Tamil Nadu’s defiant history is woven into the backdrop of ‘Sarpatta Parambarai’

Pa. Ranjith has shown that real political history can provide a rich canvas for an entertaining film

Sarpatta Parambarai (The Sarpatta Clan), touted as one of the most intense sports dramas to emerge from India, is Director Pa. Ranjith’s fifth film. Sarpatta’s story has been brewing within him from the days of his debut film Attakathi. Like the rest of Ranjith’s oeuvre, Sarpatta is set within a conscious framework of historicity, political contestations, and ideological assertion. In the opening credits, the film pays affectionate homage to the boxers and coaches from Black Town in north Madras, and to the numerous contractors, commentators, and working-class audiences who contributed to the flourishing of the boxing culture there in the 1970s. North Madras had a very rich heritage of boxing traditions initially inherited from the British, later carried forward by dedicated indigenous boxing clans. Ranjith, through his meticulous scripting of that boxing culture, has ingeniously brought the social history of those marginalised communities into the limelight. The feuding among the boxing clans of Black Town, both in and out of the ring, constitutes the crux of Sarpatta’s story, but the sporting rivalry unfolds against a vivid political backdrop, depicting the imposition of the 1975-77 Emergency. The milieu of Black Town in the 70s — home to the protagonist, Kabilan — is brilliantly reconstructed and becomes a signifier for urban ghettos with predominantly Dalit population.