PS 1 - Movie

 PS 1 is Ponniyan Selvan is a movie based on the 1955 work of historical fiction by Kalki and captures the reign of the Cholas in the 10th century. We can trust Maniratnam to deliver a movie of that scale well and he does - though PS 1 after the three hour watch still seems like a trailer. I could not remember the names of any of the min characters and only remembered the actors names.

Anyway the Cholas have captured places up North and down South thanks to their enterprising princes Aditya and Arul (he is the guy, he is PS1 which I realised after half the movie was done). Anyway there is an old king who is in Tanjore and who somehow cannot communicate with his two sons directly, some uncle type who is married to Nandini (the only name we could get, Ash). This uncle is a bit of a hen pecked chap. Anyway Aditya sends a smart young fellow Karthi to communicate something to his father and also spy on an important mutiny meeting and then tell his father about it and also tell his sister about it. This chap somehow manages to get the ring of Nandini and somehow accesses the palace, sees the mutiny and meets the sister and finally even goes to meet the younger brother in Lanka. There is some story of why Aditya does not want to come back (he has beheaded Veerapandian despite Nandini's pleas) and now the entire Pandyas are behind the Cholas - infiltrating their ranks (psst..Nandini is one of them). There is one secret passage she smuggles out Karthi from which is no secret - it is like a highway with so many people going and coming you could have a toll booth there. Anyway by the end we have the Lankans, the Pandyas, the traitors within and god knows who else looking to kill these Cholas (I was hoping they would all have some name tags to identify who was who) and it looks like they will kill the Cholas who somehow do not seem to know how to communicate with each other directly. Aditya gets mad however when he is told his brother is killed and vows to kill Nandini or get killed by her which means he will get killed by her in PS 2. 

Anyway it was fun while it lasted though a tad long. All characters look their part and we can now look forward to PS 2 (hopefully with name tags this time). I thought Trisha did very well.