GDN trailer: Madhavan's GD Naidu squares up to the British

One line does most of the work in the GDN trailer, dropped onscreen in plain white text: “Feared by the British. Forgotten by his countrymen.” That is the pitch for R. Madhavan’s biopic of GD Naidu, the Coimbatore inventor and industrialist whose name barely registers today outside his home city, released nearly three minutes of footage that plays him as a threat the colonial administration actively tried to bury.

The trailer builds its conflict around exactly that. A younger Naidu draws the attention of the British for tax evasion and other acts read as defiance, and an officer is heard flatly calling him a traitor: “Naidu is doing business with Germany and the Nazis against the interests of the Crown. This is treason.” There is a glimpse of his inventions being destroyed in protest against the government, and a moment where Naidu turns the threat back on his accuser: “You will soon understand which land you have occupied and whom you are talking to.” The tagline frames him as a man out of his time, someone who “dared to reinvent the future” long before the technology boom made that ambition ordinary.

Madhavan carries the film across two ages, playing both the young firebrand and an older Naidu he is virtually unrecognisable as. The makers unveiled the trailer in Coimbatore, the inventor’s birthplace, a fitting choice for a man remembered locally as India’s Edison.

That gap between local memory and national recognition is what co-star Priyamani, who plays Chellammal, kept returning to. “It will be an eye-opener for everyone, because many people still don’t know who GD Naidu was,” she said. “When you mention his name, the first reaction is usually, who is GD Naidu, what did he do? I’m hoping that after this film, people will proudly say, now we know.” She stayed guarded about her own role, offering only the character’s name and that the film would explain “what kind of woman she was during that period.” The team has run a GD Naidu innovation contest alongside the promotions, and Priyamani said the volume of entries suggested the appetite for the man’s story is already there.

Written and directed by Krishnakumar Ramakumar of Oho Enthan Baby, with Madhavan credited on the screenplay, GDN reunites Varghese Moolan Pictures and Madhavan’s Tricolour Films, the pairing behind Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, his last turn as a real-life man of science. The ensemble runs deep, with Sathyaraj, Jayaram, Dushara Vijayan, Vinay Rai, Thambi Ramaiah, Yogi Babu, Aditi Balan and Kaniha among the names, music by Govind Vasantha and camera by Aravind Kamalanathan. Dharma Productions is handling the release across Karnataka and North India. It arrives as part of a run of Tamil biographical dramas in the pipeline, an Ilaiyaraaja biopic with Dhanush among them.

GDN opens in theatres on July 17 in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi.