Anegan

Plot

Munaruna is a Tamil worker in 1960s Burma. His friend Saamuda falls in love with Mallika, but Mallika loves Munaruna. Munaruna saves Samudra, the daughter of a Burmese army general, from a Ferris wheel accident and they fall in love. When Mallika learns about this, she is devastated and marries Saamuda. The Burmese general disapproves of the union between Munaruna and Samudra, and revokes the privileges that the Tamil immigrants had until then. Violence breaks out and the Tamil nationals flee Burma. Munaruna and Samudra join the refugees on a ship with Saamuda and Mallika. When Samudra's father comes looking for her, Mallika spitefully reveals where they are hiding. As Samudra and Munaruna try to escape by diving into the ocean, Munaruna is shot and killed. Samudra drowns after promising to be together forever.

Back in Dr.Radhika's office in present-day India, Madhu claims that it is the story of her previous life and she has already met Saamuda and Mallika as Jagan and Meera, who are fellow programmers in the same gaming company. Radhika dismisses this and gives Madhu medicine for stress. Madhu meets Ashwin, a new employee in her company, and realizes his resemblance to Munaruna and flirts with him. Kiran is their boss and he knows to extract work from employees with ease.

Meera hallucinates about ghosts that try to rape her and she jumps from the office window and dies. Madhu is disturbed and attends her therapy sessions with Radhika when she remembers her first birth.

Madhu and Ashwin meet with a car accident and Madhu is admitted in a hospital. She dreams about overhearing a policeman Gopinath's conversation about Kaali and Kalyani, when she intervenes and says that she knows their whereabouts. Once awake, she recites the dream to the policemen in the hospital and they are confused. Police commissioner Gopinath visits her and Madhu realizes that he looks like the police from her dream. He says that the Kaali-Kalyani story was a missing person case that happened 25 years ago. Madhu claims that Kaali and Kalyani were killed and buried and takes Gopinath and Ashwin to a place where they dig up and find skeletons identified as remains of Kaali and Kalyani. Gopinath finds a ring engraved with letter R on one of the skeletons. Ashwin is confused as to what R may mean.

Madhu returns to her therapy, and Kiran hears about her hallucinations and rushes to the clinic. Madhu hallucinates about her third birth, where she is Kalyani, a Brahmin girl who falls in love with a rowdy Kaali and her father forcefully arranges her marriage with RaviKiran when Kaali is in jail for murder. Kaali escapes from prison and meets Kalyani and they plan to elope, but RaviKiran finds out and offers to help them. He takes them to a secluded spot where he murders Kaali and Kalyani out of jealousy and buries them. The finger with the ring belongs to RaviKiran and is amputated by Kaali during the fight. RaviKiran buries it along with dead bodies, unknowingly.

In the present, Kiran is RaviKiran in his youth. When he finds out that, as a child, Madhu learned the truth of Kali and Kalyani's death from Kalyani's father, he kidnaps and tries to kill her. Ashwin finds video games whose plots resemble the stories of Madhu's previous births and Meera's hallucination and death. He finds a drug that the employees have been using to boost memory. He realizes that Kiran has been giving illegal drugs his employees to boost their creativity so that he can profit with uniquely-themed, intense games. As a side effect of the drug, his employees hallucinate. Ashwin confronts Kiran, and in the ensuing fight, he saves Madhu and Kiran is killed when a knife Ashwin threw into a tree falls onto Kiran's chest. Gopinath covers up the death as suicide, stating that Kiran killed himself for the illegal activities.

Ashwin and Madhu marry and honeymoon in Burma, where they pass by a log with a heart and the names of Munaruna and Samudra carved into it.

Cast

Development

In May 2013, K. V. Anand stated that he would collaborate with Dhanush for his next film, which Dhanush confirmed on his social network page. Anand joined hands with AGS Entertainment for the second time after Maattraan (2012), and it was confirmed that the production company would also distribute the film worldwide. Though it was rumoured to be titled as Thaara Thappatta Ready, it was later dismissed by the director. Dhanush was said to appear in four different looks in the film, and that he would not be playing the "moody-sombre" type-role he played in his previous films like Mayakkam Enna (2011). The film, a romantic entertainer laced with action was titled Anegan, meaning "the man with many shadows", according to Tamil poet Manikkavacakar, from his volume, Tiruvacakam. It was revealed that the story comprises multiple period set-ups, and in one of the segments, Dhanush goes back to his previous birth. The technical crew consisted of cinematography by Om Prakash, editing by Anthony, action by Kanal Kannan and the dialogues were written by Subha. As with most K. V. Anand films, Harris Jayaraj was once again signed to compose the musical score. K. V. Anand had stated that Dhanush will be sporting a hairdo similar to Kamal Haasan's look in the film, Tik Tik Tik (1981).

Casting

Alia Bhatt was rumoured to be playing the lead, before Amyra Dastur, a model who made her film debut in Issaq (2013) was later cast opposite Dhanush. In preparation for her role, she was asked to see Tamil films and also took Tamil lessons from Dhanush to get her dialogues right. Amyra was further reported to be performing stunts for the film. In an interview to IANS, Amyra said that she would portray three different roles in the film. Karthik was signed to play the role of a love guru to Dhanush, for a part, similar to the role portrayed by Santhanam in Theeya Velai Seiyyanum Kumaru (2013), and also sport a look similar to that of Ajith's look in Mankatha (2011). Baby Vedhika of Nirnayam (2013) fame is also playing a role. Actress Aishwarya Devan was selected to play the second heroine in the film. Actors Atul Kulkarni and Ashish Vidyarthi were selected to play supporting roles. Malayalam actress Lena was also selected to play a supporting role in the film.

Filming

Principal photography began on 2 September 2013 at Puducherry. It was reported that the film would be shot across locations such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Burma among many other countries. In Malaysia, a football game scene was shot in the oldest English school in South East Asia, Penang Free School. The second schedule took place in Hyderabad, where an action sequence was shot for 20 days, along with a song sequence choreographed by Baba Baskar. According to unit members, Amyra stunned the unit with her perfect lip sync for Tamil dialogues and that she overshadowed the hero in some places as well. By 29 May 2014, 90% of the movie was shot, including 3 song sequences. Another song sequence and part of the climax were shot on a farmland, spread over 100 acres, near Puducherry. During the process of shooting the climax, which was reported to be a racy stunt sequence, Dhanush injured his leg severely, because of which shooting was halted for 3 weeks, after which Dhanush recovered and shooting proceeded as scheduled. The team then went to Scotland to shoot for a song sequence. In mid-August 2014, the filming was almost done with just a song left to be shot in Chennai on 1 September 2014. On 15 September 2014, Anand confirmed that the shooting of the film was completed.

On 26 August 2014, Dhanush stated that he had started dubbing for the film.

Music

Harris Jayaraj composed the songs and background score for the film, collaborating with K. V. Anand for the fourth time. Shankar Mahadevan, Bhavatharini and Shail Hada have contributed to this album.

In April 2014, Harris recorded a song called "Aathadi Aathadi" . The song was sung by Bhavatharini and written by Vairamuthu. In May 2014, Harris recorded an "energetic" track, also written by Vairamuthu and sung by Shankar Mahadevan, who collaborated with Harris after Ghajini (2005). In late June 2014, Harris finished recording a "peppy number", written by director C. S. Amudhan. During the recording of Amudhan's song, K. V. Anand said that the album was in its final stages of recording and that each song would be of a different dimension based on its situation in the film. In August 2014, Harris informed via Twitter that almost all the songs were completed.

Sony Music India purchased the audio rights of the soundtrack and the album was released on 10 November 2014.

All lyrics written by Sahithi, Vanamali.

Release

The first look poster was released on 1 September 2013. The title font was designed to resemble a gamepad. Additional stills and posters were made available on 24 October 2013. A one-minute teaser was released on 21 October, coinciding with Diwali. The official trailer was released on 7 January 2015 on YouTube by Sony Music India. The satellite rights of the film were sold to Sun TV. The film released on 13 February 2015, in nearly 1000 screens worldwide.

The film was listed by Behindwoods in its "Top 10 most Anticipated films of 2014".

Critical reception

M. Suganth of The Times of India in his review stated that the film "[had] traces of Magadheera, Enakkul Oruvan, Cloud Atlas and The Fountain" but attributed the comparison "mainly due to the reincarnation theme." Suganth rated the film 4 stars out of 5 and stated, "Anegan is pure camp but also a hugely entertaining one". Nicy V.P of The International Business Times rated it 3 stars out of 5 and wrote "Anegan is a brilliant attempt by KV Anand, he tried a new visual style to tell his story and to an extend he was successful too". Udhav Naig of The Hindu wrote, "With most commercial films recycling the usual plot and its many tropes, full credit to K.V. Anand for striving to narrate a banal plot – full of déjà vu and clichés – in an enterprising manner." Another reviewer Sudhir Srinivasan wrote "Anegan...is a complex story told simplistically. Had the complexity been retained, and had the masala spoon been of a lesser size, it would have made for a great film. For now though, it will have to satisfy itself with being a hit film." Rediff.com stated, "The narrative technique and interesting screenplay keep things moving at a brisk pace. But on the downside, there are far too many songs and several unanswered questions". Sify wrote, "Gorgeously shot, crisply edited, and handsomely mounted, KV Anand's Anegan is a fast paced rollicking adventure ride that is gripping till the very end".

Indiaglitz rated the film 3 out of 5 and wrote "Although not a masala perse, Anegan savours all tastes. There is action, a little bit of revenge, lighthearted comedy, smothering love, all served with a twist from the usual." Behindwoods.com rated it 2.75 out of 5 and stated "Though there are lots of questions which can be raised on the story and happenings, the overall screenplay and editing keeps you engaged by and large." Gautaman Bhaskaran of The Hindustan Times rated it 2 stars out of 5 and stated "If Anegan is a mishmash of many films that one has seen over the years, the performances are passé. Yes, a new look Karthik may be a novelty, but Dhanush appears to be disinterested in changing his style or his roles."