Singgaramm belongs to a curious category of films that are impatient to be a film before they strive to become a story. We do see characters with motivations, needs, and wants. However, what’s missing is a coherent narrative that justifies why we move from one scene to another. And the reasons that do provide justification are either tired old cliches or only exist to satisfy the filmmaker’s disconnected ideas on what makes up a film. Why do we need a short animated documentary on the Narikuravar community? Because the film wants you to know it stands with them. But can’t they do that within the story? No, you need this history lesson on how they used to have a warrior past because otherwise why would you empathise? There are several overused tropes, like a white saviour oor thalaivar/nattamai-type played by Vela Ramamoorthy, and sexual assault to underline the plight of the oppressed. The oppressed are shown as one-dimensional simpletons with no inner lives or self-awareness. In an attempt to try and empathise with the marginalised, the film unfortunately takes a patronising tone in its depiction of the Narikuravars.
Director: KV Kathirvelu
Cast: Yogi Babu, Vela Ramamoorthy, MS Bhaskar, Maria Vincent, Charms, Aarti Ganesh Manobala
The film follows a nomadic Narikuravar group as they settle in a new village and try to make a living for the season. However, the political tensions in the village spill over and affect their lives in irreversible ways. Singgaramm had several perfect settings to talk about the issues faced by the Narikkuravar community. But it gives in to lazy writing and uses its central subjects for outdated, sappy emotional scenes. The clan struggles to get help from government institutions, like the ration shop, tahsildar office, and even the government hospital. This leads Yogi Babu’s Singgaramm to understand the need to capture institutional power in order to uplift his community. He decides to stand in the election and become an MLA. This is a good enough setup for a socio-political drama. But how does Singgaramm get there? By winning huge sums of money in the lottery, and with the help of a good-natured oor thalaivar. Everything happens by happenstance, and it does not seem like a conscious effort on Singgaramm’s part to understand his circumstances, employ the wisdom he learned through hardship, and strategize his ascension. Once again, the film strips its central characters of any interiority and treats them like mere props.
MS Bhaskar and Ilavarasu strive to bring some level of sincerity into their film through their focused performances, once again asserting their position as some of the finest professionals in the industry. On the other hand, while everybody makes the effort to deliver the Narikuravar accent, Yogi Babu seems strangely unbothered and talks like he always does. Yogi Babu’s nonchalance struggles to co-exist with the scenes where the director feels the need to lay down his critique on the system with dialogues, which are clearly designed to be spoken directly into the camera. Vela Ramamoorthy suffers the same fate with the dialogues, but it somehow registers worse than Yogi Babu’s visible disinterest, which is ironic considering how Vela Ramamoorthy struggles to perform convincingly despite his evident involvement.
For all its issues, Singgaramm does seem sincere in its effort to portray the Narikuravar community and their struggles through an empathetic lens. However, the director seems to look at films as a collection of scenes and not as a story that unravels every step with focus and intent. The collection-of-scenes approach might have worked if the director didn’t draw inspiration for his scenes from older films with an outdated storytelling style. The nail on the coffin is when the film gives up trying to be a film towards the end credits and just throws news clippings and documentary footage about real life Narikuravar’s. That is when you realise that the film is more concerned with what it wants us to perceive it as than making us feel anything.
