Editing, space, and pace in Viduthalai

Vetrimaaran's editing approach in Viduthalai is integral to its immersive and disorienting realism. The film adopts a slow yet tense pacing, with extended sequences that allow the audience to absorb the brutality of police violence and the complexities of resistance. The editing by R. Ramar rejects the rapid cuts typical of commercial action films, opting instead for long, uninterrupted takes that enhance the film's raw aesthetic. In contrast, the relatively faster-paced editing choices in action sequences shape the viewer's perception of space and movement, making violence feel more immediate and lived. Narratively, the use of ellipses in Viduthalai deepens its thematic weight. By often strategically omitting key moments and showing only their aftermath, the film compels the audience to imagine the horrors occurring off-screen, amplifying an episode’s psychological impact. In addition, the fragmented, non-linear editing in key sequences—such as the higher cast violence and police raids—reinforces a sense of chaos and instability typical of Third Cinema's rejection of traditional narrative coherence in favor of structural critique.

Spatial composition in Viduthalai plays a crucial role in articulating power dynamics. The expansive landscapes of rural Tamil Nadu contrast with the claustrophobic, oppressive interiors of police stations, creating a visual metaphor for the systematic entrapment of marginalized communities. This contrast aligns with Henri Lefebvre's theory of space, which posits that physical environments are not neutral but actively shape and reflect power structures. Framing of the character Kumaresan within confined spaces, often surrounded by senior officers, visually reinforces his entrapment within an authoritarian system. The overall pacing of Viduthalai mirrors the slow, accumulative horror of systemic violence. Unlike mainstream police films that escalate action toward a climactic showdown, Viduthalai maintains a steady, deliberate rhythm reflecting oppression's inescapable nature. This approach aligns with the slow cinema movement, where long takes, composition in depth, and minimal cuts lead the audience to engage deeply with the film's social and political realities.

In particular, Priya Jaikumar’s concept of history as filmed space offers a compelling lens through which to examine Viduthalai's spatial politics, notably in its representation of guerrilla/insurgent movement and state violence. Jaikumar argues that cinematic space is not merely a backdrop but a site where history is actively constructed and contested. In Viduthalai, Vetrimaaran employs the rugged, expansive landscapes of rural Tamil Nadu to evoke a history of resistance against state oppression. The film’s use of forests, mountains, and rivers as zones of guerrilla warfare aligns with Jaikumar’s assertion that cinematic space shapes our understanding of historical struggles. These locations are not neutral; they bear the scars of past confrontations between the state and insurgent movements, particularly the Naxalite struggles in India. By staging police violence within these landscapes, Viduthalai situates contemporary state brutality within a longer history of counterinsurgency campaigns, from the colonial-era suppression of peasant revolts to post-independence crackdowns on leftist movements. The film’s wide shots of the police forces navigating the terrain highlight the state's attempt to impose control over spaces of historical resistance, transforming natural landscapes into militarized zones. Moreover, Vetrimaaran’s long takes and aesthetics of realism immerse the viewer in these contested spaces, making visible the ways in which the past continues to shape the present. With this visual style, Viduthalai not only critiques police violence but also reclaims space as an archive of struggle, reinforcing Jaikumar’s argument that history materializes through the very landscapes that cinema renders visible.

Cinematography and
Vetrimaaran's use of multiple cameras/angles

Vetrimaran strikingly uses multiple cameras/angles to capture scenes from various perspectives. This method of framing adds depth to the film's chaotic depiction of state violence. Such an approach brings to mind Dziga Vertov's theory of a "kino-eye," wherein the camera functions as an omnipresent observer, capturing the rawness of reality from multiple angles, here particularly in drone shots that I will discuss later. However, unlike Dziga Vertov’s investment in “life caught unaware” in documentary form, Vetrimaran’s film is fictional and staged. However, the anthropomorphism of the camera in Man with a Movie Camera could be extended to describe the omniscient and surveilling drone in Viduthalai. By employing multiple cameras/angles, Vetrimaaran constructs a fragmented visual narrative that mirrors the disorientation and fear induced by police brutality. Minimal lighting and earthy color palettes further enhance the film's raw unfiltered aesthetic. In a particularly harrowing sequence, Kumaresan witnesses the torture of detainees. The incident is filmed with multiple cameras to provide shifting perspectives—alternating between the detached gaze of power and the visceral, close-up horror of the victims. This multi-camera approach intensifies the film's critique of surveillance and control.

Vetrimaaran chooses to use slow motion and accelerated edits simultaneously during action sequences, ensuring that every moment of brutality is detailed from various angles. By employing multi-camera setup/angles, Viduthalai refuses to present a singular, authoritative viewpoint. Instead, it leads the audience to engage with multiple perspectives, similar to cinéma vérité and Third Cinema traditions. This approach transforms the film's depiction of police violence into an immersive, participatory experience.

Cop looking through the binocular. A cold, calculated gaze—state power sees everything but coldly.	Karuppan tortured. A Dalit body reduced to evidence—his pain circulates as a visual proof of the state's unrelenting force.

André Bazin's theory of realism in cinema emphasizes the significance of deep focus and long takes in preserving the ambiguity of reality. In Viduthalai 1 and 2, Vetrimaaran frequently employs these techniques, allowing the audience to engage with the spatial and temporal complexities of police violence. A notable example is the film's opening sequence, featuring a long tracking shot of a train accident site—a visual metaphor for systemic collapse—where the audience is asked to absorb the horror of state negligence without any editorializing cuts or manipulative music. Vetrimaaran's decision to eschew excessive background scores during violent sequences aligns with his minimalist aesthetic, depicting the realism of suffering while not sensationalizing it. Additionally, Siegfried Kracauer's emphasis on cinema's ability to capture "material reality" through unfiltered images and sounds can be seen in Vetrimaaran's deliberate choice to present police violence in a raw, unembellished manner, without distractions.

The raw depiction of the train accident site in Viduthalai serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of societal neglect and government corruption. By presenting harsh realities of rural life without embellishment, Vetrimaaran creates thought-provoking commentary on life in Tamil Nadu. The film meticulously reconstructs the socio-economic conditions of its characters, from police concentration camps to impoverished villages. Through its unwavering attention to detail, the film draws viewers into the stark and often brutal world of the marginalized, allowing for an experience that is both immersive and unsettling. Through this approach, Vetrimaaran effectively sheds light on the systemic issues plaguing society without resorting to melodrama or manipulation. The film’s critique of caste and state violence remains historically and geographically grounded. Using non-actors in certain roles, along with local dialects and cultural references, enhances the film's authenticity.

Uncanny vantage: the drone’s omniscient gaze

Vetrimaaran’s Viduthalai 1 and 2 deploy drone cinematography sparsely but thoughtfully. It is used not merely as a technical embellishment but as a critical visual strategy that embodies both an uncanny vantage point and the logic of everyday militarism. As it portrays the state’s violent repression of a radical Maoist-like group in Tamil Nadu, the cinematography uses drones to construct an aesthetic of surveillance that echoes the militarized policing tactics used in real-world counterinsurgency operations.

The drone in Viduthalai operates as a disembodied, all-seeing presence, aligning with what Harun Farocki calls "operational images"—images that do not merely depict but actively participate in control and coercion (Pong & Richardson, 2024, p. 13). Farocki's concept of operational images aids in exploring the intersection of technology and warfare. Drone Aesthetics offers a thought-provoking examination of the visual culture surrounding drones and their implications for society, challenging viewers to consider their perceptions as shaped by drone footage and the ethical questions that arise with drones’ increasing presence.

By examining the visual representation of drones in various media, Farocki delves into the ethical implications of their use in warfare and surveillance and critically engages with the ways in which these technologies are portrayed and perceived in society. In Viduthalai, however, Vetrimaaran deploys the drone imagery sparsely and deliberately. The film opens with the protagonist Kumaresan arriving at his post amidst the dense, mountainous forest terrain. Here, the initial drone shots—evoking the vast, rugged landscape—function not merely as establishing shots but as initiation, signaling Kumaresan’s entry into a space already saturated with surveillance, suspicion, and militarized policing. The aerial view marks his spatial dislocation and establishes the character’s symbolic induction into state surveillance.

Later, drone imagery punctuates key moments of police brutality and crackdowns on villagers. In Viduthalai, paradoxically such moments take place in a historical period prior to the widespread use of drone technology. In this way, the film anachronistically maps contemporary surveillance aesthetics onto an earlier era, invoking the continuity of control through older technologies such as telegraphs, telephones, and walkie-talkies. This narrative gesture reinforces the idea that while the form of surveillance may change, its function remains constant: to suppress, to monitor, and to dominate. The drone becomes a spectral presence—a retroactive imposition of the state's "eye" across temporal boundaries, re-inscribing past violence with present-day visual regimes.

Vision pierces darkness—an all-seeing apparatus that dehumanizes and flattens.	Digital dominance—Spaces of rebellion, captured in cold pixelation.

In the final scenes, as Kumaresan comes to terms with unjust police practices and recognizes the moral legitimacy of the villagers’ resistance, the drone returns—not just as a machine of vision but as a reminder of the larger mechanisms of state violence that continue beyond the visible. The sparing use of drone cinematography, then, amplifies its effect. Rather than normalizing the gaze, Vetrimaaran wields it strategically to shock, disrupt, and critique. The film’s aerial shots often depict vast, undulating forested landscapes from a high vantage point, invoking a sense of omnipotence that aligns with the logic of military reconnaissance. This scopic regime is unsettling, producing a panoptic effect where the hunted—primarily the rebel group led by Perumal Vaathiyar—are rendered minuscule, vulnerable, and perpetually exposed. This overview echoes Antoine Bousquet’s argument that drone imagery fosters a "martial gaze," where the world is apprehended primarily through the technological apparatus of militarized perception (2024, pp. 32-45). In Viduthalai, the drone’s high-angle shots serve to indicate the power imbalance between police and rebels, conveying both the hyperreal clarity of surveillance and the disorienting fear it engenders among those surveilled.

Everyday militarism is thus depicted as a pervasive force that invades even the most intimate spaces of resistance, blurring lines between public and private spheres. The use of drone technology in Viduthalai underscores the insidious nature of surveillance in maintaining power dynamics and controlling dissent, highlighting the constant threat of state surveillance in both physical and psychological realms. This portrayal reflects the reality of modern surveillance practices and the ways in which technology can be weaponized to suppress resistance and maintain control over marginalized communities. The film effectively captures the effect of constant surveillance on individual autonomy and free expression, serving as a reminder of the erosion of privacy rights and the difficulty of achieving a balance between security and individual freedoms.

Militarism, state of exception, and
subaltern resistance in Viduthalai:
A Baishya-Agambenian reading

The narrative of Viduthalai revolves around an occupied landscape where a special police force carries out brutal operations to capture the revolutionary leader Perumal while ordinary villagers are subjected to constant surveillance, suspicion, and state-sanctioned violence. This terrain of control, conflict, and resistance can be productively analyzed through the theoretical frameworks of Giorgio Agamben's state of exception and Amit R. Baishya's work on militarism and "deathworlds," particularly in his studies of Northeast India. Baishya draws on Agamben to argue that the Indian state, in militarized zones like the Northeast, produces "spaces of exception" where legal protections are suspended, citizens are rendered as "bare life," and violence becomes routine (2018, 2021). These insights resonate strongly with the world depicted in Viduthalai, where the rural countryside functions as a laboratory for state violence and where narratives of resistance subtly undermine the sovereignty of the state.

In Agamben's formulation, the "state of exception" is a juridico-political situation in which the law is suspended in the name of its protection. This paradoxical logic allows sovereign power to act outside the law while claiming legitimacy (2005). Baishya applies this to the Indian context by focusing on laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which allows security forces in "disturbed areas" to operate with impunity. In Viduthalai, the state of exception is enacted through "Operation Ghosthunt," a counterinsurgency campaign to eliminate the People's Army leader Perumal. The terrain of the operation is effectively rendered as a zone where customary legal frameworks do not apply. The villagers are no longer seen as citizens with rights but as potential threats whose lives can be surveilled, policed, and extinguished at will.

The film's visual grammar reinforces this transformation of the village into a "camp" in the Agambenian sense. Checkposts become mechanisms of control and classification, echoing Baishya's observation that militarized spaces in Northeast India are structured through grids of surveillance. The villagers are stopped, questioned, and often brutalized, not because they have committed any crime but because they inhabit a geography marked as exceptional. The landscape itself is treated as suspect, a terrain to be conquered and cleared. The commando units, clad in fatigues and armed with heavy artillery, do not resemble traditional law enforcement officers; they embody the militarization of the police that Baishya describes as characteristic of counterinsurgency regimes. Their tactics—abduction, torture, sexual violence, and extrajudicial killings—are carried out in broad daylight, suggesting a collapse between law and lawlessness. The very presence of such forces signifies the withdrawal of ordinary legal protections and the normalization of extraordinary violence.

This militarized violence also implicates the protagonist Kumaresan, a newly recruited constable who enters the village with naïve idealism. As he witnesses—and gradually becomes complicit in—the operations of the special police, his transformation illustrates what Baishya refers to as the co-option of individual ethics by militarized structures. Kumaresan's discomfort with torture and injustice is evident, but his location within the machinery of the state renders his resistance muted and precarious. He straddles the border between the state and the subaltern, caught between institutional loyalty and ethical clarity. Baishya's analysis of literature and life writing in Northeast India emphasizes how such in-between figures often dramatize the contradictions of state sovereignty. Kumaresan is not merely a witness but a participant in a system that erodes his agency even as it calls upon his allegiance.

Yet, Viduthalai does not solely narrate the triumph of state power; it also makes visible the subterranean forces of resistance. Though largely unseen, Perumal functions as a spectral presence, a figure of insurgent sovereignty. His absence from the screen paradoxically strengthens his symbolic power. He is constructed not through the state's caricature of him as a "terrorist" but through the memories, stories, and solidarities of the villagers who support him. This strategy aligns with Baishya's emphasis on the counter-narratives offered by former rebels and marginalized communities in literature from Northeast India. These counter-narratives, often metaphoric and allegorical, do not simply reject the state's claims to legitimacy; they expose the violence upon which those claims rest. In Viduthalai, the forest becomes a fugitive space, a site of alternate sovereignty where state surveillance falters and new forms of belonging emerge.

The gendered dimension of violence in Viduthalai also resonates with Baishya's concept of the "deathworld"—a term he borrows from Achille Mbembe to describe spaces where life is rendered precarious and disposable. In the film, women are subjected to sexualized violence not only as a tactic of terror but as a demonstration of sovereign power. This is not incidental but central to the logic of exceptionality: it reveals that the law's suspension is not a temporary deviation but a permanent condition in specific geographies and bodies. Baishya's analysis of such acts of violence in militarized India underscores how they are not aberrations but part of a more extensive system of biopolitical control.

Despite its bleak portrayal of militarism, Viduthalai opens a space for imagining justice beyond the state. The ethical tension within Kumaresan, the resilience of the villagers, and the mythic aura around Perumal all point toward what Baishya might call narrative counterpower—the capacity of stories, symbols, and allegiances to question and destabilize sovereign violence. Like the literary texts Baishya studies, the film does not offer a resolution but a rupture. It interrupts the state's monopoly on truth and violence by foregrounding lives lived otherwise—lives that persist, resist, and remember in the face of annihilation.

Thinking through Amit Baishya's insights on militarism and the state of exception in Vetrimaaran's Viduthalai reveals the deep affinities between the cinematic representation of Tamil Nadu's rural hinterlands and the lived experiences of Northeast India under military occupation. Both are "deathworlds" structured by a suspended legality, where the state enacts violence through the very mechanisms meant to protect. And yet, both are also sites of resistance where literature and cinema become tools for exposing and challenging the very foundations of sovereign power. Viduthalai is not merely a film about insurgency and repression; it is a meditation on the ethics of witnessing, the politics of occupation, and the possibility of freedom in a world marked by exception.

Asuran: caste, cop violence, and state oppression

Asuran (Demon, 2019), directed by Vetrimaaran and based on Poomani’s novel Vekkai, is a searing critique of caste-based oppression in Tamil Nadu. The film, starring Dhanush, unfolds as an intergenerational struggle between a marginalized Dalit family and the upper-caste landlords who control land, law enforcement, and political power. Through its layered narrative, Asuran exposes the systemic violence embedded in caste hierarchies, the complicity of the police in perpetuating oppression, and the state’s role in reinforcing caste supremacy. At its core, Asuran is a story about land—the central site of caste oppression in India. Sivasaamy, played by Dhanush, is a farmer whose family is targeted by the landlords for resisting their land-grabbing attempts. The conflict begins when his son, Chidambaram, kills an upper-caste oppressor in an act of defiance, triggering violent retaliation. This clash mirrors the real-world struggles of Dalit communities against upper-caste hegemony, where land becomes both a symbol of autonomy and a reason for subjugation.

The film traces the historical roots of land ownership as a marker of caste privilege, where Dalits, historically landless laborers, are subjected to feudal exploitation (Ambedkar, 2014). Through its visceral depiction of violence and resistance, Asuran echoes the works of Mari Selvaraj (Karnan, 2021), highlighting how land and caste are inextricably linked (Geetha & Rajadurai, 2007). The police in Asuran are portrayed not as neutral enforcers of law but as active agents of caste-based violence. In multiple instances, the police serve the interests of the landlords, brutalizing the Dalit family instead of protecting them. This aligns with real-life accounts of custodial torture, false accusations, and the disproportionate incarceration of Dalits (Rao, 2009). In one of the most harrowing sequences, Sivasaamy and his family are arrested and beaten mercilessly. The police, instead of investigating the landlords' crimes, align themselves with them, reinforcing the Brahminical state apparatus (Pandian, 2014). The family’s situation illustrates how law enforcement in India has historically functioned to suppress Dalit assertion, ensuring that the oppressed remain in a state of fear and subjugation. Asuran’s depiction of police violence parallels real-life incidents such as the custodial killings and the real-world injustices faced by marginalized communities across India (Kumar, 2021).

Sivasaamy in Asuran. Like Perumal, Sivasaamy embodies vengeance shaped by caste trauma—history repeats through different bodies.	Education as wealth. A revolutionary belief—education is casteless wealth, a tool for mobility and memory.