DC backs off a week and puts its A certificate on the poster

The announcement poster for DC is mostly a giant letter A. Not the title, not the two leads, who are shrunk down to the bottom edge. Just the certificate, with CENSORED stamped across it and the new date in the corner: 7th August, worldwide. Most films treat an adults-only rating as something to absorb quietly. Arun Matheswaran’s film has made it the artwork.

The rating and the date arrived together on that poster, though only one of them is a consequence of the other, and it is not the one the wires have been implying. The A certificate did not move DC. Vijay did.

DC was booked for July 31. Then Jana Nayagan took July 23, and July 31 stopped looking like open road and started looking like the second weekend of Vijay’s farewell film, which is a different proposition entirely. Vijay is the sitting Chief Minister. The film is his last. It was leaked online before it ever reached a theatre and spent months stuck in certification limbo, which has only wound the thing tighter. Whatever it does on July 23, it will not be doing it quietly, and it will not be leaving many screens for anyone else on July 31. August 7 buys a third weekend of daylight.

There is a small symmetry in who blinked. Lokesh Kanagaraj directed Vijay in Master and again in Leo. The last time the two of them were in a room together it was Lokesh calling the shots. Now he is the one stepping out of the way, and doing it on the film where he steps in front of the camera for the first time.

He plays Devadas, a gangster running from something in his past. Wamiqa Gabbi is Chandra, running from trouble of her own. They travel together, he decides to protect her, and they fall in love. The title is just their two initials, which tells you the makers want you to catch the reference: this is Devdas rebuilt as an action film. Sanjana AK plays Parvathi. In Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel, Parvathi is the love Devdas loses and Chandramukhi is the woman who loves him anyway and gets nothing for it. DC puts Chandra in the title and hands Parvathi the supporting credit. The old story’s loser has been promoted.

An A certificate for a Devdas is almost redundant. The source text is a man drinking himself to death over a woman he was not allowed to marry. Put that in the hands of the director of Rocky and Saani Kaayidham, films that treat violence as something with weight and consequence rather than choreography, and the certificate writes itself. The trailer opens in black and white and stays dark. Anirudh Ravichander has the score.

Shooting is done and the release work is underway. After this, Lokesh goes back behind the camera for his Allu Arjun film, with Anirudh again. The acting experiment gets one summer.