Kunjumon decided to collaborate with Shankar for the second time after the success of Gentleman (1993) and the story Shankar developed was that of a romance between an ordinary man and a wealthy girl; to increase the scale of the project, Kunjumon incorporated the cold-war between the then chief minister of Tamil NaduJ. Jayalalithaa and governor Marri Chenna Reddy into the script. The dialogues were written by Balakumaran, while the music was composed by A. R. Rahman. The cinematography was handled by Jeeva and editing by B. Lenin and V. T. Vijayan.
Kadhalan was released on 17 September 1994 and became a major commercial success. The film earned several accolades, including two Filmfare Awards South and four National Film Awards. It was later dubbed into Telugu as Premikudu, where it also achieved success.
Plot
Kakarla Sathyanarayana, the governor of Tamil Nadu, inaugurates a new open market in Madras, but as Mallikarjuna, a bomb specialist, planted a bomb the night before, the market area explodes minutes after Kakarla leaves, leaving the state government thrown into disarray.
Prabhu, the union chairman of a college and his friend Vasanth, the joint secretary, invite Kakarla as the chief guest for the college annual day. Prabhu sees Kakarla's daughter Shruti and instantly falls in love with her. Kakarla accepts the invitation and arrives on the function day with his wife and Shruti. Prabhu joins Shruthi's dance school to get close to her. Shruti hates Prabhu for disrespecting classical dance.
Prabhu's father Kathiresan, a police constable, advises Prabhu to impress her by learning classical dance properly and Prabhu accepts. He practices continuously for a month and becomes well-versed in the art. Shruti refuses to go to the Natyanjali festival at Chidambaram if Prabhu attends as he would insult the art. To disprove her, Prabhu secretly enters her house and demonstrates his dance skills, thus impressing Shruti. She agrees to attend Natyanjali, but Kakarla refuses to let Shruti attend Natyanjali due to fear of terrorism.
Unknown to anyone, Kakarla is an aide of the National ruling party and was paid heavily to topple the state government by horse-trading of MLAs. Kakarla instead chose to create law and order disarray and dismiss the legislature using Article 356 of the Constitution of India. He orchestrated the bombing at the market. Shruti escapes with Prabhu and Vasanth via motorbike, outwitting her bodyguards. Kakarla and Malli plan the next bomb blast at the Nataraja Temple, where Natyanjali is to take place.
Ajay, a commander, informs Kakarla that Shruti left with two men to attend Natyanjali. Kakarla orders Malli to remove the bomb, but he faces an accident on the way, resulting in a broken leg. Shruti realises Prabhu's love for her and reciprocates his feelings. They reach Chidambaram as planned. Due to Malli's inability to remove the bomb, Kakarla secretly informs the police and his guards. Ajay and the squad reach the temple, remove the bomb and bring Shruti back by helicopter.
Kakarla doubts Shruti's virginity as she was with Prabhu for a night. Upset at this, Shruti meets with Prabhu and asks him to marry her, but Ajay and his commandos imprison Prabhu and accuse him of planting the bomb. The police order Prabhu to confess, but he refuses and is tortured. Shruti becomes embittered over his imprisonment and expresses her love for him to her parents. Vasanth informs all the students about the happenings and a strike is called by the students against Kakarla.
Kakarla is embarrassed by Sruthi in an official dinner party, where they make a deal. In exchange for Prabhu's unconditional release, Shruti is sent to her paternal grandparents' house in Tadepalligudem. Some weeks later, Prabhu and Vasanth reach Tadepalligudem and find Shruti. Shruti's grandparents support their romance and unite them. Malli sees Prabhu and informs Kakarla, which Prabhu overhears. Prabhu discovers evidence of Kakarla's attempts to blast the temple and learns about his plans to blast the Government General Hospital. After subduing Malli, Prabhu and Vasanth escape with the evidence.
Malli informs Kakarla, who orders the police to find Prabhu. The police arrest Prabhu and Vasanth and Kakarla tells Malli to make the bomb detonate after his visit to the hospital to see the Vice President of India undergoing treatment there. They plan to dump an unconscious Prabhu and Vasanth in the hospital. However, the two escape and Prabhu informs Kathiresan about the bomb. Malli plants it, but Kakarla tries to kill him with a bomb radio. Malli survives and, in revenge, re-times the bomb to detonate during Kakarla's scheduled visit. Prabhu searches for the bomb, while Vasanth brings students to vacate the patients. After meeting the Vice President, Kakarla is trapped in a lift with his wife and Shruti. Shruti and her mother are helped out, while Prabhu, having located the bomb, throws it into a river; the bomb detonates without killing anyone. Prabhu and Shruthi reunite, while Malli kills Kakarla with a live wire, and succumbs to his injuries.
After the success of Gentleman (1993), producer K. T. Kunjumon of A. R. S. Film International decided to collaborate with director S. Shankar for the second time. Shankar narrated the plot of "a young dancer from a normal middle-class household falling in love with a girl from a very influential household". Kunjumon liked the plot and, "to turn this into as grand a film as was possible", he decided to incorporate the cold-war between the then Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa and the then governor Marri Chenna Reddy into the screenplay.[5] The dialogues were written by Balakumaran, cinematography was handled by Jeeva, and editing by B. Lenin and V. T. Vijayan.[1]
Casting
Shankar wanted Prashanth to be the lead actor, but due to other commitments he could not act in the film.[6][7]Prabhu Deva, who worked as a dancer for Kunjumon's previous ventures, was later finalised by Kunjumon. Shankar was initially reluctant to have him as the lead actor as distributors felt audience would not accept him in that role because of his "lean physique" and "bearded look". However Kunjumon was firm with his choice and wanted to prove distributors wrong.[5] Dubbing voice for Prabhu Deva was provided by the then struggling actor Vikram.[8]Madhuri Dixit was originally considered as the lead actress. Busy schedules meant that Nagma was instead chosen.[5] It is her first Tamil film.[9]
Kunjumon initially wanted to have Goundamani play Vasanth, but he did not accept, citing scheduling conflicts; Vadivelu was instead chosen. Girish Karnad was not initially interested in playing the governor, but after convincing by Kunjumon, he agreed.[5] While S. P. Balasubrahmanyam played the role of Prabhu Deva's father, Padmapriya was reluctant to portray Prabhu Deva's mother; she relented after believing the role would give her a break, like how Keladi Kannmanii (1990) did for Radhika who played Balasubrahmanyam's pair in that film. However, the majority of Padmapriya's scenes did not make the final cut.[10]
Filming
The song "Urvasi Urvasi" was shot near the SPIC building in Guindy, Anna Salai and other landmarks across Madras.[11][12] Art director Thota Tharani specially created a glass framed bus for the song. Since the crew made a film with a relatively new cast it created doubts on the trade, so the crew decided "to use the newest technology at that time to make the film appealing to audiences. They decided to go all out with visual effects in the songs, making them the attraction."[5] Venki Sambamoorthy was chosen to handle the visual effects for the film,[13] and he had done by outsourcing the work to technicians from abroad. It became the final film to be shot inside the premises of Nataraja Temple after the film's crew was sued by court for shooting inside the temple.[5]
The song "Muqabla" was shot at Rajahmundry. Kasi, who designed costumes for the song had to design around 400 costumes within a short time as the dancers had only one day callsheet.[14]Lalitha Mahal at Mysore was shown as Nagma's home in the film.[15] The song "Ennavale" was shot at Kulu Manali.[11] Other filming locations included Kumbakonam, Chidambaram, Pollachi, Delhi, and it took eleven months to be completed.[16][11]
The score and soundtrack were composed by A. R. Rahman. with lyrics written by Vaali, Vairamuthu and director Shankar who penned the "Petta Rap" number. The song "Mukkabla" became popular and was plagiarised freely by tunesmiths. Nearly a dozen versions of the song were churned out, a feat that earned "Mukkabla" and Rahman a place in the Limca Book of Records.[17] New styles were experimented with, as in "Petta Rap", a Madras Bashai song which was written in a rap-like style, interspersing Tamil with English words. The synthesiser and the keyboard also feature while drawing from Tamil folk music. P. Unnikrishnan made his playback singing debut with the song "Ennavale Ennavale" which is set in Kedaram raga.[18]
The dubbed Hindi version of the soundtrack, Humse Hai Muqabala, sold 2.5 million units in India.[19] "Urvasi Urvasi" inspired the 2014 song "It's My Birthday" by American rapper will.i.am.[20] It was remade in Hindi as a single, "Urvashi" in 2018, sung and composed by Yo Yo Honey Singh, with the music video starring Shahid Kapoor and Kiara Advani.[21] "Mukkabla" was remade as "Muqabla" in Hindi for the 2020 film Street Dancer 3D, in which Prabhu Deva stars as one of the leads, and an accompanying video song was released in late 2019 as promotion for the film.[22]
Release
Kadhalan was released on 17 September 1994.[23] The film was a major success, and by the end of January 1995 was expected to gross ₹15 crore (US$1.8 million) against a budget of ₹3 crore (US$350,000) in South India alone.[24]
Reception
Malini Mannath of The Indian Express said, "[Kadhalan] is better than expected, and will appeal to the college crowd."[3] K. Vijiyan of New Straits Times said, "Sadly, the love story is not all that endearing as it is eclipsed by the dance songs."[25] R. P. R. of Kalki praised the film for its grandeur, but criticised its story and Prabhu Deva's performance for being overshadowed by his dancing.[26]
Congress MP Era. Anbarasu submitted a petition to the Madras High Court to ban the film, citing the negative portrayal of the governor; the High Court admitted the petition.[30] Kunjumon said he received calls from governor's office ordering him to remove certain scenes from the film. However, Jayalalithaa was impressed with the film, supported Kunjumon and no scenes were removed.[5]
