A Dream Project - Ponniyin Selvan
The year was 1958, when my grandmother would have been in her own world not knowing that she would be married in a couple of years to a handsome Hulk and would have lots of children. The same year my Grandfather would have been serving his country not knowing he was gonna marry a beautiful woman he had ever seen.
The same year one soul bought the rights of the novel that he and thousands of the people fell in love with for 10,000 rupees. His aim was to make the feature film with an extraordinary cast and play it on the big screen for his audience.
As someone who grew up in the 21st century and has never seen MGR or many other Tamil veteran actors in IRL or been alive during their era, what would have been like? The 50s & 60s were literally a turning point in Tamil/Indian cinema. I am fortunate to have witnessed the cinema's glory on small screens and how skilled they were.
From Chandralekha to Vanji Kootai Valiban, From Aayirathil oruvan to Ulagam Sutrum Vaaliban, From Parasakthi to Thiruvilayadal. The scope of them being grand and extremely articulated fascinated me, how they were able to achieve them with very little budget and no CGI. The old-school animation or stop motion really makes me believe that the ones who created them are just extremely out of this world.
Coming back to this Magnum Opus project which MGR dreamed of being part of and wanted to create all his life. Even after he left the cinema world and went on to be a politician he still dreamt of making this Kamal and Sridevi but sadly each time it failed. And I am very glad that finally, Maniratham was able to complete this after decades of it being shelved for various reasons and I am also glad that how the cast of Ponniyin Selvan happened now. Sadly the man MGR and many others couldn’t able to witness it.
But somewhere in my mind what would have been if MGR was able to complete his project with the original cast he had in mind, what if he hadn’t gotten into an accident, would we be still talking about the film if it had happened back then, would that be a classic still?
So, I wanted to list out some of the original cast members who were in the plan to be part of the film. I actually switched two of them, cause my heart told me to, can you guess which two from the ones below?
The original Ponniyin Selvan main cast list.
Original movie announcement poster
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