97-511: Moondram Pirai ( transl. The third crescent ) is a 1982 Indian Tamil -language romantic drama film written, directed and filmed by Balu Mahendra . The film stars Kamal Haasan and Sridevi , while Y. G. Mahendran , Silk Smitha and Poornam Viswanathan played supporting roles. It revolves around a school teacher who rescues a woman with retrograde amnesia , from a brothel, and protects her in his house located in Ketti . The rest of
194-468: A lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached. Most Tamil affixes are suffixes . Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person , number , mood , tense , etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination , which can lead to long words with many suffixes, which would require several words or
291-553: A puja at Prasad Studios . Moondram Pirai was predominantly shot in Ooty and Ketti , a small town situated close to the former. Shooting also took place in Bangalore . Mahendra shot the montage shots for the songs "Poongatru" and "Kanne Kalaimaane" simultaneously. The interior shots of "Kanne Kalaimaane" were shot within two days with Mahendra "would shoot the exterior portions while we were moving from one location to another". For
388-484: A , as with other Indic scripts . This inherent vowel is removed by adding a tittle called a puḷḷi , to the consonantal sign. For example, ன is ṉa (with the inherent a ) and ன் is ṉ (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called virama , but the Tamil script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible puḷḷi to indicate a 'dead consonant' (a consonant without
485-759: A 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies. Tamil is the primary language of the majority of the people residing in Tamil Nadu , Puducherry , (in India) and in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . The language is spoken among small minority groups in other states of India which include Karnataka , Telangana , Andhra Pradesh , Kerala , Maharashtra , Gujarat , Delhi , Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India and in certain regions of Sri Lanka such as Colombo and
582-432: A child. Viji, as she is called by Cheenu, has completely forgotten her past and becomes very close to him. When Viji accidentally spills ink over Cheenu's documents, angering him, their relationship is threatened, but they reconcile. Later, a local woodcutter named Natarajan lusts for Viji and nearly assaults her, but she manages to save herself. When she tells Cheenu about it, he becomes enraged and almost kills Natarajan, but
679-521: A clear allusion to Mahendra's then wife Shoba 's death. Thyagarajan denied this, saying Mahendra narrated the story to him much before, and Shoba's death occurred only once the project was being finalised. The music of the film was composed by Ilaiyaraaja . The soundtrack was released through the record label Agi Music. The number "Kannae Kalaimane", which is based on the Kapi raga , was written by Kannadasan in "about two minutes" time, after listening to
776-516: A film about a youth falling in love with an amnesiac, and that the film would not be a box office success. The film uses intense violin music in both its opening and closing credits. The final length of the film was roughly 3,918 metres (12,854 ft). Moondram Pirai depicts a young woman whose mental state regresses to that of a child following an accident. Sexuality and the repression of desire are dominant motifs, similar to Balu Mahendra's previous film Moodu Pani (1980). The film also explores
873-642: A human character?" According to Thyagarajan, Sridevi was a strong contender for the National Film Award for Best Actress , but lost to Shabana Azmi because of politics: "The makers of Arth had lobbied for Shabana Azmi to make her win. By the time we got to know this, it was too late". Moondram Pirai attained cult status in Tamil cinema for its "unique amalgamation of high emotional quotient and film-making style". The climax scene where Haasan's character, Cheenu, runs after Sridevi's character, Bhagyalakshmi, who has recovered her memory but forgets
970-413: A lead. Cheenu takes Viji to an Ayurvedic practitioner and leaves her there for a day's treatment. In his absence, the police come to his house searching for Viji. Finally, the police learn that Viji is getting treated at the doctor's place and reach there. Cheenu is unable to come as he is afraid of police action. The treatment goes through successfully. Viji regains her memory, but completely forgets about
1067-449: A less favourable review, calling the film "a neon moon" and said, "There was at one time a brooding, premonitory quality about Balu Mahendra's movies ... but (he) has now gone into the trade of picture postcards and pani puri ." After a brief word of praise for Haasan's performance in the climax ("darkly luminescent, like a rain drenched monsoon night") the reviewer added, "Kamal makes a very amusing monkey, but should he not rather be playing
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#17327971901341164-553: A minor fight scene involving Cheenu and Natarajan ( K. Natraj ), Haasan and Mahendra told the stunt choreographer "it shouldn't look like a regular movie fight, but like a street brawl". Natraj and Haasan performed their own stunts by jumping into a stream water. Haasan ensured he looked fit in the song "Ponmeni Uruguthey" and worked out to get a "sculpted physique". This was the film's only song to have rehearsals for one week in Madras (later renamed Chennai ). Mahendra did not want to shoot
1261-430: A nobody [like the jackal] who, through a salubrious twist of fate, becomes the ruler of a woman's life, until he is restored, at the end, to the nobody he was, a fraudulent claimant to her emotions." In his book Dispatches from the wall corner: A journey through Indian cinema , Rangan says that although Haasan is inspired by Marlon Brando , the scene where Haasan burns himself while cooking and vents his anger on Sridevi,
1358-607: A number of apparent Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew dating to before 500 BCE, the oldest attestation of the language. Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from 300 BCE to 700 CE. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil-Brahmi . The earliest long text in Old Tamil
1455-518: A number of sound changes, in particular, a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions, and the disappearance of vowels between plosives and between a plosive and rhotic. Contact with European languages affected written and spoken Tamil. Changes in written Tamil include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamil. The syntax of written Tamil has also changed, with
1552-514: A party and is hospitalised with severe head injuries. When she recovers, she is diagnosed with retrograde amnesia and she fails to recognise her own parents. She mentally regresses to the state of a child. While she is undergoing treatment, she is kidnapped and sold to the madam of a brothel. R. Srinivas, also known as Cheenu, comes to Madras to meet his old friend. Together, they visit the brothel for services rendered. The madam sends Bhagyalakshmi, renamed Vijaya, to his room. Cheenu realises that she
1649-535: A relative parallel to Tamil, even as Tamil has undergone some changes in modern ways of speaking. According to Hindu legend, Tamil or in personification form Tamil Thāi (Mother Tamil) was created by Lord Shiva . Murugan , revered as the Tamil God, along with sage Agastya , brought it to the people. Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, ultimately descends from the Proto-Dravidian language , which
1746-503: A role like Sridevi's character, Bhagyalakshmi, as "really challenging." In March 2013, S. Shiva Kumar of The Hindu compared the climax of Sethu (1999) to the climax in Moondram Pirai . In November 2013, S. Saraswathi of Rediff included Moondram Pirai in her list of the "10 best Films of Kamal Haasan". In February 2014, Arundhati said she "would love to play a role like Sridevi's in Moondram Pirai ". Sridevi's performance in
1843-495: A sentence in English. To give an example, the word pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka (போகமுடியாதவர்களுக்காக) means "for the sake of those who cannot go" and consists of the following morphemes : போக pōka go முடி muṭi accomplish Sathya Jyothi Films Sathya Jyothi Films is an Indian film production and distribution company in Tamil Nadu . It was established in 1977 by T. G. Thyagarajan . Sathya Jyothi Films
1940-488: A significant achievement not only for himself but also for the ethos he represents." Kalki appreciated Moondram Pirai as a rare film where the lead actress was able to outshine Haasan in acting. The critic also liked the way the story of the Blue Jackal was incorporated into the screenplay, appreciated Mahendra's cinematography, and concluded that the film was as perfect as a full moon . The magazine Aside gave
2037-422: A single take. Haasan refused to use a double , and strove to make Cheenu's injuries look real, including giving the character a black eye and swollen lips. In the post-production phase, Smitha's voice was dubbed by Anuradha. Mahendra supervised Anuradha's dubbing session and taught her the methods to emote the dialogues for Smitha in the film. While the film was under production the team was scoffed at for making
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#17327971901342134-647: A small number speak the language. In Reunion where the Tamil language was forbidden to be learnt and used in public space by France it is now being relearnt by students and adults. Tamil is also spoken by migrants from Sri Lanka and India in Canada , the United States , the United Arab Emirates , the United Kingdom , South Africa , and Australia . Tamil is the official language of
2231-610: A subject of study in schools in the French overseas department of Réunion . In addition, with the creation in October 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the Government of India and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations, Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. The recognition was announced by the contemporaneous President of India , Abdul Kalam , who
2328-463: A variety of dialects that are all collectively known as Brahmin Tamil . These dialects tend to have softer consonants (with consonant deletion also common). These dialects also tend to have many Sanskrit loanwords. Tamil in Sri Lanka incorporates loan words from Portuguese , Dutch , and English. In addition to its dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on
2425-449: A very simple film, chances are I might end up with an 'A' certificate. These 'A's and 'U's mean a damn to me. I make a film and that is it. I cannot talk about other filmmakers, but this rule doesn't stop me. If I want to make a film on a subject I have thought of, I will do it. Whether it gets an 'A' or a 'U', I'm least bothered. I'm not interested in its rating. I have my own code of conduct and I stick to that. – Balu Mahendra on
2522-438: A vowel). In other Indic scripts, it is generally preferred to use a ligature or a half form to write a syllable or a cluster containing a dead consonant, although writing it with a visible virama is also possible. The Tamil script does not differentiate voiced and unvoiced plosives . Instead, plosives are articulated with voice depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of Tamil phonology . In addition to
2619-410: A well-documented history with literary works like Sangam literature , consisting of over 2,000 poems. Tamil script evolved from Tamil Brahmi, and later, the vatteluttu script was used until the current script was standardized. The language has a distinct grammatical structure, with agglutinative morphology that allows for complex word formations. Tamil is predominantly spoken in Tamil Nadu , India, and
2716-516: Is "Kanne Kalaimane". In February 2010, director R. Balki , in an interview with Forbes India , called Moondram Pirai as his favourite film. In February 2015, Moondram Pirai topped Indumathy Sukanya of The New Indian Express ' list of "Top 5 Tamil Romances". Baradwaj Rangan opined that the film was "a superb example of how the presence of a commercially viable plot and the participation of commercially viable actors and technicians can result in art." In July 2011, Janani Iyer said she considered
2813-543: Is also relatively close to the Tamil language and shares the format of the formal ancient Tamil language. While there are some variations from the Tamil language, Kannada still preserves a lot from its roots. As part of the southern family of Indian languages and situated relatively close to the northern parts of India, Kannada also shares some Sanskrit words, similar to Malayalam. Many of the formerly used words in Tamil have been preserved with little change in Kannada. This shows
2910-457: Is based on the dialect of Jaffna . After Tamil Brahmi fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called vaṭṭeḻuttu amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava . The current Tamil script consists of 12 vowels , 18 consonants and one special character, the āytam . The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 × 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel
3007-563: Is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam . Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th-century grammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam , with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu , col , poruḷ , yāppu , aṇi . Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry. Tamil words consist of
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3104-405: Is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century, was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (ஃ), an old phoneme, the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals, and the transformation of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic . In grammar, the most important change
3201-409: Is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, koṭuntamiḻ has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of centamiḻ . Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example,
3298-402: Is hesitant to come back to his quiet existence, realising that in reality, dreams feel like its antithesis . Malathi Rangarajan of The Hindu considers the usage of a railway station in the climax scene to reflect the Tamil cinema trope of "Turning points, crucial interludes and significant twists" taking place in such places. According to S. Shiva Kumar of The Hindu , the climax of the film was
3395-410: Is in koṭuntamiḻ , and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of koṭuntamiḻ in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial 'standard' spoken dialects. In India, the 'standard' koṭuntamiḻ , rather than on any one dialect, but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai . In Sri Lanka, the standard
3492-420: Is mentally still a child and pities her. He learns that she is from a cultured family, and that she was kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Cheenu returns the next day and, after paying a huge sum to the madam, takes Vijaya out, supposedly on a pleasure trip. He takes her away to Ketti , where he is working as a school teacher. He takes her to his residence, where he protects her and also looks after her like
3589-771: Is not always consistently applied. ISO 15919 is an international standard for the transliteration of Tamil and other Indic scripts into Latin characters. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to Latin script , and thus the alphabets of various languages, including English. Apart from the usual numerals, Tamil has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for day, month, year, debit, credit, as above, rupee, and numeral are present as well. Tamil also uses several historical fractional signs. /f/ , /z/ , /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ are only found in loanwords and may be considered marginal phonemes, though they are traditionally not seen as fully phonemic. Tamil has two diphthongs : /aɪ̯/ ஐ and /aʊ̯/ ஔ ,
3686-646: Is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India , along with Sanskrit , attested since c. 300 BCE. The language belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian language family and shares close ties with Malayalam and Kannada . Despite external influences, Tamil has retained a sense of linguistic purism, especially in formal and literary contexts. Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders, with inscriptions found in places like Sri Lanka , Thailand , and Egypt . The language has
3783-420: Is reminiscent of the acting style of Marcel Marceau . In another book of Rangan, Conversations with Mani Ratnam , he states that in the scene where Cheenu enters Bhagyalakshmi's room in the brothel, there was fumbling and embarrassment, whereas in another Haasan film Nayakan (1987), his character, Velu Nayakar, behaves as if he has visited a brothel before. Nayakan ' s director Mani Ratnam replied that
3880-404: Is stopped by his neighbours who were informed of the incident by Viji. Meanwhile, the wife of Cheenu's headmaster is attracted to Cheenu, but he does not reciprocate her feelings. Viji's father Vedachalam, who was searching her through the police, releases a newspaper advertisement about his lost daughter. A co-passenger who had travelled with Cheenu and Viji from Madras to Ooty by train gives them
3977-409: Is the Tolkāppiyam , an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the late 2nd century BCE. Many literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corpus of 2,381 poems collectively known as Sangam literature . These poems are usually dated to between the 1st century BCE and 5th century CE. The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil , which
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4074-414: Is unable to recognise him. Cheenu acts like a dancing monkey that Viji developed a liking for, but Viji, unable to comprehend, thinks he is insane and begging for food. Cheenu continues his futile attempts to gain her attention, and the train eventually leaves with Viji not recognising him. Cheenu, who was injured while chasing her car and trying to get her attention, walks away, heartbroken. Moondram Pirai
4171-848: Is used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia , along with English, Malay and Mandarin. A large community of Pakistani Tamils speakers exists in Karachi , Pakistan , which includes Tamil-speaking Hindus as well as Christians and Muslims – including some Tamil-speaking Muslim refugees from Sri Lanka. There are about 100 Tamil Hindu families in Madrasi Para colony in Karachi. They speak impeccable Tamil along with Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi. Many in Réunion , Guyana , Fiji , Suriname , and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins, but only
4268-547: The Filmfare Awards South , and five Tamil Nadu State Film Awards , including Best Film (third prize), Best Actor (Kamal) and Best Actress (Sridevi). Moondram Pirai was dubbed into Telugu under the title Vasantha Kokila . Mahendra remade the film in Hindi as Sadma (1983), with Kamal Haasan, Sridevi and Smitha reprising their roles. Bhagyalakshmi, a young woman, has a car accident while returning from
4365-490: The Irula and Yerukula languages (see SIL Ethnologue ). The closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam ; the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. Although many of the differences between Tamil and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic divergence of the western dialect, the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century. Additionally Kannada
4462-701: The Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . It has significant speaking populations in Malaysia , Singapore , and among diaspora communities . Tamil has been recognized as a classical language by the Indian government and holds official status in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Singapore. The earliest extant Tamil literary works and their commentaries celebrate the Pandiyan Kings for the organization of long-termed Tamil Sangams , which researched, developed and made amendments in Tamil language. Even though
4559-599: The University of Madras , was one of the earliest dictionaries published in Indian languages. A strong strain of linguistic purism emerged in the early 20th century, culminating in the Pure Tamil Movement which called for removal of all Sanskritic elements from Tamil. It received some support from Dravidian parties . This led to the replacement of a significant number of Sanskrit loanwords by Tamil equivalents, though many others remain. According to
4656-491: The 11th century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai , a special form of Tamil developed in the 9th and 10th centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values. Several castes have their own sociolects which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. It is often possible to identify a person's caste by their speech. For example, Tamil Brahmins tend to speak
4753-483: The 2023 film Leo , when the main character, Parthiban, adopts a spotted hyena , he names it “Subramani” a homage to the dog that Sridevi's character holds in the film. Tamil language Sri Lanka Singapore Malaysia Canada and United States Tamil ( தமிழ் , Tamiḻ , pronounced [t̪amiɻ] ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia . It
4850-481: The Indian state of Haryana , purportedly as a rebuff to Punjab , though there was no attested Tamil-speaking population in the state, and was later replaced by Punjabi , in 2010. In Malaysia, 543 primary education government schools are available fully in Tamil as the medium of instruction . The establishment of Tamil-medium schools has been in process in Myanmar to provide education completely in Tamil language by
4947-474: The Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the 22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India . It is one of the official languages of the union territories of Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Tamil is also one of the official languages of Singapore . Tamil is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, along with Sinhala . It was once given nominal official status in
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#17327971901345044-484: The Jain king of Kalinga , also refers to a Tamira Samghatta ( Tamil confederacy ) The Samavayanga Sutra dated to the 3rd century BCE contains a reference to a Tamil script named 'Damili'. Southworth suggests that the name comes from tam-miḻ > tam-iḻ "self-speak", or "our own speech". Kamil Zvelebil suggests an etymology of tam-iḻ , with tam meaning "self" or "one's self", and " -iḻ " having
5141-696: The Tamils who settled there 200 years ago. Tamil language is available as a course in some local school boards and major universities in Canada and the month of January has been declared "Tamil Heritage Month" by the Parliament of Canada . Tamil enjoys a special status of protection under Article 6(b), Chapter 1 of the Constitution of South Africa and is taught as a subject in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province. Recently, it has been rolled out as
5238-442: The ancient language ( sankattamiḻ ), a modern literary and formal style ( centamiḻ ), and a modern colloquial form ( koṭuntamiḻ ). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write centamiḻ with a vocabulary drawn from caṅkattamiḻ , or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking koṭuntamiḻ . In modern times, centamiḻ
5335-942: The approximately 100,000 inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India in India are in Tamil Nadu. Of them, most are in Tamil, with only about 5 percent in other languages. In 2004, a number of skeletons were found buried in earthenware urns dating from at least 696 BCE in Adichanallur . Some of these urns contained writing in Tamil Brahmi script, and some contained skeletons of Tamil origin. Between 2017 and 2018, 5,820 artifacts have been found in Keezhadi . These were sent to Beta Analytic in Miami , Florida , for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating. One sample containing Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions
5432-532: The certification of his film, in January 2014. Moondram Pirai was given an "A" (adults only) certificate by the Central Board of Film Certification . According to Anand Mathew of The Quint , this was done so because of Smitha who "saunters into the film now and then striking Khajuraho inspired poses with Kamal." When the film was screened to distributors at AVM Mena Hall, they were not happy about
5529-448: The characters to make unusual and often tragic choices." Hari Narayan of The Hindu said Cheenu "looks like a melange of [John] Keats ' tragedy and [Sigmund] Freud 's psychoanalysis ." Narayan explains the idea of Cheenu keeping Bhagyalaskhmi with him not only as an act of sympathy and love, but also with the intention to preserve her like a portrait. Narayan also states that when Bhagyalakshmi recovers her memory and forgets him, Cheenu
5626-404: The climax. The scene where Cheenu hits himself on the pole while walking towards the train was not planned; Haasan performed it in the middle of the shot. To shoot that scene, Mahendra sat on the steps of the train with a rope tied around his waist with crew holding and preventing him from falling down. Despite being in such a "precarious position", he managed to get the shot right and approved it in
5723-413: The connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternatively, he suggests a derivation of tamiḻ < tam-iḻ < * tav-iḻ < * tak-iḻ , meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)". However, this is deemed unlikely by Southworth due to the contemporary use of the compound 'centamiḻ', which means refined speech in the earliest literature. The Tamil Lexicon of University of Madras defines
5820-952: The dialect of Madurai , and iṅkaṭe in some northern dialects. Even now, in the Coimbatore area, it is common to hear " akkaṭṭa " meaning "that place". Although Tamil dialects do not differ significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. The dialects spoken in Sri Lanka retain many words and grammatical forms that are not in everyday use in India, and use many other words slightly differently. Tamil dialects include Central Tamil dialect , Kongu Tamil , Madras Bashai , Madurai Tamil , Nellai Tamil , Kumari Tamil in India ; Batticaloa Tamil dialect , Jaffna Tamil dialect , Negombo Tamil dialect in Sri Lanka; and Malaysian Tamil in Malaysia. Sankethi dialect in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by Kannada . The dialect of
5917-422: The director and cinematographer Balu Mahendra to Thyagarajan as Ratnam felt Thyagarajan would be the right person to produce the film that would later become Moondram Pirai . After hearing Mahendra's story, Thyagarajan's father liked the plot and said "the film will do well like Kalyana Parisu and asked me to proceed without any worry". After the project was finalised, Mahendra took one month time to complete
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#17327971901346014-647: The district of Palakkad in Kerala has many Malayalam loanwords, has been influenced by Malayalam's syntax, and has a distinctive Malayalam accent. Similarly, Tamil spoken in Kanyakumari District has more unique words and phonetic style than Tamil spoken at other parts of Tamil Nadu. The words and phonetics are so different that a person from Kanyakumari district is easily identifiable by their spoken Tamil. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in
6111-428: The film shows how the woman recovers her memory with the teacher's help. Moondram Pirai is the first film produced by G. Thyagarajan and G. Saravanan's Sathya Jyothi Films . It was predominantly shot in Ooty and Ketti , with further shooting also taking place in Bangalore . The music for the film was composed by Ilaiyaraaja , with lyrics written by Kannadasan , Vairamuthu and Gangai Amaran . It also featured
6208-470: The film was included in The Times of India ' s 2015 list, "Sridevi: 5 times the actress bowled us with her performance". Although no print of Moondram Pirai has survived, the film is still available on home video. Balki mentioned in an April 2016 interview with Indo-Asian News Service , that Moondram Pirai "tremendously influenced" him as a filmmaker. Writer V. Vijayendra Prasad stated that he got
6305-585: The film's ending lacked logic, Mahendra said, "Believe me there's no logic in life." In November 2004, critics compared the plot of the Kannada film Nalla to Moondram Pirai . In March 2005, Sneha , in an interview with Rediff, listed Moondram Pirai among her favourite films. In July 2007, S. R. Ashok Kumar of The Hindu asked eight Tamil film directors to list their all-time favourite Tamil films; two of them – Mani Ratnam and Ameer – named Moondram Pirai . In September 2009, singer Harini , in an interview with The Hindu , said that her favourite song
6402-572: The film's story and the situation for the song. According to his daughter Kalaiselvi, the song was written with his wife in mind. Kannadasan was present at the recording session of the song, which took place in September 1981. It was the last recorded song which Kannadasan wrote before his death in October 1981. "Poongatru" was based on the Sindhu Bhairavi raga. Do you know that Moondram Pirai got an 'A' certificate? ... So, even if I make
6499-436: The film. Mahendra did not find hiring a train expensive at that time; as a result, he hired a train for the film's scene where Cheenu and Viji depart for Ketti, and another train for the climax which was shot at the Ketti railway station . Although it was raining on the day the climax was shot, Mahendra decided to continue shooting the scene even though the rain was not part of the film's script. It took nearly five days to film
6596-407: The film; however one distributor remarked that the film affected him emotionally, giving confidence to the filmmakers. The film was released on 19 February 1982, in 45 theatres in the state of Tamil Nadu . Due to Haasan's popularity, the crowd came in during the first day of the release; however since it was "a slow-moving film", business on the second day was "only OK. The third day was better. Monday
6693-485: The final round but lost to her. Silk Smitha , who had done around 20 films by then and was considered only for performing item numbers , was cast as the headmaster's sexually excited wife, as Mahendra wanted a woman who was "sexy and at the same time a rustic beauty". Poornam Viswanathan was initially reluctant to portray the headmaster as it deviated from the character roles he was then known for, but after convincing by Mahendra, agreed. Principal photography began with
6790-699: The hill country . Tamil or dialects of it were used widely in the state of Kerala as the major language of administration, literature and common usage until the 12th century CE. Tamil was also used widely in inscriptions found in southern Andhra Pradesh districts of Chittoor and Nellore until the 12th century CE. Tamil was used for inscriptions from the 10th through 14th centuries in southern Karnataka districts such as Kolar , Mysore , Mandya and Bengaluru . There are currently sizeable Tamil-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in Malaysia , Singapore , Philippines , Mauritius , South Africa , Indonesia, Thailand, Burma , and Vietnam . Tamil
6887-467: The idea to write the story of the Telugu film Simhadri (2003) while watching Moondram Pirai . Balu Mahendra's Telugu film Nireekshana (1982) was dubbed and released in Tamil as Kanne Kalaimane . In Manadhai Thirudivittai (2001), Valayapathi ( Vivek ) pretends to have lost both his hands. His lover then promises to take care of him. The song "Kanne Kalaimane" is heard as the background music for
6984-514: The incidents that occur between her accident and recovery completely, and Cheenu trying desperately to make Bhagyalakshmi remember the time she spent with him, to no effect, became popular and was parodied many times. The dialogue told by Smitha's character to Cheenu, "You haave a verrry strrong physique, you know", also attained popularity. A. P. Thiruvadi, in his obituary of Balu Mahendra, called him "The Moondram Pirai of Indian cinema". When S. Shiva Kumar of The Hindu suggested to Balu Mahendra that
7081-432: The introduction of new aspectual auxiliaries and more complex sentence structures, and with the emergence of a more rigid word order that resembles the syntactic argument structure of English. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiran Vanakkam , thus making Tamil the first Indian language to be printed and published. The Tamil Lexicon , published by
7178-474: The last song written by Kannadasan to be recorded before his death in 1981. Moondram Pirai was released on 19 February 1982 and received critical acclaim. It was a box office success and had a theatrical run of over a year. The film won two National Film Awards : Best Actor for Kamal Haasan, and Best Cinematography for Balu Mahendra. It also won the Best Director – Tamil award for Balu Mahendra at
7275-461: The latter of which is restricted to a few lexical items. Tamil employs agglutinative grammar, where suffixes are used to mark noun class , number , and case , verb tense and other grammatical categories. Tamil's standard metalinguistic terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamil, as opposed to the Sanskrit that is standard for most Indo-Aryan languages . Much of Tamil grammar
7372-485: The name of the language which was developed by these Tamil Sangams is mentioned as Tamil, the period when the name "Tamil" came to be applied to the language is unclear, as is the precise etymology of the name. The earliest attested use of the name is found in Tholkappiyam , which is dated as early as late 2nd century BCE. The Hathigumpha inscription , inscribed around a similar time period (150 BCE), by Kharavela ,
7469-537: The old aspect and time markers. The Nannūl remains the standard normative grammar for modern literary Tamil, which therefore continues to be based on Middle Tamil of the 13th century rather than on Modern Tamil. Colloquial spoken Tamil, in contrast, shows a number of changes. The negative conjugation of verbs, for example, has fallen out of use in Modern Tamil – instead, negation is expressed either morphologically or syntactically. Modern spoken Tamil also shows
7566-475: The period between her accident and recovery. From the doctor, Vedachalam learns that the person who had brought her there had been taking good care of their daughter; he withdraws his police complaint and they begin their journey to Madras with Viji. After the police leave, Cheenu comes running after the car in which Viji is travelling. He follows them to the railway station and tries to gain Viji's attention, but she
7663-418: The photography by Balu Mahendra, and gave the film 53 marks out of 100. Mid-Day 's critic wrote that in Moondram Pirai , Mahendra "does not narrate a story in the traditional sense of the term. What embellish the film are not incidents or characters as they are commonly understood. He presents a whole fascinating array of vignetes and couches them in such endearing cinematic terms that it turns out to be
7760-424: The possibility of unresolved sexual tension between the protagonists. When asked about the reason amnesia was chosen for a disability, Mahendra said the disorder is used as a camouflage and as an excuse to portray relationships in the film. Film critic Baradwaj Rangan finds the sequence where Cheenu narrates the story of the Blue Jackal to Viji to be a distant echo of the arc negotiated by Cheenu: "He is, after all,
7857-467: The scene of action is Ooty, the main character is mentally challenged, and the story-telling sequence with Vikram and the kid is familiar, at times [ Deiva Thirumagal ] reminds you of Balu Mahendra's inimitable Moondraam Pirai ." Baradwaj Rangan compares a scene in Barfi! (2012), where Barfi ( Ranbir Kapoor ) goes after Shruti ( Ileana D'Cruz ) and stumbles, to that of Moondram Pirai' s climax scene. In
7954-458: The scene. In a comedy scene from Run (2002), Mohan (Vivek) imitates Haasan's mannerisms from the climax scene in Moondram Pirai to make his friend Shiva ( R. Madhavan ) recognise him but fails. Mahendra described his 2003 directorial venture Julie Ganapathi as an inverse of Moondram Pirai as it was about "a mad woman who has a normal man in her house". Malathi Rangarajan, in her review of Deiva Thirumagal (2011) said, "Probably because
8051-435: The script and he worked on the budget alongside film's production manager Govind and fixed the budget to ₹ 33 lakh (equivalent to ₹ 6.7 crore or US$ 810,000 in 2023). A. Ramaswamy and D. Vasu were in charge of art direction and editing respectively. While discussing about the casting, Mahendra suggested Kamal Haasan as the lead actor as he "would do excellent work". Haasan has stated that, when Mahendra narrated
8148-421: The song in "flat light"; he shot it "in the early morning, from 6am to 8am, then we'd take a break, and then, we'd assemble again by 4.30pm, and then shoot from 5pm to 7pm, as the sun was setting" and managed to finish the song in five days. In April 2006, Mahendra said that the inclusion of the song was "absolutely unnecessary"; the sole reason for its inclusion was the presence of Smitha in the song to help promote
8245-470: The standard characters, six characters taken from the Grantha script , which was used in the Tamil region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used to represent sounds not native to Tamil, that is, words adopted from Sanskrit, Prakrit , and other languages. The traditional system prescribed by classical grammars for writing loan-words, which involves respelling them in accordance with Tamil phonology, remains, but
8342-459: The story of Moondram Pirai to him, he listened to Mahendra for about twenty minutes before accepting the role of the male lead Cheenu. The role of Bhagyalakshmi / Viji was initially offered to Sripriya , who could not accept the role due to her prior commitments. It was Haasan who successfully suggested Sridevi for the role..Sridevi was into the final round of National Film Awards fr the particular year, who made tough competition to Shabana Azmi in
8439-481: The two scenes are very different from one another and that it "can't be played the same way". Rangan called Moondram Pirai "The apotheosis of [Balu Mahendra's] art". Nandini Ramnath, writing for the website Scroll.in , noted that Moondram Pirai contains elements common in Balu Mahendra's other films: "realism, evocative and naturalistic cinematography, strong performances, and psychosexual themes that drive
8536-487: The word "Tamil" as "sweetness". S. V. Subramanian suggests the meaning "sweet sound", from tam – "sweet" and il – "sound". Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages , a family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent . It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family that, alongside Tamil proper, includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups such as
8633-526: The word for "here"— iṅku in Centamil (the classic variety)—has evolved into iṅkū in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore , inga in the dialects of Thanjavur and Palakkad , and iṅkai in some dialects of Sri Lanka . Old Tamil's iṅkaṇ (where kaṇ means place) is the source of iṅkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli , Old Tamil iṅkiṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in
8730-534: Was a Tamilian himself, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on 6 June 2004. The socio-linguistic situation of Tamil is characterised by diglossia : there are two separate registers varying by socioeconomic status , a high register and a low one. Tamil dialects are primarily differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. For example,
8827-462: Was also just OK". The later picked up due to positive word-of-mouth, it became a " silver jubilee hit in many centres" and ran for more than a year in Subam theatre in Madras. According to Sathya Jyothi Films, Moondram Pirai received its highest distributor share in Madras and Coimbatore. The film was also screened at FILCA, a Film Festival held at Thiruvananthapuram in September 2014. Moondram Pirai
8924-600: Was claimed to be dated to around 580 BCE. John Guy states that Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders from India. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka and on trade goods in Thailand and Egypt. In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BCE with ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions. There are
9021-411: Was dubbed into Telugu under the title Vasantha Kokila . The film was remade in Hindi as Sadma (1983), with Mahendra again directing while Haasan, Sridevi and Smitha reprised their roles. Moondram Pirai received critical acclaim. Ananda Vikatan , in its original review of the film, dated 7 March 1982, praised the performances of Haasan and Sridevi, Ilaiyaraaja's background score and songs and
9118-533: Was founded by T. G. Thyagarajan in the 1970s. Thyagarajan, an MBA graduate from the United States, is the son of film producer, late Venus T. Govindarajan, who had made films from the 1960s to the 1980s under Venus Pictures. Thyagarajan initially ventured into film productions under the studio Sathya Movies, production company of his father-in-law R. M. Veerappan before founding Sathya Jyothi Films to make "slightly offbeat films". The first film distributed by
9215-614: Was most likely spoken around the third millennium BCE, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the culture associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India, but it has also been related to the Harappan civilization . Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods: Old Tamil (300 BCE–700 CE), Middle Tamil (700–1600) and Modern Tamil (1600–present). About of
9312-451: Was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb kil ( கில் ), meaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this verb was used as an aspect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, non-sustained or non-lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ṉ ( ன் ). In Middle Tamil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker – kiṉṟa ( கின்ற ) – which combined
9409-411: Was the first film produced by G. Thyagarajan and G. Saravanan's production company, Sathya Jyothi Films . Thyagarajan, who was looking after Sathya Movies owned by his father-in-law R. M. Veerappan , started Sathya Jyothi Films on his own to make "slightly offbeat films". Mani Ratnam and Thyagarajan had been friends since childhood as both their fathers were partners of Venus Movies. Ratnam introduced
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