Endiran

Cast: Rajinikanth, Aiswarya Rai, Danny Denzongpa Music: AR Rahman Direction: Shankar

Now, Shankar has obviously seen Artificial Intelligence (AI), I Robot and Transformers and liked them. He has not come out of the Matrix hangover and probably never will. He likes his songs and often doesn't care where he places them in the script. He likes to amplify emotions for melodramatic effects so love comes out as lust and anger comes out as aggression. Having said all that, no one can deny that he was a pioneer of a new kind of commercial cinema, one so successful that it produced a breed of directors such as Dharani, Hari, Susi Ganesan, etc. who brazenly followed Shankaresque format. It was about time he raised the bar.

Looking at Endiran, we can only imagine the number of brainstorming sessions he must have had with writer Sujatha during all these years when he was incubating the project. Shankar will be the best judge as to how successfully it has turned out and also, at the risk of blasphemy, how much he had to compromise in order to accommodate Rajinikanth in the role.

For hardcore Rajinikanth fans, Endhiran may be quite satisfying. Here Rajini is the hero, Rajini is the villain, Rajini is the machine, the cloned robots, and at some point in the climax, Rajinis are the only things seen on the screen, other humans simply reduced to being insects caught in the storm. Those fans will simply be happy to just watch more and more of him for two and half hours. I don't think you'll find it difficult to believe in the existence of such fans. I even know of one who actually believed Baba was a good film. Nevertheless, for other Rajinikanth admirers, which comprise the entire Tamil speaking population, the film may be a bit disappointing. There are no typical Rajinikanth elements that we have come to expect. He doesn't enter the frame in the midst of drum rolls and flying confetti. He doesn't deliver 'punch dialogues'. Worse still, in a potential brawl situation, the scientist Rajini actually runs away from a lone fisherman, a stark contrast from the Rajini who made minced meat out of about fifty top rowdies of the city in Sivaji. You may say he is just a 'scientist'! Well, he was just a 'software engineer' in Sivaji and that didn't deter him from breaking their bones? As if to compensate for that, the other Rajini, the robot, pulverises goons, runs over a speeding train, leaps forward and backward across a flyover from a speeding car amidst chasing police vans, and demolishes army battalions in a mad frenzy.

Leaving aside the Rajini factor, the film's landscape and vision is impressive and at times breathtaking. That it has taken Shankar courage to think up such a story, albeit with ample support from Sujatha and Karky, and execute it effectively calls for commemoration. Although actors who are much younger and more agile such as Shah Rukh Khan would have fit the role more convincingly, who, but Shankar, would have thought that Rajinikanth can fit into the role? And what would Shankar had been thinking when he was reworking on the script to fit Rajinikanth? Well, did he even make those changes?

More than how the movie itself has turned out, it is worth noting what the movie represents as a commercial product, especially to Tamil film industry. Shankar never claimed to change the nuances of Tamil cinema. He is not a Balu Mahendra and never claimed to be. However, in his own small way, or shall we say 'big budget way', Shankar has changed the way commercial films are conceived, made, and even marketed. He introduced the concept of 'blockbuster' to South Indian film industries. In that sense, Gentleman was to Tamil cinema what Jaws was to Hollywood. He exploited the concept of saturation release with Sivaji, now being done by almost every second producer in the South. The term blockbuster originated from the warfare technology, connected with the powerful aerial bombs of World War II that were capable of destroying whole housing blocks. With Endhiran, Shankar has introduced another warfare term 'carpet bombing' to film marketing. Regardless of which weaponry you are applying to market your product, if you don't have impressive script filled with great original ideas, it will actually be your film that will be bombed. I don't know if Shankar thinks about marketing at all during the scripting phase. I would like to think he doesn't. Some would claim that he doesn't need to. Whatever may be the case, one thing is sure: no other Tamil filmmaker thinks like Shankar.

Angadi Theru

Cast: Mahesh, Anjali, A.Venkatesh Music: GV Prakash & Vijay Antony Direction: Vasantha Balan

Melodrama is not an Indian invention. The term originally referred to 18th and 19th century European dramas where music and songs were used to heighten the emotion. Then in the 50s Douglas Sirk made the term famous among the modern audience. However, the use of this genre in Indian films was so prevalent that until the late 80s, the genre of large number our films could only be defined as ‘melodrama’.

As the taste of the audience grew and became more sensitive, and as many directors became inspired by other influences such as New Wave and Neo Realism, our films changed tone, tenor and texture. In Tamil, directors like Balu Mahendra, Barathiraja and Bala used Neo Realism effectively in Indian context. However, losing melodrama altogether was not possible. For almost four decades people were fed on it non-stop and the antidote had to be gradual lest the withdrawal symptoms would be severe and unbearable.

Thus was born another formula unique to Indians. A fusion of melodrama and neo-realism: the two incompatible elements cleverly fused together to provide a different cinematic experience. A combination of Vittorio de Sica and Douglas Sirk would have been unimaginable and therefore unpalatable to a western taste bud was lapped up eagerly by the Indians. The Bala school pioneered this (probably often unaware of what they were doing) movement joined actively by soldiers from another unlikely institution: The Shankar school.

Vasantha Balan’s Angadi Theru pays ample tributes to Bala school while remaining true to Shankar’s action melodrama techniques. It works like as if Shankar had written the script but gave it to Bala to direct. This kitsch must have been an inedible concoction but it surprisingly works, simply because of the sincerity of Balan’s intentions and his consciously woven multi-layered script.

Angadi Theru which tells the story of the workers of a large Indian style departmental store in Chennai’s most famous shopping area, Ranganathan Street, has all the elements of a Shankar film. It has opinionated social angst, drama, action, stereotyped villains and a comedy track in the midst of the misery. The villains are so loud they grit their teeth and always look angry. As if that wouldn’t produce the desired aversion, they pick their nose and smell the gooey.

On the other hand, the protagonists are normal people with normal problems. They drop out of school due to dire economic conditions, take up jobs just to support family and sleep on the pavements. The main protagonists are people from villages who have come on employment with their ‘urban dream’. There are ample subplots involving a dwarf and a sex-worker, a blind hand-kerchief seller an underage girl working as domestic servant, a caretaker of a public toilet, and a couple working in the same departmental store whose secondary love story plays an influential role on the main protagonists. In a way, true to the principles of established scriptwriting techniques, each of these subplots in some way connects to the main characters and influences their decisions. Douglas Sirk would have been proud to see that Vasantha Balan even makes liberal use of ‘melodramatic objects’, a technique Sirk pioneered that helps to establish and narrate romantic emotions.

Fusions are not without their problems. In Angadi Theru, Vasantha Balan oscillates between his desire to be judgemental and pragmatic. Neo Realism prefers to depict situations as they are. Melodrama not only articulates opinions but even amplifies them for heightened impact. The heavy set background music and action-packed plot developments heighten the mood and certain dialogues and exaggerated character development sensationalise what are otherwise very natural events. This disturbs at times although the overall effect is kind of a surreal dream charged with emotional power where you’re made part of and that participation without your permission. You're shake your head in disagreement at certain opinionated depictions whilst anxiously caring for the characters. Isn't it a success for Vasantha Balan?

Angadi Theru is one of the films in the line up of the modern phenomenon that’s sweeping Tamil industry. What started off as a quiet, reticent initiatives by Balu Mahendra and spontaneous burst of energy from Barathiraja have now become an active and conscious movement. Guided mostly by the Bala school but also helped by a few handful directors from outside this new generation directors are now reengineering Tamil cinema. Vasantha Balan is one of proud soldiers among them. They are unapologetic about the films they make. They are skilled, technically savvy yet highly rooted in the culture. They don’t pick up their inspiration from DVD rental stores. They look at our society for story ideas. And our society rewards them by offering plenty of plots. And plenty more subplots than they could reasonably close in a single film.

Endiran - a preview

Attempting technology-based films is a dicey game in India. The filmmaker will have to overcome many barriers in order to even successfully communicate the story, leave alone entertain. Many such valiant attempts in the past have bitten the dust miserably. Vikram, Kamal Hasssan’s answer to James Bond was more than laughed at by the audience. Many others, trying to balance their eagerness to do a ‘Hollywood style’ thriller with the taste of local audience, diluted the presentation so much that it often resulted of garish, shoddy outputs.

With today’s audience, the nature of the trouble has changed. In urban pockets, they have seen all the Hollywood blockbusters so it is difficult to meet their high expectations and also they approach Indian products with certain level of cynicism.
In this respect, when a filmmaker sets out to make an Indian film about a robot, words whisper around about inspiration from Terminator, I Robot, etc. Endiran, arguably the first Indian film on robots, has to bear that weight. The presence of Rajinikanth is going to level the playing field to large extent as in his fans are going to be more forgiving of the technological compromises. And the good thing for him is most of Tamil speaking peoples can be safely considered as his fans, only with a varying degree of devotion and fanaticism.

The curious question is how is Shankar going to tell this story? Is the robot going to be created by the scientist Rajinikanth to fight society’s evils? Every Shankar’s movie boasts of an almost superhero who single-handedly and tirelessly destroys corruption, nepotism and bureaucracy. Has Shankar found the most powerful superhero in the form of Robot? Is Robot a cross between Iron Man and Terminator?

These are the problem a filmmaker will have to face. None of these questions would have been asked if Shankar has made a non-technological film. But a question which this blog purports to ask, and considers significant, is how is Shankar going to ‘explain’ the concept of robotics to our audience. With the exception of the urban viewers who grew up on liberal doses of Spielbergs and Camerons, the rest of the population may not even know what a robot is and is capable of. While this could be advantageous in presenting preposterous things, such an attempt may offend trained urban pockets.

So a robot that is simple enough for rural populace to understand and enjoy and ‘accurate’ enough for urban sensibilities to appreciate is the challenge Shankar should meet in Endiran. Add to that, another curious thing would be how the technology is going to be merged with Shankar’s pot-boiler formula seamlessly? For years, Rajini fans have come to expect politically charged scenes so there’s also a requirement to include such power-packed sequences to whet the appetite of hardcore Rajini fans. That’s part of the problem for the director who had to sign up with Rajini because presenting a cohesive script whilst meeting all these requirements was never an easy bargain. Added to that the hype for Rajini films kept getting bigger for every release. Sivaji effectively ticked all these boxes and once again proved Shakar’s dexterous mastery over the mass-entertainment segment. The hype went a few notches higher when Endiran was announced. Is Shankar’s robot a cross between Iron Man and Terminator fortified with the moral angst of the old man in Indian and the ferocity of Anniyan? September 24th will be as much a test for Shankar's inventivenss as it is for the Tamil audience’s readiness.

Goa

Cast: Jay, Prem Gi Amaran, Vaibhav, Sampath, Sneha, Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja, Direction: Venkat Prabhu

There’s another film that deserves social criticism, not for the same reason. Though Goa scores high on certain aspects of filmmaking departments and, on occasions, high comedy, sociological approach would better suit the content.
Venkat Prabhu came with a fresh perspective to Tamil film storytelling that had not existed, the perspective that’s going to inspire very many filmmakers of today and tomorrow. One of his stock tricks, of identifying an old, usually nostalgic, song with each of the characters and playing it in bits at strategic points in the story is clever and funny. He also has a semi-spoof tendency where his characters often enact famous scenes and characters from other films. Many filmmakers do that for comical effects but Venkat Prabhu does it to progress a story or conclude a sub-plot. That is used to a great effect (and humour) in Goa when he brings in Simbu in the form of the psycho from Manmadhan character together with psychologically disturbed Sneha with a cheeky caption ‘Corrected Machi!’ Is it also a coincidence that Sneha’s estranged husband subsequently meets Nayanthara? Is there another layer to that?

Now coming to the sociological perspective, it’s worthwhile to question how much the audience understood the story and also appreciated its boldness. It is the first Tamil film to portray an ‘ordinary’ gay couple and arguably the first Indian film to use them non-judgementally. The Indian public can’t just be considered homophobic but homo-ignorants, people who were not even aware of the existence of communities with different sexual orientation. To them, the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) are the people who are genuinely ‘queer’ to the public and are not just disapproved but even considered ‘outside’ of their normal lives, like lepers. In this respect the homophobia is at a stage higher than in other countries. This, combined with classic Indian tendency to reject anything that’s not part of their culture (that’s mainstream contemporary culture) has relegated homosexuality to the farthest of the backbenches. Till about mid-noughties, they were referred to as strange ‘beings’ spotted in the dark corners of the beach at late nights or the corners of obscure restaurants, and spoken in the same delight and astonishment accorded to a Bigfoot or Yeti.

Bridging this divide would have been immensely challenging for the sponsors of the subculture, whose attempts began in the mid-noughties with none other than the then health minister who openly made a statement about legalising homosexuality. His context was mainly about the AIDS epidemic and the need to control it and he thought that by bringing the gay community out from the underworld would be the first step towards his goal. Whatever may be the aims, coming from such an authority did create some ripples, but not enough to be of any significance. There is one thing to be remembered here though: that something becoming a ‘law’ really means nothing to an ordinary Indians. Hardly any law is respectfully obeyed and adhered to and subsequent governments, both state and central, have lost even a superficial inclination in trying to enforce it onto their billion plus citizens. In that chaotic, yet incubate environment, many counter-cultures thrive, queer being one of them.

Hence it becomes important that more than the law, an acceptable depiction in the mainstream culture becomes necessary and nothing is more dominant in Indian psyche than the influence of cinema. That’s where Goa’s achievement becomes momentous. As mentioned earlier, Goa attempts to portray a gay couple without judgement. Although it make fun of them (a few of the jokes being really crass) the fun element clearly comes from Venkat Prabhu is inherent nature of ridiculing just about everything rather than aimed at queerness disparagingly. Goa also could be the first film to look at homosexuality beyond ‘sexual overtones’. In this film the couple are endowed with normal relationship-emotions, such as love, jealousy, companionship, and they even dream of gay weddings. Though homosexuality is no longer illegal in India civil-partnerships are still far from reality. In this context, Goa goes beyond even what could legally be achieved however irrelevance that is to the filmmaker’s objectives.

The crucial question is how many people really understood what’s being portrayed? Venkat Prabhu never openly identifies them as ‘gay’ even though he graphically depicts their relationship using gender symbols. Funnily enough, it escapes attention since not many movie-going audiences in Tamil are aware of these international symbols. His success could be in providing such depiction convincingly but his failure may have been that it did not garner much attention. In other words, not many people may have understood what was happening on the screen. Personally, I believe that Venkat Prabhu may have anticipated some controversy but I’m not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed at not having generated one. In any case that doesn’t diminish the sincerity of his ambition.

It is difficult to say how much impact this film will have on people’s attitude towards sexual orientation. It is also confusing to see the society being so progressive at certain and so primitive on the other avenues. Movies like Angadi Theru (a review of this will be made shortly) that portray the residues of the society in bare disillusionment to shocking effect whilst Goa portrays a clubbing, doping crowd with assimilationist tendencies. In both films a group of disillusioned and desperate rustic venture out onto the bold and promising urban life. While one end up in streets to sleep with urchins, in other they party joyously and end up bagging beautiful women. Both have humorous overtones. Both happen in India. And that’s what’s confusing.

Singam

Cast: Surya, Prakash Raj, Nasser, Radha Ravi, Anushka, Music: Devi Sri Prasad, Direction: Hari

Some movies deserve rave reviews and some don’t deserve a review. However tempting, segregating Singam in the latter category would be unfair to the filmmaker. It must be admitted, albeit embarrasingly, that the film is immensely entertaining as it was fun to watch the ‘hero’ thrashing up the baddies to pulp, especially when the ‘hero’ happens to be Surya who delivers every punch with passionate energy with suitably accessories of his toned biceps and six packs.

Having said that, the question remains as to whether Singam deserves the ‘regular’ review. An art can be analysed in different critical approaches. A formative and structural analysis would mean looking at it from the filmmaking point of view. A sociological review will approach it from a different viewpoint. This review takes that approach for reasons that will soon become evident.

Singam tells the story of a sub-inspector from a south Indian village. Durai Singam is intelligent, honest, righteous, aggressive, strong, humble and charming. The last two qualities come handy in wooing his woman who hopelessly falls head over heels. However the first few qualities are obstructions to any police officer in India who wants to progress in his career. But he does get promoted and transferred to the capital city. The promotion is sponsored or ‘engineered’ by a city-based mafia gangster whose path crossed sub-inspector’s previously when the gangster got humiliated by the SI. The gangster believes that by bringing the SI to the city - his own bastion - will help in avenging his humiliation. Then what happens consequently forms rest of the story. The story in itself provides interesting cinematic possibilities for entertainment and the director Hari amply delivers all of them. As mentioned earlier, that’s not our main contention, nor our focus of this review.

What kind of the policeman is this Durai Singam? We were told he is honest. We would have believed it even if we were not told because he is the ‘hero’. I invite readers to observe my conscious use of the word ‘hero’ and not protagonist which is my usual preferred choice. When Singam hears that a girl is being ‘eve teased’ and subsequently harassed by a group of thugs in a cinema hall he gets incredibly enraged. So much so that he takes out his motorcycle (with the girl in the pillion, of course), personally visits the cinema hall and beats up the gang to no ends. There’s a curious aspect to this scene. Before he begins to bash up, he challenges them to show up (because out of fear they hide behind the rest of the cinema going public). One of the thugs shout from behind the crowd that they will show up only if the SI can lay his gun aside. The SI, valiantly, unfastens his gun and hands it over to the harassed girl. Now he is ready to face them.

What were they worried about? That the SI would shoot them? And for what crime - eve-teasing? Technically no police inspector can use a firearm without an order from the collector. Not least on eve-teasers, with or without collector’s orders. Then in a fight scene that ensues, Singam beats up each one of the guys in front of the cinema hall with full crowd watching. The crowd too watches the action nonchalantly. After the fight is over, one woman in the crowd evidently remarks, ‘These guys should have known what would happen if they played foul with a policeman’s wife.’ What would happen if they played foul with an ordinary man’s wife is not explained.
Have our people been so desensitised enough to not understand the apparent absurdity of the action? Or because of the constant behaviour of our callous, corrupt, and increasingly violent police, have our public come believe that the job of a police officer is to beat up bad guys? And ‘bad guys’ according to whose belief? What would our public do if another officer decides to beat up a ‘good guy’ because the ‘good guy’ was being a thorn in the police officer’s fraudulent flesh? How many movies have we seen where the ‘hero’ is not a police officer but an ordinary civilian who gets arrested and beaten up by the corrupt police officers in collusion with the equally corrupt politicians?

Even in this movie, the ‘honest’ police officer Singam fabricates charges on the guys who frustrate him. He sets up a trap for the gangster’s brother and murders him (for a good measure Singam calls up the gangster and puts the phone on loudspeaker so that he could hear the raining bullet shots). Later, the honest inspector arrests the police commissioner who was found assisting the gangster and later releases him stating a strange kind of logic that if the press gets to know of his arrest, it would sully the reputation of the police department.

The police department is being repeatedly portrayed in two extremes in our films. They are corrupt, merciless and violent or honest, intelligent and straightforward. The former are villains and the later are heroes. In both cases they are aggressive and violent. When the villain policemen are shown to be violent it is seen as horrid because the violence is usually aimed at good guys. But when the hero policemen are shown to be violent it is celebrated because the violence is shown to be aimed at bad guys. The violence in itself is not scorned at and the conviction that policemen are violent is not questioned. In a way, again in a crude sense of logic, we can’t find fault with the director because he was indeed portraying what we see in everyday life. The trouble arises only when the film appears to celebrate it. Policemen violating the law or turning violent is bad for the society. That it is indeed being violated by a good cop is no excuse. Films like Singam that glorifies police violence does much more harm to police department than films that portray them as villains or buffoons.

Raavanan

Cast: Vikram, Aishwarya Rai, Prithvi Raj, Prabhu, Karthik, Music: AR Rahman Direction: Mani Ratnam

The first thing that came to my mind when the credits rolled was ‘Why Ramayana?’ I mean why. Why take a beaten and bruised mythology for adaptation when you don’t have a great inspiration? This confirms the often held belief that our filmmakers don’t have stories at stock. We have great novels in India which could have been adapted to powerful effect. Our filmmakers are either reluctant or too proud to go after such a route. Mani Ratnam had never taken the novel adaptation route but had a very useful ally in the form of Sujatha. The novelist, script-writer’s absence is felt quite acutely in Raavanan.

Mani Ratnam loses the opportunities to use his imagination to present the mythology differently. Although his love of foliage is quite clearly visible in the frames, they remain just that: lovely foliage. He even appeared to have squandered the chance to utilise one of the best actors in India. Make no mistake, I’m referring to Vikram. Every time Vikram comes on frame, the screen judders, shakes, frame cut in between long-shot and mid-frame as a result frustrating you instead of entertaining. Making shot-lengths into miniscule blips, blurring images and then refocusing them and juddering the frames, all of these to create an appearance of ‘racy presentation’ is the latest disease plaguing the Tamil film industry. It’s saddening to know that Mani Ratnam is the latest victim to this epidemic. He of course achieves the effect of ‘racy presentation’. The film races in breakneck speed in the first half, only without any aim. The aims and goals are made clearer only in the second half with the help of a clichéd flashback approach that smacks of Shankar.

When the flashback ends, everything becomes clearer about the story but you’re still a bit disappointed by it. After all, it’s a personal revenge drama and what you had imagined or rather portrayed by the director about Veera falls flat. The outlaw is a people’s man who struggles against police atrocities seems only a facade; in a way he is a sort of maoist leader with the backing of the rural/tribal community. He has virtually created a village inside the forest with women and children living with him. Even eunuchs are included for good measure. Their war against the police reminds you of naxalism and though their cause is not clearly visible, you believe something will emerge later on.

Nothing happens. And you have only yourself to blame: Mani Ratnam never intended to do anything more than Ramayana for Dummies so if you’ve expected something more, well, it is your expectation and is not his problem.

Unfortunately even the Dummies version pans out incohesively. Here, acutely feeling the absence of his scriptwriting companion Sujatha, Mani Ratnam makes elementary mistakes in the script which i. confuses you about the plot and ii. fails to engage. To cite a couple of examples: when the police officer Hemant is abducted by Veera’s men they set out to tonsure his head. Then, quite excitedly, they drag Veera’s younger brother and begin to shave his head too, with him being the willing participant. You don’t know why. Then Veera explains to Ragini that his brother had challenged them about going to the police camp and returning successfully. This incident could have come prior to them setting out to the camp thereby making it clearer to the audience about what was going on. Actually it might have even made Veera’s adventures to the camp suspenseful.

Another is when Veera’s brother-in-law is brought to him. Veera casually enquires about his sister, accuses him and then in a dramatic action, custs his brother-in-law’s arm. There was never any mention of his sister prior to this and you wonder what’s all this fuss about. You get the answer much later in the film in the form of a flashback, by the time you're long past caring.

Correcting all of the above would not have made Raavanan look like a typical Mani Ratnam film. But at least they would have made it look engaging. Sujatha would have ironed out these bumps to make it into a clean ride. He would perhaps even made the dialogues more effective, which are penned by Suhasini are nothing more than explanatory notes blurted out uninspiringly by the characters. Strangely even Mani Ratnam's typical one-liner humour is missing. Even his most serious films had those moments that shocked you and made you chuckle. Out of his comfort level milieu, absence of the able script-writer and concerned perhaps about the effectiveness of his own techniques in the contemporary audience Mani Ratnam delivers the most clichéd, least humouruos, most confusing and above all the noisiest film of his career.

Aayirathil Oruvan

Cast: Karthi, Reema Sen, Andrea, Parthipan Music: GV Prakash Direction: Selva Raghavan

Do you want to make an Indiana Jones, or the Lord of the Rings, or Timeline? Or you don’t want to brand what you intend to make and insist that it is going to be an altogether a new experience. Something the viewers had not seen before. Something like the effect Matrix or Terminator 2 had on the world audience and Nayagan had on the Tamil audience. It’s perfectly fine.
But have you made up your mind by the time the script had been completed?

From the output, it appears that director Selva Ragavan really couldn't make up his mind. Apparently he had gone into the production with an astonishingly ambitious goal but with only a draft version of the script.

Aayirathil Oruvan, stands for One in a Thousand, is a testimony of what will happen when lofty goals do not accompany sincerity in execution. It is a bewildering, incoherent film further made worse by the pre-release promotions. It appears like Selva Ragavan has not apprised his marketing team about the exact genre of the film because what was promised was an Indiana Jones, or King Solomon’s Mines in Tamil. It is important I clarify that my objection is not about the production values. I can understand that you can’t have the kind of budget and production resources available to Spielberg. There were some amazing fantasy adventure films in the 50s and 60s, made with low budget but worked superbly. A quick memory search revealed films such as Vedala Ulagam, Pathala Bairavi, and historic epics such as Vanjikottai Vaaliban, etc.

Apparently it turned out that Selva was not exactly aiming for the Indiana experience. Aayirathil Oruvan is mostly a serious film with rare humour enforced not through plot elements but through protagonist's abrasive ignorance. The director did indeed have an opportunity for genuine hilarity where he had placed the unusual protagonist in an unsuitable setting. The hero is rustic, illiterate and often utters sexist innuendos aimed at the two leading female characters. It is these remarks that at times make you laugh but mostly make you furious, and we’re not exactly sure whether Selva wanted you to laugh at them or not. Other than that, the story is stripped completely of any humour element that instantly disqualifies it to be compared with the action adventure genre. Anyone who has had a glimpse of Indiana Jones or King Solomon’s Mines would know that they serve primarily as a comedy and then as action adventures.

Every action has a reason and explanation in Indiana Jones movies. You know wherefrom Dr. Jones got the poisoned dates. You know why he goes to the Nazi excavation site and goes to a location that they have missed, or not explored further. You even know things beforehand that he himself wouldn’t know in advance. Those elements provide excitement. ‘I’m making this up as I go’ is what he says before jumping into the driver’s seat of huge armoured German truck and flinging the driver out on to the passing kerb. That was ridiculous and unbelievable and you didn’t care. You were hooting and laughing and waving your hands in excitement in a kind of exhilaration that you never knew before Dr Jones set foot in those dangerous jungles or those cunning Mesopotamian towns.

That was action adventure. Even its poor cousins such as Mummy had some fun element going on the screen. They were necessarily funny because the whole premise of the story is so preposterous that the filmmakers can’t afford to take them seriously. They would be laughing in the discussion rooms while drafting that outrageous script and obviously that had to come out in the cinema halls.

Ayirathil Oruvan lacks the fun element for which we have never known Selva for. His previous films have never been funny and if he can be credited for anything, that is for inventing ultra-serious, morbid, sex thriller genre. The protagonists usually have psychological flaws that the film was expected to explore but often falters by making their flaws heroic. In 7G Rainbow Colony, he is an obvious failure who must have been child abused. His passionate admiration for the girl is never explored sufficiently because the film treads on familiar Tamil love story plane and thereby makes him the right guy and the girl as the one who did not appreciate him. In Kadhal Kondein, the protagonist has clearly had a horrendous childhood, who later grew up in an orphanage that had not taught him social skills and treated him like a lost child even in his late teens. These people were someone who badly needed therapy but act like they badly need sex.
In Aayirathil Oruvan, if the protagonist had any bad childhood, it was not made as clear but sex plays a predominant role albeit as a subtext for the two male leads, the construction worker and the Chola king. Also, at least one of the women exploits her sexuality to get their way with both the male leads.

We have no explanation as to why Selva wanted to interject blatant sexual references in an action adventure except knowing full well that’s where his specialism lies. And this is really a compliment and not an indictment.

Unfortunately that’s the only aspect that comes out clearly in the film. Everything else is a confluence of confusing sequences, jumping explanations, unexplained narrations, lost plot elements and pathetically poor performances. A few questions may make this emotion clear.

• Where was the lost archaeologist walking in the initial scene when a shadow appeared to overwhelm him and why was he kept captive by the Cholas?


• When Cholas can manage to create seven supernatural barriers to prevent people discovering their hideout, why were they fighting an ancient bow-and-arrow war in the end?


• When the actual messenger was identified as per the prophecy, and the messenger suddenly has a kind of Brave Heart resurgence, why did it become a damp squib, meaning what was his role after he was spectacularly identified as the right messenger?


• What was the need for such an emotional farewell for the Chola king, except obviously to bring in references to Sri Lankan war with terrorism? How relevant is the reference anyway?


• When the daughter of archaeologist could speak the obscure tongue of a remote tribal in Viet-Nam, why couldn’t she speak the tongue of the Cholas, about whom she and her father had been researching for years and whose palm leaf manuscripts she had been decrypting for their adventurous journey?


• When the same girl was warning the battalion leader about snakes why was he making silly humour out of it when indeed he turned out to be a representative of Pandya dynasty which means he should very well know about the fortifications built by Cholas? In fact, as we decode from the film, the very purpose of them taking her in their journey was because she knew about Cholas and their cunning ways. So why spend money and effort in taking her along and then make fun of her warnings?

And some smaller questions too: Why was Reema Sen wearing sunglasses in a poorly lit meeting room? I can understand all the construction workers (including our hero) travelling by sea but why can’t the police officer and the daughter of the archaeologist fly down? Obviously because Selva wanted to pit the two ladies and the man together? Have some meet cute events? And re-enact some residual Titanic? Actually I shouldn’t complain about the journey by sea because it provided the only enjoyable scene in the film, the intercutting dance between the old Aayirathil Oruvan and the new one. It showed how simple, direct and charming the old one was. Seeing MGR dangling from the mast rope was so refreshing that I immediately wanted to stop the new titled and play the old. I don’t know if anyone in Tamil Nadu wonders why MGR became the CM. I don’t.