Manmadhan (film)

Manmadhan
Film poster
Directed by	A.J. Murugan
Written by	A.J. Murugan Balakumaran (Dialogues)[1]
Screenplay by
Story by	A.J. Murugan
Produced by	S. K. Krishnakanth
Starring	Silambarasan Jyothika Goundamani Sindhu Tolani Atul Kulkarni Santhanam
Cinematography	R. D. Rajasekhar S.Moorthy
Edited by	Anthony
Music by	Yuvan Shankar Raja
Production company	Indian Theatre Production
Release date	12 November 2004 (2004-11-12)
Running time	166 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	₹5 crore[2]

Manmadhan (transl. Cupid) (spelt onscreen as Manmathan) is 2004 Indian Tamil-language romantic thriller film directed and written by A. J. Murugan with dialogues by Balakumaran. Silambarasan played dual roles for the first time in his career while Jyothika, Sindhu Tolani, Santhanam, Atul Kulkarni, and Goundamani played supporting roles. The film's score and soundtrack are composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja.^[3]

Manmadhan was received favourably and had a blockbuster run at the box office for over 150 days at the time of its release.This^[4] It was later dubbed into Telugu as Manmadha.^[5] It was remade in Kannada as Madana with Auditya and Sameksha in the lead roles ^[6] and also remade in Bengali Bangladesh as with Bappy Chowdhury and Arshi in the lead roles.

Plot[]

Madhan Kumar (Silambarasan) is an auditor by profession, who lives in Chennai and also learns music part-time in a college. Mythili (Jyothika), a naive woman, also learns music from the same college. She gets scared upon seeing Madhan one day because she happens to witness a dream of her getting raped by him. Later on, she realizes his kind nature and they both become friends.

However, Madhan also has another side under the pseudonym Manmadhan, in which he hunts and kills morally corrupt girls in Chennai by seducing them before rendering them unconscious using chloroform. He burns the girls' corpses and stores their ashes in bottles with their respective names. Whenever he intends to kill a girl by seducing her, he suffers a nosebleed. The media attention turns towards the case of missing girls, and Chennai ACP Deva (Atul Kulkarni) takes the charge to find the person behind the crimes.

One day, Mythili finds Madhan riding a bike with a girl as pillion. On the next day, Mythili gets shocked to see the news that the girl whom she spotted with Madhan has gone missing. Mythili thinks that Madhan is behind the crimes in the city and informs Deva about Madhan's whereabouts. Thus, Madhan gets arrested.

During the investigation, Madhan reveals that it was his younger twin brother Madhan Raj (also Silambarasan) responsible for killing "loose" girls under the pseudonym Manmadhan. The story then moves to a flashback where Madhan Raj and Madhan Kumar were affectionate with each other. They lived with their maternal uncle Puncture Pandiyan (Goundamani) in Madhampatty in the outskirts of Coimbatore district, as both of their parents had died years ago. While Madhan Kumar was brave, intelligent and practical, Madhan Raj was innocent and sentimental. While Madhan Kumar went to study for auditorship in Chennai, Madhan Raj moved to Coimbatore to study in an engineering college. There, he became friends with his hostel room mate Bobby (Santhanam), and fell in love with his college mate Vaishnavi (Sindhu Tolani), who also reciprocated his feelings upon seeing his good nature. However, Madhan Raj's friend Ravi informed him that Vaishnavi was having an affair with her relative Seenu, who also studied in the same college. He didn't trust him and in anger he beats Ravi. When Madhan Raj confronted Vaishnavi, she got angry and thought that he did not trust her.

Madhan Raj realised his mistake and covertly went to Vaishnavi's house to apologize, only to find her in bed with Seenu. He realized that Ravi was correct this whole time. He also heard Vaishnavi's conversation with Seenu that she pretended to love Madhan Raj and would like to marry him so that she could take advantage of his innocence and sincere love, which would help her lead life the way she wanted, and have Madhan Raj as a slave under her. Furious, Madhan Raj killed both Vaishnavi and Seenu. He returned to Chennai and arrogantly narrated the whole incident to his brother. Madhan Raj decided to change his appearance and set out in search of girls cheating in the name of love to kill them and warned his twin brother that if he informed the police of his whereabouts, he would kill him.

Back in the present, the police investigate about Madhan Raj and get solid evidences about his existence. Madhan Kumar, with the help of Pandiyan, is released from the case. Mythili apologizes to Madhan Kumar and also proposes to him, which he rejects, saying that he does not love her and had treated her as friend. Mythili leaves the place saying that she will wait for Madhan Kumar, believing that he will accept her love someday.

The story again moves to a flashback, where it is shown only to the audience that Madhan Kumar is, in fact, Manmadhan, and that Madhan Raj is innocent of the crimes. After killing Seenu and Vaishnavi, Madhan Raj hysterically met his brother and told him that he regretted killing them and he did it only because he was ashamed of what they were doing and committed suicide in front of Madhan Kumar's eyes, despite the latter's pleas. Madhan Kumar hence decided to avenge his brother's death by killing girls who cheat in the name of love, under the pseudonym Manmadhan and develops his "nosebleed" from then on. Kumar has hidden his brother Madhan Raj's death, thereby using his identity as a scapegoat so that he could escape if caught.

It is shown that Madhan Kumar indeed loves Mythili for her innocence and good demeanour, but cannot and will not express his feelings for her. He also exclaims that if his brother had loved a girl like her, he would also have lived happily and he would have married Mythili and be happy. Hence, Madhan Kumar concludes that avenging his brother's death is more important, and only God can judge his actions. The film ends with a message that even if Manmadhan has escaped the clutches of the police, he would answer for his actions before the law someday.

Cast[]

• Silambarasan as Madhan Kumar (Manmadhan) and Madhan Raj (Motta)
• Jyothika as Mythili
• Sindhu Tolani as Vaishnavi
• Goundamani as Puncture Pandiyan
• Atul Kulkarni as ACP Deva
• Santhanam as Bobby
• Sathyan as Inspector Shakthi (Deva's assistant)
• Mayuri as Malathi
• Guhan Shanmugam as Madhan Kumar's college rival
• T. P. Gajendran as Village Landlord
• Dr. S.Suresh Kumar as Reporter
• Crane Manohar as Puncture Pandiyan's worker
• Brinda Parekh as Train Passenger (guest appearance)
• Mandira Bedi as Psychiatrist (special appearance)
• Yana Gupta (Item number)
• Arzoo Govitrikar as girl in cafe

Production[]

Simbhu experienced difficulties with director A. J. Murugan during the making of this film and was widely reported by the media to have "ghost-directed" the project.^[7] Murugan was later demoted and worked in Silambarasan's directorial venture, Vallavan (2006) as an associate director, and was consequently critical of the actor's insistence on interfering with the director's role.^[8]

Soundtrack[]

The soundtrack, composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja, was released on 1 July 2004 and features 6 songs. The lyrics were penned by Vaali, Snehan, Pa. Vijay and Na. Muthukumar. The singers include the film's lead actor Silambarasan, Anushka Manchanda from the girl-pop group Viva! and rapper Blaaze, who all sung for the first time under Yuvan's direction. After the release of the film, several bonus tracks, that featured in the film, but not in the soundtrack, were released again as a soundtrack, which includes pieces of the film score and the earlier released songs. All the tracks were composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja.

Telugu version[]

^[9]

All music is composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja.

Release[]

Though made on a high budget of ₹5 crore, Manmadhan was sold at a deficit to distributors. However, the film opened with 140 prints^[10] and emerged successful despite facing competition from veterans on Deepavali weekend - Ajith's Attagasam, Vijayakanth's Neranja Manasu, and Sarathkumar's Chatrapathy.^[11]

The film carried an 'A' certificate with some cuts and as the production cost had over-run, exhibitors and distributors were made to cough up some money for smooth release on Deepavali weekend.^[12]

Collection reports from Chennai, Coimbatore and Salem distribution territories indicated that Manmadhan surged ahead of Attagasam in its second week with the help of strong reviews in the media, music and excellent word of mouth.^[13]

The movie's satellite rights were sold to SUN TV and this version carried a V/U Certificate.

References[]

External links[]

• Manmadhan at IMDb