Manmadhan (film)


Manmadhan is 2004 Indian Tamil-language romantic thriller film directed and written by A. J. Murugan with dialogues Balakumaran. Silambarasan played dual roles for the first time in his career while Jyothika, Sindhu Tolani, Santhanam, Atul Kulkarni, and Goundamani played supporting roles. The film's score and soundtrack are composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja. The film revolves around Manmadan, who after the suicide of his beloved brother takes on a dark path and becomes a serial killer and rapist, allegedly to avenge his brother's death.
Both 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. Manmadhan went on to run for 150 days. 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 is an auditor by profession, who lives in Chennai and also learns music as part-time in a musical college. Mythili, a naive woman, also learns music from the same college. She gets scared upon seeing Madhan one day because she happens to witness a dream of her getting raped by him. Later on, she realizes his kind nature and they both become good friends.
However, Madhan also has another side under the pseudonym Manmadhan, in which he finds and kills morally incorrect girls in Chennai by seducing them before rendering them unconscious using chloroform. 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. Whenever he intends to kill a girl by seducing them, he suffers a nosebleed. The media attention turns towards the case of missing girls, and Chennai ACP Deva 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 twin brother Madhan Raj who was responsible for killing 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. While Madhan Kumar was brave, intelligent and practical, Madhan Raj was an innocent and sentimental person who went to Coimbatore to join in an engineering college. There, he got mingled with a friend named Bobby. He fell in love with his college mate Vaishnavi, who also reciprocated her love for him upon seeing his good nature. However, 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 and thought that he did not trust her.
Madhan Raj realized his mistake and went to Vaishnavi's house to apologize, but he got shocked when he saw her on a bed, having sex with Seenu. Now, he realized that his friends were correct this whole time. 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 a slave for her throughout her life. Madhan Raj got furious on seeing this and killed both Vaishnavi and Seenu. He returned to Chennai to meet his brother Madhan Kumar and arrogantly narrated the whole happenings. Madhan Raj decided to change his appearance and set out in search of girls cheating in the name of love to kill them and warned his twin brother that if he informed the police of his whereabouts, he would kill him. 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 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 had mingled with her as a good friend. Mythili leaves the place saying that she will wait for Madhan Kumar, believing that he will accept her love someday.
The story again moves to a flashback, where it is shown only to the audience that it was indeed Madhan Kumar, who was none other than Manmadhan, who was behind all the murders, and that Madhan Raj did not have any links with the murders as he was innocent. In the flashback, after killing Seenu and Vaishnavi, he hysterically meets his brother and informs about the happenings and tells him that he regrets killing them and he did it only because he was ashamed of what they were doing 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 and develops his trademark "nosebleed" from then on. Kumar has hidden his brother Raj's death, thereby using his identity as a scapegoat so that he could escape in case of being caught.
The movie ends showing that Madhan Kumar indeed loves Mythili for her innocence and good demeanor, but cannot and will not reciprocate her feelings. 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 concludes that avenging his brother's death is more important, and only God can judge his actions. The film ends with a message that even if Manmadhan has escaped the clutches of the police, he would still answer for his actions before the law.

Cast

Simbhu experienced difficulties with director A. J. Murugan during the making of this film and was widely reported by the media to have "ghost-directed" the project. Murugan was later demoted and worked in Silambarasan's directorial venture, Vallavan as an associate director, and was consequently critical of the actor's insistence on interfering with the director's role.

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.
TrackSongSingerDurationLyricistNotes
1"Thathai Thathai"Silambarasan, Clinton Cerejo, Blaaze, Vasundhara Das5:55Vaali
2"Manmadhane Nee"Sadhana Sargam4:34Snehan
3"Oh Mahire"Anushka Manchanda5:49Pa. VijayNot featured in the film
4"Vanamenna"Shankar Mahadevan, Palakkad Sriram5:08Na. Muthukumar
5"En Aasai Mythiliye"Silambarasan, Suchitra4:25Pa. VijayRemixed from the Tamil film Mythili Ennai Kadhali, composed by Vijaya T. Rajendar
6"Kadhal Valarthen"KK7:28Na. Muthukumar

Telugu version details-
TrackSongSingerDurationLyricistNotes
1"Thathai Thathai"Devi Sri Prasad, Clinton Cerejo, Kalpana, Vasundhara Das5:52Vennelakanti
2"Manmadhuda Nee"K. S. Chithra4:30Veturi Sundararama Murthy
3"Ningilanti manasu choodu"Tippu,Murali5:02Veturi Sundararama Murthy, Bhuvana Chandra
4"Kadanna prema"S. P. B. Charan6:54Veturi Sundararama Murthy
5"Andaala Menakave"Ranjith, Suchitra4:19Bhuvana Chandra

Release

Due to high budget of 5 crore, Manmadhan was sold at a deficit to distributors. However, the film opened with 140 prints and emerged successful despite facing competition from veterans on Deepavali weekend - Ajith's Attagasam, Vijayakanth's Neranja Manasu, Sarathkumar's Chatrapathy.
The film carried an 'A' certificate with some cuts and as the production cost had over-run, exhibitors and distributors were made to cough up some money for smooth release on Deepavali weekend.
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.
The movie satellite right on SUN TV. The Film Carried an V/U Certificate.