I suppose the question always was: what’s so special about Bhagavanth Kesari that it needed to be repurposed as Vijay’s last film? Balakrishna’s film rides on moments, on his entertainingly over-the-top presence, on a kind of, shall-we-say, self-aware absurdity? When he yells, “Bro! I don’t care!”, you’re laughing even as you’re cheering. With Vijay, we were always going to take everything far more seriously. Which means that the entire jail-fight idea is no longer quasi-comedy like it was with Bhagavanth Kesari. Here, every moment also carries the burden of homage, nostalgia and election symbolism. So, when an old man wants to sleep, a rowdy sings, “Ennai Thalatta Varuvaalaa…” Even Vijay’s character name is the totally awkward Thalapathy Vetri Kondaan, only so it abbreviates to… TVK. And of course, this also gives everyone a convenient excuse to call him Thalapathy.

This means that we end up processing the protagonist as two different people at once: Vetri, the fictional character, and Vijay, the public figure. As Vetri, he’s entrusted with raising young Viji (Mamitha), the daughter of a police officer (Gautham Menon) who gets killed off in a random road accident the moment the screenplay decides it no longer needs him alive. So, just when you’re beginning to process Vetri’s own past, his mother’s sudden death, something about his forest, something about Baasha-esque bouncer friends who are around to protect him… the film abruptly expects you to accept that he is now interested enough, free enough, eager enough, to raise a little girl who enters his life out of nowhere. The justifications arrive and disappear as bits and pieces of information. She once told him to think of her as his mother, so he cannot leave her. He promised her father he’d take care of her, so the years just pass.

If this film didn’t have everything else going on, perhaps it might have been easier to invest in their relationship. But then we’re whisked away to Africa, told something about Pakistan, then some country called Swasnia (?), then teddy bears carrying guns, then shown a woman being set on fire. Right from the beginning, it feels like you’re thrown information faster than you can process it. Even early on, I found it all hard to track, hard to attach myself to anyone.

I’m not even sure the people in this film come across as… people. They feel more like character placeholders, summoned and manipulated into doing whatever the screenplay needs to help Vetri look noble. That’s why the army trainer acts so cartoonishly misogynistic. Asked to train Viji, he tries to expose her physical weakness, has her kicked around, and ends his strange tantrum by bizarrely asking Vetri to teach her cooking and get her married off. But then, a small generic on-stage speech from Vetri, and his lifelong misogyny gets instantly cured. Another woman (Raichel Rabecca) wails for justice for her daughter (raped, murdered and flung by the roadside). But moments later, she’s smiling as she uses her daughter’s clothes to drape a shawl over Vijay (?!). People, in this film, get dramatically rearranged to suit the changing needs of this film.

The film’s primary need, of course, is to present Vijay as a messiah figure, as a reincarnation of MGR if you will. He’s holding a book about Indian elections in his very first scene. His introductory shot frames him against a burning photograph of MGR. He sings, ‘Naan Aanai Yittaal’. A whip is brandished. At one point, MGR even briefly comes alive, almost like one of those animated Hogwarts portraits. At various points, Vetri looks into the camera, breaks the fourth wall. He imparts body-safety education to young girls. Bussy Anand materialises out of nowhere for a cameo. In parts, Jananayagan really feels like one of those ruling-party films that play before the actual movie can.

And yet, there are glimpses of what this film perhaps could have been. In a story populated by remote-controlled humanoids and dictators trying to capture entire nations, the idea that I saw most promise in is something real, something emotional: good police officers being suffocated by politicians (formerly rowdies). You could argue that we’ve seen this idea in perhaps every film about a righteous policeman. But here, it’s shown as the very reason someone breaks bad, why Bobby Deol descends into villainy. I liked this notion that institutions deform decent people. And I liked more that his loss of faith isn’t merely in politicians, but in the people who continue electing them, a disillusionment he weaponises by spreading hatred. Perhaps these ideas simply deserved a different film.

You see, Jananayagan carries too many ambitions, too many objectives. It wants to preserve the soul of Bhagavanth Kesari. It wants to launch Vijay into politics. It wants to motivate you to vote for him. It wants to celebrate his cinematic legacy. It wants to speak about social justice and psychological motivations. It wants to be an action spectacle. Even at nearly three hours, the film seems to be merely scratching the surface of these ideas.

What I suspect will linger as this film’s defining image is Vetri brandishing a sword, four headless bodies behind him falling off. I do think all the violence is a problem in the context of this film. Any other film, any other profession for the protagonist, any other star… it might have been easier to see it all as fantasy violence. But films inevitably arrive within a cultural context. And in that context, of protests and newly elected politicians and police brutality, it isn’t much fun to see a uniformed police officer keep severing heads. Also, even cinematically, the repeated shots, the repeated gore… I got numbed quite early.

The problem isn’t that the violence exists. It’s what the film seems to advocate through it. Jananayagan prescribes violence as the only real legitimate route to justice. See Viji’s arc as an example. Or see how towards the end, Vetri openly dismisses protests and even sarcastically condemns candle-light vigils as well-meaning but futile exercises. Think of the closing image of this film: women walking towards polling booths carrying weapons, confronting armed men twice their strength, who are apparently frightened into inaction. It’s the fantasy, no? But considering Jananayagan presents its protagonist as a real-life saviour figure, it becomes hard to process these moments only as cinematic exaggeration. And in any case, I’m not convinced that civil violence can meaningfully overcome systemic violence. More often than not, it only strengthens the system’s justification for responding with even greater force, resulting potentially in greater tragedies.

You’ve got to spare a thought for H. Vinoth though. This cannot have been an easy film to put together. He has to preserve the soul of Bhagavanth Kesari. He has to present Vijay as Tamil Nadu’s saviour. He has to flavour the film with nostalgia because this is Vijay’s last film. He has to bring in his own commentary on social justice. And somehow, he is expected to deliver an entertainer that satisfies everyone (Anirudh certainly tries his best, as always).

The tragedy is, Jananayagan never quite becomes any one of these many films within it. Right at the end, there’s a moving montage made out of Vijay’s filmography. As passing shots from Ghilli, Kaththi and Kadhalukku Mariyadhai faded over the screen, I found myself thinking about them and remembering something: The best of his films were always about characters Vijay played. Not about Vijay himself.