‘My Lord’ movie review: Sasikumar, Chaithra Achar power Raju Murugan’s sharp social satire

‘My Lord’ movie review: Except for a contrived pre-climax sequence, Raju Murugan’s film intersperses social satire and political commentary with wit, heart, and conviction

“I wilted every time I saw a crop wither,” said renowned Tamil saint and philosopher Ramalinga Swamigal, or ‘Vallalar’ as he is popularly known. This resounding statement is a part of Vallalar’s Jeevakarunyam philosophy, which speaks about the need to ‘see god in all living things.’ This torch of humanity is also the seed of writer-director Raju Murugan’s latest Tamil film, My Lord, a work of social commentary on the pivotal need for affordable healthcare for all in India, and how the corrupt wouldn’t hesitate to even feed on the poor’s flesh. One fine day in Manapparai, Kovilpatti, Vallalar devotee Thirunavukkarasu finds a young boy named Muthu Chirpi picking at scraps for food. He takes him in and raises him as his own, along with his daughter, Susheela, and other destitutes under his care. Little would he know that when Muthu and Susheela grew up, they would fight through unspeakable afflictions to light Jeevakarunyam like a wildfire. An assured mix of social satire and political commentary, My Lord has the best of Raju Murugan we know, but it also hints at where he has always fallen short.

How My Lord introduces many of its characters either piques your interest with its irony or leaves you in stitches. A pious and religious man from a low-income household, with a stitch across his abdomen, leaves for work, where he would feed off the needs of the helpless and coerce them into selling off their kidneys. Meanwhile, a powerful Central Minister, Sujatha Mohan (Asha Sarath), who has all the power and money at her disposal, suffers since there aren’t many kidney donors who match her unique H/H blood group. She is forced to measure even the water she consumes every day. Surely, she can ask her two children to donate a kidney, right? Raju Murugan compels you to sit right up when Sujatha tells us of the venom she has fed into the minds of her two children — details here are better left unsaid. Meanwhile, Sujatha’s minions return with the findings of two possible donors whose blood group matches hers: a poor woman in Bihar, and Muthu Chirpi (Sasikumar), a man from Kovilpatti.

A still from ‘My Lord’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

When we first meet Muthu, he is a dead body — a corpse that wakes up and belts out a dance to cause a stir at a nearby political gathering. It’s a theatrical display to seek justice for the bizarre cruelty that he and his wife, Susheela (Chaithra Achar), have been subjected to — the government has somehow issued two death certificates in their names. With the help of a local journalist named Na Kathirvelan (Somasundaram), Muthu is attempting to gain the attention of the powers that be, not only to solve his problem, but also shed light on how the system is a vortex that plunders and leeches off the helpless for the benefit of the privileged. What happened to Muthu and Susheela, and the bridge that connects Muthu to Sujatha and to the organ broker, forms the rest of the story. From this summary, you might perceive a predictable story about organ trafficking, and though My Lord is a film that tackles organ thievery, the film we end up getting is anything but straightforward.

In fact, you begin to wonder if the screenplay has taken on a bit more than it can chew, but to the credit of Raju Murugan and editor Sathyaraj Natarajan, My Lord never skips a beat in explaining the complicated path through which the conflict is established and resolved. Every dialogue is sharp, and every move is pronounced. There are no unnecessary red herrings to throw you off. What’s compelling to note is how Raju Murugan refrains from making it just a gritty, hard-hitting social drama, despite having all the ingredients for it. Instead, he has, applaudably again, chosen to commercialise this story in two ways — by imbuing some cerebral humour to make it a social satire, and by making it a cat-and-mouse thriller in the later stages of the film. Without a doubt, he excels in the former.

From colourful character designs — like a cricket fanatic money lender or Krishnakumar (Ramkumar Prasanna), Sujatha’s lackey who goes to any lengths to achieve his goals — to astute dialogues, like one that goes “What does a man without money have to do at a government office?”, My Lord is filled with witty, ironical, and sharp pokes at The Man and all his comical misdeeds. Many fragments of ideas spread throughout the film, too compel your attention — be it the value of an identity card in today’s world, the need for medical awareness among the common people, or how social media is a manipulative tool that always benefits the privileged. As has been the case in most of Raju Murugan’s films, the actors give their all, from Sasikumar and Chaithra to those playing secondary characters, like Somasundaram and Ramkumar.