Mirugam

Mirugam (English: Animal) is a 2007 Tamil neo-noir drama film written and directed by Samy and starring debutant Adhi and Padmapriya, directed by Samy.

Plot

The story is set in a village near Ramnad. The protagonist Ayyanar (Aadhi) is a care free villager who uses his muscle than his brains for any situation and behaves more or less like an animal. He is a terror to the whole village. He is a womanizer sleeps with sex workers and even rapes the housewives. There is no woman in the village that he hasn't had an encounter with. He beats up anyone including his mother. He makes a living through his bull which he hires out for its stud services. During one of his visits to the local brothel, he has raped the queen whore Savithri, but refuses to pay for her services.

One day, Ayyanar meets Alagamma (Padmapriya) a tomboyish girl. Her beauty strikes him and he manages to marry her, but treats her like another one of his conquests. In the first night itself he brutally rapes her and continues with his sexual exploits. She hates him for what he is. But she soon changes her mind after knowing his past, she warms up to him and decides to change him and bring him on to the right path by her love and affection.

Fate takes a turn-Ayyanar is hauled in by the cops after a drunken fight and he is sentenced to a year in jail. In jail he gets addicted to drugs, using the same syringe and needles with co-prisoners and finds no problem in sexual activity with co-prisoners of same sex. After coming out of the jail he starts of his own way. He wants to kill his pregnant wife whom he believes that she had an illegal relationship with her uncle. Soon he is hit by some virus according to doctors and later it becomes as he is affected with AIDS (HIV-Positive). The villagers ignore him but his loyal and devoted wife stands with him till the end. A villager kills him. Film ends with the death of Ayyanar.

Cast

• Aadhi
• Padmapriya
• Ganja Karuppu
• Sona

Production

Director Samy misbehaved with the actress Padmapriya and harassed her by slapping her in front of the crew and the village people. The South Indian Film Industry imposed a one-year ban on him for his behaviour on set, but later the ban was lifted due to constant lobbying by Producer's associations.^[1]

Critical reception

Sify wrote "The film fails to strike a chord because the concern of the director to highlight the plight of an Aids patient in the post interval scenes is facetious. Throughout the film the director becomes more of a voyeur and dialogues loaded with sexual overtones. And surely Samy knows the difference between exploitation and cause-orientation".^[2] Rediff wrote "Watch Mirugam for some realistically done rural fare. With all the dollops of sex, action and messages, it harks back to the good old masala genre, spiced according to today's specifications."^[3] Behindwoods wrote "While the AIDS issue could have remained the focus of the movie, Sami, on the other hand indulges mostly in other shoddy matters providing it with an overdose of sex delving too much into it. His lack of clear conviction in the subject is glaringly visible that probably made him adopt other ways and means reducing the movie to a mediocre product."^[4]

References