Manmadhan (film)

Manmadhan
Film poster
Directed by	Silambarasan A.J. Murugan
Produced by	S. K. Krishnakanth
Written by	Silambarasan Balakumaran (Dialogues)
Screenplay by	Silambarasan
Story by	Silambarasan
Starring	Silambarasan Jyothika Goundamani Sindhu Tolani
Music by	Yuvan Shankar Raja
Cinematography	S. Moorthy R. D. Rajasekhar
Edited by	Anthony
Production company	Indian Theatre Production
Release date	12 November 2004 (2004-11-12)
Running time	143 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	₹5 crore[1]

Manmadhan (Tamil: மன்மதன்) (English: Cupid) is 2004 Indian Tamil language crime thriller film directed by A.J. Murugan and Silambarasan who wrote the story, screenplay, and co-dialogue along with Balakumaran. Silambarasan played dual roles for the first time in his career while Jyothika, Sindhu Tolani, Santhanam and Goundamani played the supporting roles. The film's score and soundtrack are composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja. The film revolves around twin brothers, Madhan Kumar (Manmadhan) and Madhan Raj, with the former being a serial killer of incorrect girls who cheat in the name of love and the latter being an innocent and a sincere lover.

Silambarasan and Jyothika won critical acclaim for their performances and both were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress Category at Filmfare Awards respectively. The film was released on 12 November 2004. It was later dubbed into Telugu as Manmadha. It was also remade in Kannada as Madana with Auditya and Sameksha in the lead roles.

Plot

Madhan Kumar (Silambarasan) is a well-respected and well-educated Chartered Accountant by profession, who lives in Chennai and also learns music as part-time in a musical college. Mythili (Jyothika) also learns music from the same college. Mythili gets scared seeing Madhan because once she had a dream of getting raped by him. Later on, she realizes his kind nature and they both become good friends.

But Madhan also has another side under the pseudonym Manmadhan, in which he finds and kills morally incorrect girls in Chennai. He takes the dead bodies of those girls to drainage and burns them to ashes and stores it in bottles with the names of the girls pasted over the bottle. Media attention turns towards the case of missing girls and Chennai Assistant Commissioner of Police, Deva (Atul Kulkarni) takes the charge to find the person behind the mystery.

One day, Mythili finds Madhan riding a bike with a girl at the pillion. On the next day, Mythili gets shocked to see the news that the girl whom she spotted with Madhan the previous day goes missing. Mythili thinks that Madhan is behind all the crimes in the city and informs Deva about Madhan and his whereabouts. Hence Madhan gets arrested.

During the investigation, Madhan reveals that it was his younger brother Madhan Raj (also Silambarasan) who was responsible for destroying the incorrect 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). While Madhan Kumar was brave and intelligent, Madhan Raj was an innocent and sentimental person who went to Coimbatore in to join in an engineering college. There he got mingled with a friend named Bobby (Santhanam). He fell in love with his collegemate Vaishnavi (Sindhu Tolani). Vaishnavi also reciprocated her love for Madhan Raj seeing his good nature. But Madhan Raj's friends informed him that Vaishnavi was having an illicit affair with her relative Seenu who also studied in the same class. When Madhan Raj asked about this to Vaishnavi, she got angry thinking that Madhan Raj did not trust her.

Madhan Raj realized his mistake and went to Vaishnavi's house to apologize, but got shocked to see her on a bed with Seenu. Now he realized that his friends were correct. He also heard Vaishnavi's conversation with Seenu that she pretended to love Madhan Raj but would like to marry him, so that she could take advantage of his innocence and sincere love which would help her lead a life the way she wanted and Madhan Raj would be like a slave for her throughout her life. Madhan Raj got furious on seeing this and killed both Vaishnavi and Seenu. He returned to Chennai for meeting his brother Madhan Kumar and narrated the whole happenings. Madhan Raj set out in search of girls cheating in the name of love to kill them. Hence the flashback ends here.

Back to the present, the police investigates about Madhan Raj and gets all evidence about his existence. Madhan Kumar, with the help of Puncture Pandiyan, is released from the case. Now Mythili apologizes to Madhan Kumar and also proposes her love towards him which he rejects saying that he does not love her and mingled with her as a best friend. Mythili leaves the place saying that she will wait for Madhan Kumar believing he will accept her love someday.

The story again moves to a flashback where it is shown only to the audience that it was Madhan Kumar, who was none other than Manmadhan and he was really behind all the murders and Madhan Raj didn't have any links with the murders as he was innocent. In the flashback, Madhan Raj met his brother, informed about the happenings and committed suicide. Madhan Kumar hence decided to take revenge for his brother's death by killing girls who cheat in the name of love, under the pseudonym Manmadhan. Kumar has hidden his brother Raj's death thereby making him be absconding so that he could escape in the case of being caught. The movie ends showing that Madhan Kumar has hidden his love towards Mythili and spared her as she was very good and innocent. He also exclaims that if his brother had loved a girl like her, he would also have lived happily and would have married her. Hence Madhan Kumar does not marry Mythili because he continues to proceed to kill such incorrect girls.

Cast

• Simbhu as Madhan Kumar (Manmadhan) and Madhan Raj (Motta) - Dual roles
• Jyothika as Mythili
• Sindhu Tolani as Vaishnavi
• Goundamani as Puncture Pandiyan
• Atul Kulkarni as Assistant Commissioner of Police Deva
• Santhanam as Bobby
• Guhan Shanmugam as Madhan Kumar's College Rival
• Brinda Parekh in a Guest appearance as a train passenger
• Sathyan as Deva's Assistant and Inspector Shakthi
• Mayuri as Malathi
• Mandira Bedi as a Psychiatrist, Special appearance
• Yana Gupta in an Item number
• V. Balakrishnan in a Guest Appearance

Production

Simbhu experienced difficulties with director A. J. Murugan during the making of his film, Manmadhan (2004) and was widely reported by the media to have "ghost-directed" the project.^[2] 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.^[3]

Soundtrack

The soundtrack, composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja, released on 1 July 2004 and features 6 songs. The lyrics were penned by Vaali, Snehan, Pa. Vijay and Na. Muthukumar. The singer 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 Raja'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 Raja.

Telugu version details-

^[4]

All music composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja.

Release

Due to high budget of ₹5 crore, Manmadhan was sold at a deficit to distributors. However, the film opened with 140 prints^[5] and emerged successful despite facing competition from veterans on Deepavali weekend - Ajith's Attagasam, Vijayakanth's Neranja Manasu, Sarathkumar's Chatrapathy^[6]

The film carried an 'A' certificate with some cuts^[7] and as the production cost had over-run, exhibitors and distributors were made to cough up some money for smooth release on Deepavali weekend.^[8]

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.^[9]

References

External links

• Manmadhan on IMDb