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Anbe Sivam- Love is God

by Rashmeet Kaur
(Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India)

Love is God is a Tamil classic film about love, life and self-identification. Written by renowned actor Kamal Hasaan and starring heartthrob R. Madhavan, Anbe Sivam is not your regular rom-com movie but a classic and way ahead of its time, maybe that was the reason it was a big flop when it was originally released back in 2003.


The movie has two stories going on simultaneously which ultimately gets connected at the end. The movie starts with Anbarasu ( Madhavan) an ad filmmaker by profession whose flight gets cancelled because of the flood-like situation in Oriya where he meets a grotesque person who he suspects to be a terrorist. The person is none other than Sivam (Kamal Hasaan). The story is about their journey to reach a common destination: Chennai.

Fate brings two contrasting personalities together where Anbarasu is a capitalist in nature whereas Sivam is a Comrade and a Communist.

The first song of the film reflects the idea of this classic, the lyrics are a confrontation between Sivam’s communist ideas and Anbarasu’s capitalist views.

The second story soon follows when Anbarasu asks Sivam about his love life. The love life of Sivam is the epicentre of the movie. Being a communist he outrightly mocks the local capitalist in a street play where he first encounters the heroine of the movie played by Kiran Rathod as Bala.

The scene of the street play is the essence of the movie as the song clearly manifests that this movie is not going to be just another love story of a rich girl and a poor boy but a conflict between two ideologies where love is just a scapegoat.

Two lines from the street play are:

“Let’s fight against the atrocities done to us with strength and courage”

Let’s not hesitate to march towards our destiny & there is no room for tears”

The movie is a subtle attempt to change the views of Anbarasu and make him more sensitive towards life and people, and that attempt is done by Sivam himself whose dialogues are filled with platitude and are homely in nature.

One such dialogue is where Anbarasu mocks Sivam for being a communist even when the Soviet Union has fallen and broken into several smaller countries.

The reply Sivam gives is not only befitting but a classic.

He replies- “For instance, Taj Mahal crumbles down…Will you stop loving it?”

“Communism too is a feeling. But Karl Marx wrote about it & turned it into a doctrine.”

The movie subtly keeps the two ideologies and the confrontation of the conflicts throughout the entire film without compromising with the two stories running simultaneously.

The gist of the entire movie is in one dialogue.

“The heart that sheds tears for a stranger, that’s a God.”

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