The depiction of Colonial brutality is so turgid it makes the Britishers look like caricatures of hell hounds. There are just two Colonial fiends in the entire village of Sengadu where the natives get brutalized during the day and then they dance around the fire drinking and singing songs, knowing they are going to get whipped or shot the next morning,depending on which way the colonial wind blows.
Amidst the tyranny of turmoil there is the happy-go-luck hero Paraman(Gautham Karthik) who flirts with the old ladies of his tribe, and who secretly loves the Zamindar’s secret daughter Thenmozhi .
Secret, because she has been hidden away from the terrible colonial father-son duo’s lascivious gaze. However lust cannot be wished away , not in this trashy tribute to pedestrianism where the characters behave as though they are high on rotten cannabis plucked from a field full of creeping reptiles. None more snakey than the Britishers who I am sure would wish they had never seized India if they foresaw writer-director N S Ponkumar’s preposterous and perverse take on colonial tyranny.
The violence is so ugly it is funny.In one sequence when the brutal Britisher puts his leg on Thenmozhi’s nubile neck, Paraman severs it off (the leg , not the neck) screaming, “How dare you put your leg on her?” Considering he was about to rape the girl,the rebuke is a little weird.
This is a village where Independence has not reached. The father-son Gora duo continues to lord over the natives even when colonialism has been abolished.A man is seen screaming ‘We are free’ all over the frames. Ask the duo of disciples of Dyer if they care!
It was said that the sun never set on the British empire. I prayed for the sun to set on this primitive take on the fight for freedom.