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Hi all

I have opened a website http://www.sridharsubramaniam.org. Henceforth, this site will serve as my blog, my place, the source for all my work. You will find this site better organised and more accessible.

As of today, the blog Reviews - Tamil Films remains closed.

- Sridhar

Nanban

Cast: Vijay, Srikanth, Jiiva, Satyaraj, Illeyana, Music: Harris Jeyaraj, Direction: Shankar

Nanban is a faithful, fame-by-frame remake of 3 Idiots. And that is its strength; because how else do you improve something that has already reached perfection? Shankar, skilful and abundantly talented, has also exhibited ample humility, a rare commodity in Indian film industry. In his vision for Nanban, Shankar has apparently had a simple requirement: appropriate casting. With just one exception – you know who – the film’s cast works perfectly. There’s much needed bonding between the three male leads. From the millimetre boy to the college principle you could not think of any other artist more suitable to play the roles already made immensely memorable by the 3 Idiots cast. Kudos to Shankar for having had the clarity to stick to the requirement. It is produced with such a clockwork precision that the duration is almost the same as the original. 3 Idiots – 170 mins, Nanban – 168 mins. How did Shankar manage this with one extra song plugged in is a wonder!

Talking about the clarity and humility, another example comes to mind. Vasoolraja MBBS, a remake of Munnabhai MBBS was a botched up, over-confident remake that, with a juvenile flourish, vandalised the Mona Lisa by drawing a moustache and a beard. Kamal Hasan’s haughty presence and indulgent sermons completely ruined the experience perfected by Sanjay Dutt’s simple, rustic and innocent charm. Sanjay Dutt is no Kamal Hasan, but Kamal fell miles short of the expectation because, obviously, he thought he could do much better job than Sanjay.

Vijay is no Amir Khan. Thankfully he knows it and he also knows his stock of limited emotions. Therefore he makes good use of them in attempting to portray this bubbly, goofy and quirky student. Understandably, Shankar’s presence too must have helped in toning and polishing the performance. But the very fact that we’re not able to imagine another Tamil actor for this role is, it must be admitted albeit grudgingly, a victory for Vijay.

Back to the director: Shankar can’t live without his five set piece songs. To include them in the films, he doesn’t offer the standard excuse that other directors give: that the audience like the songs and dances. Shankar includes them because he himself loves them: he enjoys planning, shooting and producing these songs. He must have felt a bit disappointed because the remake of 3 Idiots did not provide him the option for his set piece songs. So what does he do? He turns Zoobi Dhoobi song on its head to ‘Shankarise’ it and capture all his five songs in one. To make it clear to the viewer of his intentions, he captures each stanza from the shooting spot with the clap-board introducing the type of each song! That is the extent of originality the script allows and he makes the best use of it. Ingenious!

Eesan

Cast: Samuthirakani, Vaibhav, A L Alagappan, Abhinaya; Music: James Vasanthan; Direction: M Sasikumar 


Most of you would remember those 80s Hindi films. A classic example is Tezab, a film we all remember, thankfully for that infectiously peppy song. From the outset you knew the director didn't start the production with a bound script. In fact he had not so much of a plotline scribbled behind a bus ticket. Almost every second film in the 80s followed this trend.

The film starts obviously with the introduction of the hero, with a fight if he was an action hero or a song if he was a romantic hero. Then the heroine is introduced, either with a song or with an encounter with the hero. Then the villains are introduced, often with a thundering sound and also with some cruel act performed by him. Yes, the villain is always 'him'. Then the hero and heroine clash and then fall in love. Then hero's good associates come in to the picture, his bubbly, cute - but not as cute as the heroine- younger sister. Hero's friend, a good-looking - but not as good looking as the hero - bubbly lad who secretly romances the hero's sister and also provides the comic relief. After about 45 mins to one hour of this, the story begins. No, no, wait. the next part of the story begins.

This usually involves a heart-wrenching event by hero which the heroine witnesses and demands to know the background. The hero opens his heart about a flashback. Then we sit up, thinking well, here's the actual story. Here the hero has a sister and a brother-in-law who was murdered by a gang of robbers during their heist in the bank where the brother-in-law works. That day, the hero swore to avenge the murder.

Then in a twist of fate, he gets entangled in another controversy where, in an attempt to track down the baddies, and he is arrested. He makes a very passionate speech in the court about how a decent young man gets 'corrupted' by society. Well, the judge is not convinced and he is lodged in prison. There's a prison break and he escapes and suddenly he lands in harbour where he rescues his friend from the thugs and then his girlfriend is locked up to be forcibly married off to a rogue by her father and she is now rescued by the hero, who, in a twist of tale, doesn't accept her love because now he has been turned bad and wants nothing but to become rich like every bad guy who has become rich. He gives a lengthy speech about society which nurtures only dishonest people.

If these preceding paragraphs haven't made you grit your teeth and if you haven't already closed this window, Eesan is the film for you. It packs four plots which jump at you with the knack of horror film timing and the crassness of 80s Bollywood. Watching the film is not not just disappointing from the entertainment perspective but is disheartening because of the extent of faith invested in Sasikumar's first venture. Subramaniyapuram is a modern classic. It defied all the rules of the then prevailing trend. It introduced a new genre and reinvented Madurai and redefined period tales. Only Bharatiraaja and Shankar had debut as dashing as that. Unfortunately Sasikumar cannot repair the damage he has already wrought to his image. At some point in the future, he may have to explain why, after pulling off an Ashutosh Gowarikar, he ended up attempting a Subash Ghai.

Engeyum Eppothum

Engeyum Eppothum is a special film. It works in three levels, which is why it is special in a land where films often don't work even in one level. 

Firstly, it works as a vehicle for a powerful and urgent message. It is indeed simple: road safety and the follies of reckless driving. And, surprise, this is conveyed without any melodrama or propaganda. It is straight, in your face and running throughout the film. It is placed caringly as a silent, brooding undercurrent lest it end up as a documentary from department of transport.In the end, when it culminates, the message is hard hitting and moving. No pun intended.

Secondly, the film works as a social satire. Saravanan, the director, finds satirical and sardonic humour in events as common as visiting coffee shops or travelling in share autos. Here, he pits unlikely characters against these events to evoke the intended humour. The lower middle class girl's need to visit an upmarket coffee shop, the innonce of a rustic boy working in a town and his brush with upmarket living. In a developed world, the rich don't need to interact with the middle class because the gap is so wide and neither could or would want to bridge. In India, although the bridge is slowly widening, the line is still thin and still there are cross-overs and such encounters are tragic if not hilarious. Artists and filmmakers have often attempted to identify this encounters, of poor witnessing the rich life or social rural aping the upmarket town. Often these encounters ended up as scornful or scathing leftist attack. In EE, Saravanan doesn't take a moral stand. In fact we don't even know his stand. He stops short of placing his characters in such unlikely events and watching them perform. It's like the director has as much fun watching them fumble as we do. 

Thirdly, despite the grim nature of the message, the film is hugely entertaining. It's so much fun that it is possible to ignore the message. Saravanan, being acutely aware of this, ensures that the message is not lost in all that rollicking we witness. Shakespeare would call this comedy whereas the DVD rental libraries would stack this film in the comedy section. 

A friend who watched the film with me asked, 'Why should we care only for the characters and not for others in the film?' The question relates to the accident in the film where the lead characters were part of the other passengers, some we're introduced to but most remain unknown. The question is a valid one: why do we wish that the lead characters remain safe but don't care for others who die in the accident? Isn't it cruel to watch with impunity the death of several passengers whilst caring eagerly for the well-being of only four (or five) people? What kind of message is it if the filmmaker makes us insensitive to the sufferings of unknown passengers and tries to convey the urgent message of road safety and reckless driving? Actually he doesn't. The message is as much about the individual suffering as it is about the collective damage it wrecks. The accident scene is one of the most spectacularly shot action sequences in the recent times. It is not shot for the mere spectacle because you aren't looking at the effects, which are awesome by the way, but you're actually glued to the details. The word 'accident' is brought completely alive, with flesh and blood. Yes, literally flesh and blood and smoke and fumes and dust and shock and awe and death. You feel the bending rusted steel beams and engulfing dust. You witness an accident from inside the bus and you know what it does to people. How ruthless it is, how it not just kills or injures but breaks hearts, snatches away people's dreams, breaks apart lovers, destroys hopes, irrevocably decimates life. All because someone was honking madly, someone forgot to check breaks, someone was drunk, someone didn't watch the speedometer. Or someone simply didn't care.

Talking about caring, although we do care for all the passengers, we care more for the main ones. And it is key to the ending. 

The Song and its Singer

'Kolaveri' is an incredibly joyous song. It oozes a sort of reckless energy that has now come to represent the Indian youth of the noughties. It may not be the original idea. The cheeky practice of singing Tamil songs in English is a favourite pass time of Chennaites for a long time. We used sing like this:

Whattu Muni amma your eyes full of mascara,

who kept the mascara it's me kept the mascara

you go in the frontu and come in the backu.

...

Taking bath in kuttralamu heat-u won't subsidu x 2

Husbandu body heatu kannamma

you come here-u jilujilukking ponnamma

And here's another sample:

Come... Come... Springu...

Fragrance giving smellu,

Street full of festival

Lights throwing festival

Come with me singing the joooysu...

And so on. Now try and guess the second song if you can!*

What Dhanush has done is to capitalise this Chennai underground and made it mainstream. In this way, it's something like what Nirvana did. Grunge was looked down upon until Nirvana came and made this genre mainstream! The first ever review of a band of this genre read, 'Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure s**t!' The word 'grunge' actually means grime and dirt. Today, listening to Nirvana is considered as a mark of refined music taste! As for 'kolaveri', the lyrics may not fit Javed Akhtar's Lucknowi sensibilities but they have the quality of pure garage jamming. Many Grateful Dead's greatest songs are nothing but free form jamming and psychedelic live sessions which are actually more popular than their orchestrated studio albums. Some of these live sessions don't have any clear lyrics, leave alone meaningful ones. At least 'Kolaveri' has a cohesive theme and words. Well, I believe Dhanush wasn't on heroine like the Dead were but that's another matter!

On its own merit, 'kolaveri' has captured the imagination of the entire nation and it would not have happened if it didn't have any deeper resonance. Name any one song that you can call utterly dull and 'non-creative' that has become such a rage!

Dhanush has proven his creative musical abilities not just with 'Kolaveri' but with the two songs from 'Mayakkam Enna' as well. Written and sung by him agian, 'Oda Oda' and 'Kadhal En Kadhal' clearly declare a 'Dhanush sound' which is unique and original. His songs, like his dances, are delivered with reckless creative abandon. If he had been born in Seattle and if he was on crack, he would have been called Kurt Cobain!

Now, onto his acting abilities: he is one of the finest actors to emerge from this generation. His lack of 'mass-hero' image has actually helped him to some extent but then that's not the only saving factor. From Thulluvatho Ilamai days he has consistently demonstrated his energetic and absorbed performances. He made us sympathise with him in Thulluvatho Ilamai, terrified us in Kadhal Kondein and made us laugh out loud in Thiruda Thirudi. After some deviation, where he burnt his fingers trying to be 'Vijay', he returned to his forte with Pollathavan. Watch the scene where he meets the villain in the hospital after his father is attacked – pause the scene and stare at his eyes. That's one of the most powerful performances in the recent times.

Aadukalam is an honest, albeit misplaced, adventure for Vetrimaaran but Dhanush lapped up the opportunity completely to immerse into the skin of the character. From the Madurai accent to his obeisance to Pettaikkaran to his rustic anger vent on his mother and girlfriend, Dhanush demonstrated something we have not seen for a long time in Tamil cinema. Not Vikram's one-dimensional show in Pithamagan, not Priyanka Chopra's maudlin act in Fashion, but if anyone truly deserves the national award in the recent years, it is him. He does not flaunt six-pack like Suriya, does not bash up baddies like Vijay. Finally, he does not have a sophisticated look that would please the Gautam Menon fans. And thank god for that.

*The second song is 'Vaa Vaa Vasanthame' from Puthukkavithai. Thanks to Barnabas Chandran for the Tanglish songs.

Velayudham

Cast: Vijay, Genelia D'Souza, Hansika Motvani, Santhanam; Music: Vijay Antony; Direction: M Raja


I have no issues with the so-called 'commercial mass-entertainers'. I enjoyed Baasha, Saamy, with some reservations, Singam, and of course Sivaji. I could never fully enjoy any Vijay's films and they have only partly to do with the actor. That said, my special criticism on Velayudham completely absolves Vijay of any responsibilities and places the blame squarely on Raja, the director.

Velayudham is a violent film. In the Hollywood, they would have given it an 'R' rating. In the video stores, it would have been stacked alongside Saw, Hostel and Evil Dead. It is violent not just on physical but psychological level too. You see a man being sliced into two vertically, a sword being sent through one's head through his mouth, a man being tortured by being suspended on a hook and a knife being chucked onto his thighs, supposedly to make him spill some information. The last time I saw a similar scene was in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

On a psychological level, here's a sample. In the film, women are abducted and forcibly entered into prostitution. A blind girl is 'mistakenly' taken into this cartel. Since she won't be of any use in the business, the head of this cartel, an ugly rogue, decides to keep and use her. Of course there's our hero, the saviour, who intervenes and beats him to pulp. A similar scene occurs in Bala's Naan Kadavul. However, Bala treated it with enormous sensitivity, and despite the scene being far more violent you cared for the situation. Well, you can't watch the scene satisfactorily. You cringe and you even get angry at Bala. In Velayudham, the scene is presented with the voyeuristic glee, not to mention the utmost sensitivity. The despicability of the situation is not conveyed but there's a almost a sadistic pleasure derived from the scene. Even when the saviour, the hero, appears on the scene, he doesn't jump onto the tormentor instantly. He stands atop the loft beam and poses for a while, as if waiting for the bad guy to get into an appropriate 'position'. The word 'Disgusting' is not appropriate for a film critic to use but there's no other suitable word.

Why is it that Bala can get away with that kind of violence but Raja can't. Simple answer: Parents don't take their children to cinema to watch Bala films. Only adults watch his films and even those who do know very well what they can expect. I know people who, despite their respect for Bala, decided not to watch it because it was 'too gory'. You don't have such pre-warning for Velayudham because it's supposed to be a 'mass family entertainer' and when scenes like this come up, you don't know how to process it. I don't know what was Velayudham's certification but if it was 'U', then we need an urgent and serious overhauling of our censor board. And don't even get me started on the sexual innuendos.

Aside from this, there is very little to write about the film or plenty to write about - depending on which angle you approach. The screenplay conveniently makes sure that the 'hero' is there in every important situation. This is called being in the right place at the right time. Not just during the initial scenes where 'convenient' co-incidents enable him to discover and remove the bombs planted by the terrorists but even in the later part of the movie where he consciously becomes the 'saviour'. He is there where the director wants him to be and he is seen by the characters who need to see him. This is not just lazy filmmaking but a slothful filmmaking.

And, finally, well, this has been my problem with almost every commercial entertainer in Tamil. All problems that the hero faces are solved simply by fighting. In the more intelligent part of the world, superheroes solve their problems by ingenious quick-thinking, in addition to muscle power. Any difficult situation - any number of bad guys whatever may be their abilities - disappears as soon as Velayudham is there. We don't need to worry any further because he is there. Even in the end when he is humbled by the wicked villain, we 'know' that he will survive and come back to beat up all of them as he did before. As if that amount of violence wasn't sufficient, Velayudham even ends up giving a lengthy speech in the end chiding the public and admonishing the system. That, in my view, was the biggest assault on our senses from Raja.

The morning after watching the film, when we told one of our relatives that we stayed awake till early hours to finish watching Velayudham, he was incredulous. 'Why?' he asked. 'It was a sadomasochistic exercise,' I said.

Ezham Arivu

Cast: Surya, Shruti Hassan, Johnny Tri Nguyen Music: Harris Jeyaraj, Direction: A R Murugadoss

Here’s the quiz question: what is the most popular and influential Tamil film? At least in the last two decades? From which several derivatives were born, multiple inspirations were wrought, numerous variations spawn, the movie that still continues to impress and inspire hoards of new, upcoming and ambitious Tamil filmmakers. One clue: It’s an English film.

The character Dong Lee (Johhny Tri Nguyen)’s body language, character arc and development are unmistakably that of T-1000 liquid metal robot of The Terminator. Of course it has helped Murugadoss that even the motivation for this character is quite similar: sent on a mission to kill a girl who was bent on a scientific research that threatened to derail the bad guys’ operation. Instead of John Connor, the potential victim here is a twentysomething Tamil girl of genetic engineering background. The mention of ‘Tamil’ is important to the story, and also the performance of the actress.

Ezham Arivu has a clever premise from Murugadoss and an impressive effort by Suria. It starts off with a self-assured foundation, but never quite manages to elevate itself from the initial promise. Mind you, this criticism is not about the commercial compulsions faced by all the Indian directors. It’s not the enforced song set-pieces, not the romance angle necessitated by the lead characters or the mandatory comic side-kick and the love-failure song. Well, all these are there in Ezham Arivu and all these are jarring enough to upset your DNA structure. Still those are not the ones we would be apt to complain about because Murugadoss never makes any pretence of these aspects and, except not properly integrating these elements into the script, he hasn’t done any injustice. For that matter no director in the living memory has managed to integrate them as skilfully as Shankar did, so it would be futile to even make a mention of these issues.

There are two problems that actually present this dilemma. First is with resolution of the plot-tangles established in the first half. Within ten minutes into the second half, the viewer was able to resolve all of them themselves thereby making the entire second-half redundant. The facade of sci-fi elements notwithstanding, the movie’s final resolution is actually achieved by hand to hand combat and not with any scientific quick thinking. (Compare this with Endhiran where the final resolution, with all those noisy spectacles aside, was actually a clever geeky gesture by the scientist. Compare this even with Mangatha where the final revelation was pleasantly shocking.) It would be difficult to discuss the gaping holes of the story without revealing the spoilers, although many of them would be easily deductible to a seasoned and discerning viewer. It appeared like they needed more meetings during the screenplay stage. The classic mistake made by all our filmmakers. They think that a clever idea and a saleable star is enough to prop the entire movie.

The second is the propaganda element in the film. It is understandable that there’s a tinge of Tamil pride in the legend of Bodhi Dharma. But where is the Tamil victimhood in the story? Is the villain aiming to kill the scientist girl because she is a Tamil? Would he have spared her if she was a Telugu or a Bengali? And why link it with the Sri Lankan conflict? And why there’s such a lengthy lecture in the end? Aren’t Tamils prouder than any of our neighbours? Can any other race in India compete with our vanity? And for all that drivel on linguistic pride, why is Shruti Hassan talking in such an accented Tamil?

Mangatha

Cast: Ajith Kumar, Arjun, Prem Gi Amaran, Trisha Music: Yuvan Shankar Raaja Direction: Venkat Prabu

‘Money, Money, Money, Money, Money,’ groans Ajith, as if it’s a burden. In Mangatha, money does indeed get burdensome. Probably the first full-fledged heist film in Tamil, the problem of the robbers here is not how to steal the money but how to safeguard it from being stolen further. Five hundred crores of it stashed away in an old warehouse in Mumbai should be a cause for celebration, which it does become, only briefly, because the celebration itself quickly turns nasty. On the hindsight, the robbers would not have allowed even that minor celebration.

Mangatha is a chess game on steroids. If you’ll excuse the noisy re-recording and ‘inspired’ theme music, it is an excellent example of how Tamil films have come of age. If Endhiran tested the contours of technology, Mangatha evolved in the high-octane action thrillers of The Italian Job variety. We haven’t seen such true action thrillers in Tamil that didn’t egregiously glorified the ‘hero’ character. Prabu even transcends that limitation by making Ajith the no-grey baddie. Well, a lot of grey baddie, if you can get the pun. There is no juvenile twist in the end to show that Ajith is after all an Assistant Commissioner playing a baddie ‘intentionally’ to nab the gangsters or, in another extreme, that he had turned a bad guy because of a long, excruciating flashback. In Mangatha he is a bad guy because, well, he is simply bad. What a refreshing change that was!

The milieu is Venkat Prabu’s forte of ensemble cast. Plenty of characters get introduced, plenty of dialogues are exchanged, and several plans are unveiled and myriad schemes drawn up. You also get Prabu’s usual single entendre’s on sex and alcohol; his liberal, ardent allusions to other Tamil films and his obsessive tribute to Rajinikanth, all of them are present in their usual dosage. On top of that a highly complex heist, not the very robbing of it because, as mentioned, it all gets over in less than five minutes and seems too good to be true. As you begin to show some signs of weariness, the actual game begins.

We don’t know who has got what cards up their sleeve and we are constantly at an edge to figure out who is going to outsmart whom. Although instinctively we know that in the end Ajith would outsmart all the other conmen, we still don’t know how. If you don’t already know the ending, you would not know until the very end, in which Venkat Prabu truly pulls off a coup d’état. He plays a clever, cheeky game where something is hidden, something is revealed and even the ones with the right cards end up losing. True to the title!

Adukalam

Cast: Dhanush, Tapsee, Va Se Jeyabalan Music: GV Prakash, Direction: Vetrimaaran

It's not very often you get into a movie with hall with enormous anxiousness mixed with immense hope. It's rarely for the actor but always for the director; you invest so much faith in the director and when he turns around, slips under your grip and tells you, with a sombre face that you dread, that he is not in that league, it hurts.

Adukalam misses so many milestones that it requires heavy dose of suspension of disbelief to continue to respond to Vetrimaaran's second outing. Why, and why Vetrimaaran could not deliver another Pollathavan is a nagging question that you'll never find answer to. Perhaps only speculate about, at your own peril.

Having said all those nasty things, Adukalam indeed does have a fresh story of Shakespearan proportion - a rural Othello with serious complexities. It has powerhouse performances, especially from Dhanush, and a very sincere effort from Vetrimaaran. The mileu too is very earthy.

What failed me was the kitch of presentation. A modern City of Gods type introduction to a film that's rural in its core jarred hard. Such a stylish introduction may be fit for an Italian Job type of action thriller but Adukalam? I can understand that the intro was intended to ease up the complexity of the story and the characters, but it hurries impatiently briefing us about all the important characters and the problems of cock fighting and then the style suddenly disappears and we are brought to a small town in the realism of Bharatiraaja. This jarring, 'switching on the tube light in the middle of the night' kind of irritation notwithstanding GV Prakash blares as much of his intruments and Macintosh loops that he could muster into your ears that your head explodes. I was so enraged I wanted to knock off the fuse from his studio.

The film starts with a prologue to cock-fighting by a narrator that sounds as sincere as a yesteryear's Films Division newsreel and then the narrator suddenly disappears. Who is this narrator, is he one of the characters or is he an omniscient observer? Where did he disappear after the film has started? After the abrupt disappearance of the omnicient director into the chaos of the scenes that unfolded, the group rivalry about cockfighting and the love interest of the protagonist are played in a tearing hurry. Are we witnessing the invasion of editing software into the domain of the director? Why do filmmakers after filmmakers believe in the Final Cut Pro software more than their own script?

Whilst the rural part of the story is played with honesty, Vetrimaaran's portrayal of Anglo-Indian community is less than convincing, which is only made worse by a plasticised acting by Tapsee.

As I watched with anguish the slipping away of the movie, with some occasional brilliance once in a while, I couldn't help wonder what could have made my experience better. A more restrained approach from GV Prakash? A more satisfying ending? A better performing heroine? Relaxed editing?

Neverthelees, Vetrimaaran still holds the promise. Despite the gloomy portrayal of the previous paragraphs, Adukalam is still highly watchable and is more sincere than any other contemporary excrement downloaded by the Tamil cinema as a whole. Remember, a disappointed fan tends to be more critical than the impassioned critique.

What's difficult to understand was what compelled or restrained Vetrimaaran. Will his next venture repay the promise vested in him by his aredent fans like myself? Or will he go down the path of other directors with failed promises such as Cheran, Gautam Menon, etc.?

Talking about Gautam Menon, I heard his Nadunisi Naaygal has no songs. That's not something new but it doesn't have any background music either. Thinking about it, I couldn't help wonder how much better Adukalam would have been without any background music.

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.

Peraanmai

Cast: Jayam Ravi, Urvasi, Ponvannan, Saranya, Vadivel Music: Vidyasaagar, Director: S P Jananathan

What do you need in order to make a great film, well, let's just say a good film? A novel, interesting story, good performances, and good intentions from the director? Even a 'message to the society' for a good measure? Peraanmai has many of these, above all a well-intentioned director genuinely wanting to make good cinema. We all feel that it should have been sufficient and the output would be terrific.

Alas, that has been proven dreadfully insufficient with this film which utterly fails to work in almost all departments. As you wearily watch the film slip away, for once you long for directors like Hari or Murugadoss or Dharani. They would have pepped up this story enormously, given it the edge it so desperately lacks. Movies such as this rub in the face of the people who question the skills and capabilities of the directors who are dedicated to churning out mainstream mass entertainers. These films make you acknowledge that those are indeed talented directors. They churn out formula fares, but they churn them out well. Such formula-based mass-entertainers rely on tight-scripts, engaging plot narration, cohesive performances and racy editing. Where does Peraanmai stand in this scheme?

In terms of genre, it hovers somewhere between the eighties communist propaganda films to 60s MGR's idealistic series. Director Jananathan doesn't believe in subtleties when it comes to exhibiting his ideologies. On the contrary, he literally rubs it in your face so hard that often it churns out unintended laughter. Take a scene where the protagonist and the five girls set up a tent and spend the night in the middle of the forest. They light up camp fire and he settles with a book in front of the tent to guard them. What was his camping read? Das Kapital. Even for an ardent leftist, I can recommend a lot of interesting books to carry for your forest expedition.

Those eighties communist films had a social purpose. Be it by Balachander or Sridhar Rajan they were sincere in their anger and also the socio-economic conditions of society then justified such anger. Jananthan's protagonist is merely a two-dimentional cardboard character feebly reflecting the director's personal leanings that are neither justified by the plot compulsions nor by the social conditions. Therefore the film neither works as an angry young man's tale nor as a mass-entertainer. And let's get this very clear: There's still social need for angry man's tales but today, they require far more intellectual depth than they did in the eighties. Merely flaunting a book won't just do, except that you'll be bored to death in the forest.

Pasanga

Director: Pandiraj
Music: James Vasanthan
Cast: Kishore, Sri Ram, Pandian, Tharani

Why don’t movies like Pasanga get grand opening or pre-release hype that movies like Aadhavan or Kandasamy get? Why do we rush to the theatre or the DVD shop the moment these 'blockbusters' are released even though we are inherently doubtful about how good these would be? On the other hand, even though we see movies like Pasanga stacked at DVD shelves for quite a while, we hesitate to pick it up until one of our friends strongly recommends it?

We will never know the answers to these questions. We wouldn't need to either because movies like Pasanga will never get such pre-release hype. This is not just Tamil Nadu but is an international phenomenon. Movies like Gran Tornio will never get the openings commanded by Harry Potter or Spider Man. We will often rush to reserve the first day tickets for Harry Potter and end up renting out DVDs of Gran Torino. These are inevitable. What should be heart-warming is that movies like Gran Torino get made and reviewed favourably.

Watching Pasanga – other than the filmic experience it provides – was a similar heart-warming experience because the Tamil Industry – despite rotten manure like Kandasamy raking in crores – allows such movies to be made. The Tamil audience should be thankful to Balu Mahendra not just for the kinds of films he made but for spawning an institution from which directors after directors who are out to transform Tamil Cinema are emerging. Bala, Vetrimaaran, Ameer, Ram, Sasikumar, etc. And these directors are carrying the torch further and seems to be really in a hurry to topple trends. Encouraged perhaps by Sasikumar, Pandiraj, Cheran’s disciple has dared to venture into something unheard of in the Tamil industry: A children’s film.

Pasanga attempts brave storytelling and uses parodied humour as the form of entertainment, a typical Bala instrument. The story revolves around a bunch of kids and their joy, struggle, ordeal and triumphs. There are of course characters who are adults and their life obviously is affected by what is happening to the children in the movie. The characters are real, grounded and well realised. But many situations are melodramatic. This combination of pitting real characters against the melodrama, a technique invented by Barathiraja, is actively employed here to create some entertaining moments. A tad clichéd climax brings on the necessary conclusion to complete the experience. The charged music with constant reference to 'mass-entertainer' elements add to the required entertainment. The result is a powerful parody, high comedy and, well, in a nutshell the Bala cinema.

Another delightful aspect was that Pasanga knowingly or not, satirises all the so-called 'mass masala' entertainers. Especially in the first twenty minutes, the film seriously parodies the mass hero phenomenon that is at once hilarious and another level humiliating.

Pasanga works as a children's film at one level, filling in the long overdue gap in Indian cinema. Children’s films in India often end up being either tacky or preachy. Pasanga effectively overcomes that barrier. It is a clean, fun-filled, entertaining children's film on the lines of Children of Heaven or even the Apu Trilogy. Many ardent Satyajit Ray fans are going to be terribly angry at this comparison but damn them. They don't know the harsh realities of the Tamil film industry.

And finally, a very interesting feature in the film is the progress of the story through the four seasons. The story starts during April, summer, and also the start of the academic year and progresses through monsoon, autumn, and winter and till the end of the academic year. Mise-en-scene is a cinematic technique that refers to using non-actor elements such as lighting, environment, settings, and objects to aid storytelling. Mise-en-scene, pronounced as 'miss-en-sen' is the feature almost completely missing in our mainstream mass entertainers. In Pasanga, the seasons are used effectively to aid storytelling just like how the eighties Madurai was used in Subramaniapuram.

Pasanga is interesting, hilarious, and one of the important films of the year. Director Pandiraj, just like every member of Balu Mahendra institution, is the one to watch out for. They won't need a Diwali opening. Regardless of how much we are going to hesitate picking their movies up from DVD shelves, they are going to continue to make films like Pasanga and Subramaniapuram. And there are going to be friends nudging you in Facebook to watch those movies.

That’s good enough.

Aadhavan

Director: K S Ravikumar
Music: Harris Jeyaraj
Cast: Suriya, Nayanthara, Murali, Vadivelu, Sayaji Shinde

It would be apt to start on the thread left in the previous review: Comedy Tracks. What would we do without them? And what our so called Mass Masala Entertainers would do if there was legislation restricting these tracks?

There are films with comedy tracks running as separate strands unlinked to the main story. Often times the main protagonists won’t even know that there’s a comedian interrupting their story. This does not take much effort from the director or screenwriter’s point of view. They can simply write a main script without any other consideration and later insert the comedy relief wherever necessary. There were times when a separate writer is commissioned to pen the comedy tracks. Perhaps this is still being practiced.

The other, perhaps much harder, technique is to try to blend comedy within the main narration. In here, the protagonist knows the comedian or the protagonist themselves work with the designated comedian to evoke laughter in the movie halls. This is considered harder work because the main narration is usually the serious one and blending jokes within would be risky. It requires experienced directors to employ this.

K S Ravikumar certainly is one of the highly experienced and it is a known fact that comedy comes naturally to him. It is quite evident in Aadhavan that has probably one of the best utilised roles for Vadivelu. Thanks to his presence, you almost fail to notice that there is something serious going on in the main story. Even if you did notice, you sincerely hope it turns out comical to enable Vadivelu or other assigned comedians in the film to poke fun at it. Surely enough there are plenty of such opportunities.

Funnily, there are even some unintended moments of laughter in the narration. When the ambitious but botched up job of Suriya as a child is realised, when Saroja Devi in her squeaky voice delivers some melodramatic lines in feigned sincerity, or when the father cries out to his son from within a car suspended in the air by a crane. The serious attempts turn into funny moments.

Neither the director or the producer of the film would be really bothered about how the audience respond to these scenes as long as some form of entertainment is realised in the halls. The audience though won’t be complaining about Suriya or K S Ravikumar. They are, however, going to praise Vadivelu on his ability to evoke laughter by merely standing in the frame. Why do we bother that we don’t care much about the characters and the consequences? In an ironic sense, the rules of Mass Masala Entertainer dictates that the audience shouldn’t be ‘disturbed’ much emotionally and only ‘entertained’. This requirement is achieved in ample quantities in Aadhavan. So why bother?

And finally, with a huge sigh of relief, may god bless the person who invented comedy tracks!

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.’