“They grabbed my dreams. Now they want to take away my as sets,” exclaims inventor – visionary Gopalswamy Doraiswamy Naidu, with not a shred of self-pity or remorse. This was a man who could see tomorrow. Lamentably, we have forgotten him today, wasting screen space to tell hate-filled stories of men who maim, kill and destroy human lives, often in the name of desh bhakti.
In GDN there is a trenchant comment on the desecration of values and culture and the ruination of the education system through popular cinema in which Madhavan, that cinema chameleon, does a dance of mockery draped in cloth with figures of Tamil film stars imprinted on it. The man, and the actor are one on this: they are not afraid to look ridiculous to the outside world. Those watching his antics, on the screen and off it would think GDN’s behaviour is exceedingly eccentric, almost lunatic. But isn’t that what being an incorrigible dreamer is all about?
In this biopic writer-director Krishnakumar Ramakumar meticulously re constructs the life of a misunderstood genius, allowing the character to grow from rural aspirant to national oddity to global gamechanger with a fluidity that defines the craggy unpredictable thorny path taken by Doraiswamy. A large part of the pulchritudinous narrative is taken up in mapping out Doraiswamy’s battle with the income – tax department where one man Ambalapara Krishnan(played by Jayaram) is hellbent to shut down all of GD Naidu’s visionary aspirations. Of course the people’s beloved GDN is more than up to the challenge. How could he not b e, when he is played by Madhavan? The actor ’s ingrained charm and the character’s obdurate temerity merge without punctuations.
It is difficult to figure out who is playing whom. Very often I felt the character was consuming the actor, goading him into areas of his subconscious that reify Doraiswamy’s inner world without statutory warning. What do I say about Madhavan and his performance in GDN? The actor is a full blown chameleon, what Kamal Haasan once used to be. Madhavan moves with effortless fluency from one masterly performance to another. In GDN he has outclassed himself by bringing to life an unsung tainted hero with all his quirks, obstinacy and future stic vision.
Is Madhavan the best contemporary Indian actor? I don’t know how far this plucky biopic has leaned into facts. I suspect all of it is true but some of the twists and turns in the plot are so mi schi evo us, they feel more manufactured than D oraiswamy’s world-changing inventions. A performance and a product with such refined and resonant sensibilities cannot be reliant on the abilities of one actor alone. M adhavan has assembled a coterie of actors who know their job, and how to get to the core of the protagonist ’s deviant genius without fuss. Jayaram is wonderful as Doraiswamy’s adversary, and so is Sathyaraj as GDN’s right-hand man.
I wish Priyamani had played Doraiswamy’s second wife instead of first, so she could have been on screen longer. Aravind Kamalanathan’s lensing is a visual treat, though not in any ostentatious way. The various time passages from the early 1900s to the 1980s, is achieved with the least violence. All the aggression , questioning and protest are within the protagonist. Gopalswamy Doraiswamy Naidu was a fighter. Ominously, we are told that a generation would eventually emerge to fight Doraiswamy’s fight against authoritarianism. What would he say about what is happening in the country today?