GDN Movie Review:
When the credits started rolling on GDN, and they showed pictures of the real GD Naidu, one thing became immensely clear. The effervescent, playful, curious, and wildly interesting man in the pictures did not feel like the one we saw in the film. It was the difference between seeing the full moon with your naked eye versus whatever the phone captures. Judging solely by the people he was seen photographed with, if GD Naidu’s life was a Marvel film, the critics would have bashed it for too many cameos, too many fan service moments, and just too much storytelling. What a wild ride of a life: on one hand, you were friends with Periyar, hosted Dr Ambedkar, and on the other hand, you met Golwalkar and Adolf Hitler. Madhavan is a fine actor, and he seems earnest enough to do justice to the character. But it is clear that the actor shifts to higher gears while portraying very specific dimensions of a man with a kaleidoscopic personality. And the portions he chooses to focus on, like his sense of nationalism, are arguably the least interesting aspect of GD Naidu. The artists have the freedom to interpret a character however they see fit. So, it is not that the directorial choice to focus less on GD Naidu’s engineering brilliance, his zest for Tamil Nadu’s social justice movement, and more on nationalism is the ‘wrong’ choice. It just feels like looking at a statue from the top angle might not necessarily be the most efficient way to observe and appreciate its intricacies.
Director: Krishnakumar Ramakumar
Cast: Madhavan, Sathyaraj, Jayaram, Priyamani, Dushara Vijayan
However, it is not Madhavan or the script's refusal to probe into the mind, political beliefs, and philosophy of GD Naidu that disconnects us from the film. It is the complete lack of immersion plaguing every single department from production design to cinematography to dialogue writing that constantly gets in the way of us engaging with what is clearly an amazing real-life story. Farmers working in ankle-deep mud in the paddy fields wear the whitest, newest, crispiest look veshtis with not a drop of mud on them. The vintage cars look freshly painted and lifted off the GEE DEE Museum with a crane and dropped onto the set just seconds before the camera started rolling. Every time the actors are inside a room, the interiors look so artificial that we half expect them to lean on a wall, only for it to quickly fall over to reveal a soundstage. Every time you think the film looks artificial, it unlocks different levels of artificiality with exponential fakery. You start noticing it with the thatched huts looking like the sets in the “Pongal kondattam” TV special, then with the cardboard interiors, the green-screen background, the AI-generated scenes, and then the dialogues themselves.
The inventor/entrepreneur/maverick genius GD Naidu’s rise faces constant three-pronged attacks all his life. The racist British official Adams (Carl Andrew Harte), the envious North Indian industrialist Bhupendra (Vinay Rai), and the acerbic tax enforcement officer Ambalapara Krishnan (Jayaram). Karunakaran plays the enforcer of the trio's plans and is little more than an opportunistic lackey, but there is somehow more authenticity to his character than the other main antagonistic forces. Adams and Bhupendra are one-dimensional villains who hate GD Naidu just because he exists. On the other hand, the film adds dimensions to Ambalapara Krishnan’s character, giving us a peek into his household, way of life, and the principles he stands for. He isn’t your typical villain, but his hatred for GD Naidu comes from a place of misunderstanding. If only such dimensionality was added to the other antagonists, they wouldn’t have looked like cardboard cut-outs. Another supporting character who suffers from one-dimensionality is Periyar. If you are from outside TN and don’t know anything about Periyar, you are bound to get confused about why an old man walks in and out of the frame. GDN clearly doesn’t want to explore Periyar’s friendship with GD Naidu and the latter’s role in the former’s self-respect movement, a decision well within the rights of artistic freedom. However, seeing as how Periyar appears in crucial moments in GD Naidu’s life, it feels like a redundant move to include the character and still refrain from giving him any substantial role. Some of the few best lines of dialogue are reserved for Sathyaraj, who is clearly having a good time and feels like the only actor who fits the tone of the film.
For all its issues, GDN is effective in showing us the incredible life of a renaissance man who had all the potential to transform the country, but was betrayed by nefarious forces and administrative failure. Even with all the technical issues, GDN still tries its best to show us how, despite the life-long obstacles, the tall legacy of GD Naidu still shines through, and that the failures are entirely of society and not of the man. The incredible real-life story deserves more than GDN, but it also deserves the conversations and interest currently being showered upon it, the credit for which entirely rests with the film.
