Each person has their own importance in a frame. On the stage, behind the sets and gestures, these frames replace the reality we are in search of. We are totally dependent on the illusion to capture reality. This is a difficult prospect in a film about boxing – an individualistic sport with isolated characters, and usually having the ego and dogged determination of bulldogs. Any film on this sport must breathe life into this very real, ephemeral world – a daunting prospect for a genre where action has to be based on the communicative power of action, and not just on the probability or abstract improbability of that action. This relationship with the anxieties of its genre punctuates writer-director Pa Ranjith’s Sarpatta Parambarai, restoring its status as reality, making each fight sequence an event.

Sarpatta Parambarai segues into a boxing match between Kabilan and Dancing Rose and shakes off the tropes. Rose (Shabeer Kallarakkal) is a minor character, coming out of retirement to impede Kabilan’s path to the real antihero, the Vembuli of his clan. But his character in no way reflects the unflavourful demise of creativity in the genre of sports film. Ranjith ensures that each character gets his due, in the ring and outside. Rose is a keen sportsman, and a principled villain. That, of course, is an oxymoron, but this film rises beyond a hackneyed tale of villains and heroes.

Sarpatta Parambarai is set in Madras in what may be presumed to be the 1970s, with the Emergency in place. One notices the period of the imprisonment of the clan leaders, the hairstyles and the working-class rapport with everything working-class, as it clashes with the upper castes and classes. Kabilan’s story is dramatically set to an ecstatic rhythm, but with a controlled determination and patience – qualities that are not without weight in the boxing ring – meaningfully distinguished in the way the film is sectioned.

The dockyard of the first act, as the site of many gangster films, is a sophisticated rendezvous with the borderless sea, an escape from the state’s agents. It is so far removed from the air-conditioning, Havana’s sea-salt air and fancy cars that accompany the trope, but its glamour is intact – the camera is invisible, the space takes over. Here, the film opens with a deceptive montage that turns into a long take. The boxing aspirant is a labourer in a working class, coastal Madras, there is bright red soil and sunny dispositions – as if tinged with passion, conflict and blood. Aside from his bulging biceps, there is nothing to hint at this impish brute being a boxer. He is bursting at the seams (of his shirt) with an unbridled joy at witnessing a battle of the clans, an event that determines the honour of one’s clan over the other. He is a purist, principled to his core, with not an ounce of pragmatism in him. He takes his bicycle to the boxing venue, stopping to take an old man with him. Sport is not a device, nor a means to an end; it’s a way of life. The long-take sets the stage by exposing every milieu in one colour in a do-or-die match, in a game where each match is do-or-die. Not once is the stage usurped by any one character. The direction alights on all clans and characters, covering them in proportionate measure.

Kabilan is a man of character, dark and flawed; he has to want it. This adds several dimensions to his character and experience. Once in the ring, he is mocked by members of his own clan, who have been ordained into the boxing life, unlike himself. But this does not faze him because his lifelong ambition of upholding the clan honour does not stop at representing it. This is a genuine love for the sport. Every punch he lands is a concentrated effort to earn his place in the clan, to earn its honour. Kabilan’s clashes with the society are limited to the boxing ring, though the outside world soon intrudes. Nepotism, nationalism, corruption, crime and maternal pressure are his sparring partners.

This mild orchestra of love, life and defeat plays out in the first two acts, until the climax takes us into an enriching second half that shows him losing all hope and giving in to his destiny – following in his father’s footsteps. The angle of his slow descent is shot in vertigo: everything’s too close to close in on him. His nemeses wander about him, even as he is drunk and passes out in public. They pass him by, continuing to go on with their daily beat. There’s honour in this encounter. These breezy, mildly comical shots symbolise the brutality of imminent assaults on his life, the primordial role of chance, unmistakably marking each move of his. Pop-psychology, in its usual sense of the word, means little to Kabilan; what matters here is destiny. He has accepted putting himself in vulnerable situations to fulfill his destiny.

In violently contrasted shots, there is Kabilan’s father carrying his son on his shoulders, before he is taken down. Here too, Kabilan and his mother escape unscathed. One silhouette against another, the fight takes place for a few steps and then stops. A languid soundtrack carries him into adulthood. A muted, humble voice develops. There is no suspense, it’s just life. One must read between the pages of this life. The subject, Kabilan, at a naughty age, one where the boxer is still eager to show his chops but too chopped up to continue much longer, enters the ring. At this awkward age, Kabilan has just started. Age makes a weary moralist of those around him, but Kabilan retains the innocent gleam in his eye.

Dushara Vijayan as Mariyamma, Kabilan’s wife, is a spectacular step above female characters in this genre. Her coquettish charm and her misty self-determination, which she imparts to her husband by example (and not with a fleeting lecture) becomes the emotional core of the second-half. The mother and daughter duo imparts an ideal of masculinity that is sorely missing from an all-male gaze. Mariyamma echoes this when she urges Kabilan to purge “clan” and “honour” from his mind. It is this that gives the impression that Sarpatta Parambarai is abnormal as a film – it has no interest in the object itself, but the possibilities behind that object. With noble creativity and creative nobility, it forces us to consider something we’ve been numbed to in our lives. The words “honour” and “clan” are reduced to spectacles by selfish egos.

By the end we do not find ‘honour’ honourable at all – it becomes a meaningless mess that tells little of the conflict of courage and fear, morality and cowardice, liberty and lucidity that these words actually signify. Ranjith takes us beyond the idea of prioritising one over the other. It becomes a question about those who like to look up at the stars after a day on the grind and dream. In a scene towards the end of the training montages in the third act, we see the camera tranquilly cover the husband and wife, as they joke with each other about her being the fatal enchantress who is bad for his boxing bones. A ship in the sea and an overhead shot of their exchanges reveal a very Proustian feeling of pleasurable regrets. The dialogue delves into the psychology of the characters, thoroughly soaked in their weariness, which is a sign of their strength.

Kabilan lies on the bed waiting for Mariyamma, who enters with her face veiled – we notice his pleasure at knowing she is there and his displeasure at being unable to see her. These cinematic negotiations elucidate their relationship, until it is subverted by Mariyamma breaking out into dance, surprising Kabilan, who suddenly becomes the shy bride. Thus, mise en scene is simplified to the matter of logic, it is the idea of a scene that occasions the idea of a shot. Ranjith is not guilty of mistaking a closed door for an open one. Instead, he builds a house without doors, one that can use the sum of its parts to make something whole, transposing crime drama, romance and sport.

This cinematic openness is reflected most peacefully in Mariyamma. She may be a provincial muse but by putting her in command and making her the voice of the absolute, Ranjith makes her the spiritual Venus among men. Female characters are written heavily, wearily, naggingly, or the total opposite – the angelic devi amongst mortal men and endlessly forgiving. But through Mariyamma and Kabilan’s mother – both women of strength and character – the play between men and women becomes a moving spectacle of metamorphosis.

It would be a mistake to commend Sarpatta for its period stance – it is as resolutely modern as anything happening now. Though it is not completely divorced from the cliches of period films, Sarpatta is not a period film because it is ahead of its time. This natural camaraderie with time, place and legacy is rooted in the easy rapport of Kabilan and Guru Ji. Easy but not cavalier; both prefer the contemplation of the game as much as the game.

Kabilan and Guru Ji, both do naturally what has become unnatural – they breathe the air and truly, totally, inhabit it, without the oppressive feeling of ownership. What’s more natural than really breathing? When class impositions oppress Kabilan, he takes back by force his right to breathe, until he tries to choke himself, playing with death countless times. The interplay between life and death also extends to the legend of the champion morphing with the legend of the tribe. Both are connected: life and death, guru and disciple. The constant battles between guru and disciple are more frequent and intense than those with the outside world. Thus, it is our personal struggles with those closest to us, including ourselves, that impact us the most.

Many champions have been among the most maltreated in our society, either through fawning exaggeration or through boos. The crowning paradox is that Nobel laureates Malala Yousufzai and Abdus Salam, who are both warmly nonpartisan, are spurned by those who feign patriotism. Everyone bears their share of disrepute. This holds true in boxing. It is confused for a needless activity, a denaturation of human sensibilities. We see the heroes as the cultural record, but they are harrowed for being able to believe, by those who are unable to believe. The same extends to film. For many, film is a useless prospect. Why live in this illusion, behind a wall of unreality.

It is difficult for the audience to reconcile with having to be able to delude ourselves. For someone to go into boxing requires a leap of faith, and a modicum of belief. The temerity of Sarpatta’s structure makes this goal clear, re-establishing a connection with the game of life.

The writer is a student of history and comparative literature at LUMS