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.