Thandakaaranyam

In Athiyan Athirai’s sophomore film, Thandakaaranyam, the eponymous forests become a MacGuffin that is forever out of reach of the protagonists. It’s a story that’s ostensibly about the fault lines and simmering tensions between the state, comprising a nexus of the police, paramilitary forces that collude with politicians and conglomerates, and the tribal population that is given the unqualified title of Naxalites. The forests remain in the margins in Athirai’s film (his Irandam Ulagaporin Kadaisi Gundu remains one of the best debuts in Tamil cinema of the last decade); they are not landscapes for conspiracy, separatist forces or ambushes — it comes across as a conscious decision. The forest is more life and livelihood, one that is as one with the self as skin. But the forest security offices and the training camps, the locations where injustices truly roost, are the places of interest.