Kandasamy

Director: Susi Ganesan
Music: Devi Sri Prasad
Cast: Vikram, Shriya, Prabhu, Vadivel, Ashish Vidyarthi

Whatever happened to characterisation? Whatever happened to the love of cinema and plain simple storytelling? More than anything else, whatever happened to the eyesight of the Tamil audience? Just when we thought that the disorienting, music video editing trend is not, well, a trend but just a fad, here comes another film that has more than three hours of material edited with fast, interlaced frames, and within those frames, colours change, images blur, get washed out as a method of storytelling. Kandasamy follows the latest Tamil film making practice of conveying very little through characterisation, acting, or mis-en-scene. When a character is shocked, the frame is washed off colour for a couple of seconds. A character duped would have the frame shaken. Almost every department of storytelling is limited not by the creative capabilities of the director but by the features available in the latest version of Final Cut Pro, the de facto editing software.

The result is a severe headache, temporary loss of vision, and the terrible loss of story thread, if such a thing was available. So we wondered how the land acquisition problem was sorted out so quickly by a mere CBI audit, how the biggest businessman was nailed down before the last reel in such a tearing hurry and whatever happened to the other businessman with a paralytic attack? Please remember that this reaction is the result of a DVD view where the movie was amply paused, multiple breaks taken, songs forwarded, a few snippets rewound and watched again for clarity. Heart shudders at the thought of the effect one would have by watching it on the big screen; without the remote control.

Also, various other details also found missing or lost in the myriad of Final Cut Pro project files. Details such as where does the protagonist live? Where is his family? What are the businesses of the two main antagonists and how do they know each other? The director probably felt that these were absolutely unnecessary to the main story. He was probably right. Perhaps these details were unnecessary. Perhaps the movie itself was unnecessary. And so was this review.

This review does not even intend to go into the analysis of the story, the banality of its social concern, the poverty pornography it sets out to cash in, the hangover of Shankar, the hangover that was associated with a splitting, debilitating headache, and the message it seems to espouse, which we missed because again, it apparently got lost in the hard drive among the millions of edited frames.

And finally, whoever invented the feature called comedy track, thank god for that person. What a relief they were in this film.

P.S:
Here’s a sincere request to Chief Minister Karunanidhi. ‘Sir, ever since you have taken charge, you have been actively involved in the affairs of the film industry, more so than of any other industry in the state. You have passed various bills in the interest of the perceived welfare of the public, such as taxing the films with non-Tamil names. Here's another bill you can pass, this time in the real interest: Ban the usage of editing software from Tamil films, and with immediate effect, and order all the filmmakers to return to linear, manual editing. Thank you in advance. Yours faithfully, The Reviewer.’