Movie Review – Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu

A rock solid premise, which almost ticks all the boxes

I was so so skeptical about watching the movie in spite of repeated good reviews and recommendations from friends. The first look poster of Simbu leaning on a stick reminded me of Dobby and it was such a caricature of someone doing “sacrifice” for a movie. Simbu, off all especially, doing that accentuated the feel. Thankfully I watched it in TV and that too break free. Never have I seen a break free Tamil movie before. May be all the good things happened together and the experience was phenomenal, at least, almost.

‘Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu’ screams novel-ism right from the word go. The first act especially would make any viewer who had read Jeyamohan to imagine the film in print form and think how lovely he’d have written it in the novel. The first scene where the Muthuveeran a.k.a Muthu (Silambarasan) comes out with thorns sewn upon his body could have been more elaborate and shot better but still had a great rustic feel to it, which people often complain that Gautham doesn’t do. Though the claims are stupid and a director need not break his urban style of filmmaking just to prove a point. What i was thought wouldn’t be organic, looked organic. May be thanks to Jeyamohan.

Throughout the film, the best aspect was the heroism and how subtly it was done. It starts with the dialogue of Muthu saying that he’d burn the whole forest. There isn’t any postmortem scene after it to glorify that sentence and that’s mature filmmaking. Something you expect only in a Mani Ratnam movie. Also the dialogues were lit, with Nellai Tamil and had Jeyamohan touch to it, loved the first one especially where the postman comments, “Mullukae mul veli potu velama seiratha intha oorla than vae pakaen” (Only here will you find thorn-farming done behind a thorn-fence) could it more poetic than this. Beautiful thing there was, it doesn’t get lost even in the translation.

Continuing with the first act, how Muthu’s mother Latchumi (Raadhika Sarathkumar) immediately recognizes the threat that Muthu would be and leaves him to some acquaintance of her was the best part of the whole movie. It could stand along with the first act of ‘Dharma Durai’ How lovely was that part written, leaving us in a state of confusion as to what their relationship would be. And that was complimented well in the direction department by closing the door when Esakki (R Richard James Peter) asks about the story to Muthu in the Parotta stall.

The transformation from the village story to urban story was neatly made. There was no unnecessary, over the top slow Mo sequence. Everything happened organically and Simbu too does a decent job. The plot was the main thing which keeps us hooked and there were scenes after scenes of brilliant dialogues. Kaarji’s (Sara) dialogue at gun point where he tells about why he still believes Simbu wouldn’t kill him, Paavai (Siddhi Idnani) telling about how she was in that place for the last fifteen years were all superbly written. Only a writer can write this. Scenes like those proves how seamlessly the collaboration would have been. How organically each of them (Jeyamohan majorly) would have pitched in.

The track between Kutty Bhai and Sridharan was splendidly written, made and acted. Kutty Bhai was spitting venom in each and every scene. The scene where he says, “vandhu un kai vanatha kaatu” gave me chills. Gautham does really well in those psychotic sex thrillers. It’s a shame that Nadunisi Naaygal flopped, he’d have explored the genre superbly in the first half. May be audience were not ready to accept it in a Tamil film as it was done unapologetically.

Even though the role of Paavai was miniscule and felt unnecessary. It had to be there for the plot twist. Rawther (Jaffer Sadiq) who was responsible for that plot twist, felt more unnecessary than the actress. He was more irritating than the heroine. Probably the only irritating character of the whole movie.

Even though Simbu had done a decent job, I wouldn’t rate is as great because, he just did bare minimum, rest all was taken care by script. Ideally this should have been a film with someone like Teejay, Kathir or Akhil who acted in Kalloori as lead. Akhil in fact would have been a perfect choice. The film would have felt even more believable. But the other side actors were mostly brilliant, especially Kutty Bhai (Siddique) and Sridharan (Neeraj Madhav). But if there was one standout actor, who was above it, it was Raadhika, seriously, what an actor.

Having said everything, why, really why do you want to end the film like that. I thought that Simbu with a beard was a marketing gimmick and a self-parody done superbly. I was getting reviews that the climax was bad. When Simbu takes a walk down the stairs after keeping the wrapped up gun up there, I was unwrapping mine and all gearing up for defending the climax but only after that I understood the pain of audience. It’s a film which should have been left at that point and to make it part two feels pointless. I’m assuming it would be ultra-flop. Let’s see whether I’d be proved wrong.

P.S: Delhi Ganesh as Iyer for such a short scene was a tribute to Nayakan?

Movie Review – Paava Kadhaigal

A hard-hitting anthology which relies on actors for creating the impact

It’s quite clear from the title as to what to expect from an anthology like ‘Paava Kadhaigal’. Except for Vignesh Sivan, the other directors have some affinity towards violence. Vetrimaran, quite obviously, Sudha, in may be a classical manner and Gautam, in a stylish way. With Gautam stating that he’s wanting to do an anthology with a number of directors, this looked like the right time and things seem to have worked for them. The OTT movies are still in a rebellious phase and directors want to make movies which they can’t showcase in theatres. May be when it settles and directors think about giving the best product outside the rebellious nature, it may grow up to be better. No complaints against violence, in fact I’m a fan of it, but to showcase something just because it looks to be an easier forum is not agreeable.

• 

Thangam

The opening animation was quite interesting, showing the way of life of women. I thought it’s specific to ‘Thangam’ but it gets repeated for all the shorts. I felt it’d be one such story initially but it turned out to be quite a different one. Sathaar (Kalidas Jayaram) steals the show right from scene one. In fact, the first shot of him is the best shot of entire movie. Throughout the first film, he easily brings a certain warmth in his character. I only wished that his part existed longer. Shanthnu Bhagyaraj too looks like a better actor now, there is some positive change in him which is happy to see. Otherwise, it’s a mundane love story which was made in a hard-hitting way. Wish it dealt with the emotions of Sathaar rather than societal impact. So, in the end it was predictable and Sathaar dying was unacceptable. Just because you use a cuss word it doesn’t become a great ending.

Love Panna Uttranum

Probably the only director who looked out of place in the list. Not a big fan of him and his style of humor but this short was a relief from others. Anjali looked ravishing. I’m already a big fan of her but recently, after watching Peranbu, my fondness for her grew further. It’s the same here too. She was prolific and insanely hot too. It was nice to see an actress from south ready to take up bold roles. A type of role reserved only for the Apte’s and Koechlin’s. Anyways Koechlin was also there but she was as clueless in the film as how she was in Aadhilakshmi’s (Anjali) house. Again, it’s the sidekick Jaffer Sadiq who scores better than others. The climax pun was too cheesy to digest, except for Kalki’s swear. May be a lorry crashing them and Jaffer smiling would have been a more impactful end shot.

Vaanmagal

Probably the weakest story of all. Gautam as an actor is nice but not in his own film where he has to be the lead. He couldn’t handle such a powerful role. Simran, who reminded of ‘Vaaranam Aayiram’ in her get up, too, couldn’t provide much impact with her role because the writing was such. The dialogues were corny and filmmaking was literal. There is nothing much actors could do. The story too was a regulation one. When Simran was getting ready for the trailer shot with that dialogue about ‘women’s pride’, I hated the film for such negativity but when it doesn’t happen, I hated it even more. More so because it was added in trailer to make an impact. That’s just cheap way of making film. At least the other directors should have insisted and not included the scene just for shock value.

Oor Iravu

The newspaper cutting in ‘Vaanmagal’ showed the amount of respect GVM has on Vetrimaran. But I wish it could have been shown in a different way, may be just the wordings, it would have been more interesting. Anyways, thankfully, the film doesn’t play the climax trick like ‘Vaanmagal’ where the heroine gets saved. Sai Pallavi and Prakash Raj were terrific, the last ten minutes was gut wrenching, something like the flashback action sequence of ‘Asuran’. He’s really good at writing impactful scenes and almost not in a cheap manner too. Something which the series aims but may be because of the ‘Sairat’ impact, nothing comes to that level. Also, the final animation spoilt the impact. I was praying for the film to end just like that but it didn’t’.

My rating would be.

Vaanmagal < Oor Iravu < Love Panna Uttranum < Thangam

Movie Review – Putham Pudhu Kaalai

What starts like a loveable lockdown romance ends up being a numbing corona tale

The theme is lockdown and there are five films about it, the number of mentions of lockdown and corona would be a nice exercise to do while watching the short films because almost every film has a mention of it, a number of times. As if we haven’t heard the news and read the newspapers enough, the terms are annoying to the core. And given the limitations, all filmmakers try really hard to do something worthwhile where some end up successful and some end up desperate but everyone end up doing literal tales with very little cinematic value.

• 

Let’s look at each of the films, one by one.

Ilamai Idho Idho

The first film is generally a make or break film when it comes to an anthology. So, it has to be carefully selected so that it sets the mood right plus the other films has to be better than the first one, otherwise audience will easily lose interest. ‘Ilamai Idho Idho’ works for its curiosity and terrific cast. Even though Kalidas and Kalyani are cute as a young couple, it’s the seasoned campaigners Jayaram and Urvashi who steal the show. At first when they transformed to young self, I was disappointed because it felt like an insult to old age, to employ young people to act them out but the mix and match of cast worked well as a whole.

Coming from a lady director, the eye for details is amazing, the spoon in the bowl and wet towel on bed are like every household’s melodrama, which one a woman can note. May be for an upper middle-class person with maids to support for every need, this might look cute. But for an average individual, they’d know how annoying these things can get. After the drama, the film ends on a happy note too. Well begun is half done.

Avarum Naanum – Avalum Naanum

The titles, voice over, a delayed heroine entry, English speaking people. You know you’re in for a GVM retreat. Thankfully its not a love story but a story between a grandad and his granddaughter which is done in the same romantic way as how Jessie meets Karthik. Needless to say, M. S. Bhaskar is excellent, for a change, as an educated urban scientist and Ritu Varma as an IT employee, who from a recent hangover of ‘Oru Manam’ looks all the more fabulous as a GVM heroine.

Of all the shorts, this one feels the least desperate, even though there are a lot of mentions of mask and corona. There is an overtly dramatic scene between them both, where the subject is excellent but dialogues were written very poorly, a trademark GVM mistake. Thanks to the cast, they make the scene work. I loved the idea of how a man feels for her daughter’s loss of passion, it’s a great subject which GVM has touched upon but it doesn’t carry on with the same flow. Like any other GVM film, more than the film, we end up loving the heroine and her costumes.

Coffee, Anyone?

The film’s downfall starts from here. A tale of sisters, something which should have had a Jane Austen flair, falls flat because of over enthusiasm of real-life sisters, Anu Hassan and Suhasini Maniratnam, through acting and directing, respectively. Obviously Suhasini has directed because whoever came up with the idea, discussed with their peers and decided to do a lockdown film, it’s not that they hunted for talents. So, this is a pretty bleak subject. An ailing mother whom we first think has corona but thankfully not, her three daughters, one of whom had born late and a father who takes care of wife.

The film is about hope but its as hopeless as it could get, the subject is like how a teenager would write short story, there is absolutely no surprise. There is no logic but only magic but the magic doesn’t work because its like seeing the age-old act for the umpteenth time. If the GVM movie was literal in narrative, this film is literal right from the title. The climax with the granny holding a cup of filter kaapi lokes like a more irritating version of Ashwagandha, Athi Madhuram mixed 3 roses tea ad.

Reunion

Seriously, what was even tried here. It has Andrea who’s hot as hell and wears great gym wears at home and even sings an awesome English song but that’s that. Of all, this looked like the most pointless film. Like a film of an old man who so wanted to prove that he is young. It was a reunion of sorts where a singer meets doctor who has crush on her. There are drugs, biryani and adidas thrown in. Poor Gurucharan C, apart from singing that Ooh la la la song, there isn’t one scene he looked comfortable. Especially going near Andrea, he had a constant fear like a high school student trying to talk to a pretty girl. The climax where he says that the poem is for her, is a point which the audience would have decoded even before the script was written.

Miracle

This would have been a film which most people had eagerly waited for. The film starts with trademark Karthik Subbaraj shots, music and pun. Wonder how Bobby Simha acts so well when it comes to his movies. He was effortlessly funny in this film too but the show stealer would definitely be his friend, Sharath Ravi, who was terrific with his comedy timing. But that’s that. It’s not a film by filmmaker Karthik Subbaraj but only by a short filmmaker Karthik Subbaraj. The film would qualify as one of the films made by contestants but not by a maestro. He’d have easily made this film during his Nalaya Iyakunar days, who knows maybe it’s one of the films he had in mind during those days but couldn’t make. So, he had made it this time with better production value. Except for the scene where the tyre rolls with “Oru kili uruguthu” background, there wasn’t anything funny. But it’s a troupe which has been beaten to death by now, so it fails even in that aspect.

So, my rating of the short film would be almost of the same order it appears on screen.

Reunion < Coffee, Anyone? < Miracle < Avarum Naanum – Avalum Naanum < Ilamai Idho Idho

Movie Review – Enai Noki Paayum Thota

Failed Experiment

It released finally amidst any hype but the theatre response at the beginning showed how much people were waiting for the movie. The first few dialogues were not at all audible. There was Dhanush, waiting at the tip of the loaded gun, to be shot. He utters a dialogue about how a Josiakaran has said that it’s not his time to die, that he’d live for ninety years. And that’s what happens, he doesn’t get shot. The gun being a faulty one shoots only when it’s interested. Does it happen in real? Suspension of disbelief. When it’s finally shot, we get the freeze frame where we get to see the flashback sequence (much about that later). After the flashback we see that it hits the belt buckle and repels. Again, suspension of disbelief. The whole movies treads in this genre.

It was evident what GVM wanted to try but the execution is where it failed. Till the point where he escapes death in the opening scene, it was all okay. Post that it became jarring. His interest to use voice overs was evident. But something of it didn’t work like, “apdi vanthu adikanum antha kadal” or a “back home it’s called Raghavan instinct”. The latter is a dialogue and not a voice over, but you get what I mean.

The raging debate here is why a filmmaker can’t use voice over as a tool to make films. Answer by purists would be that film is a visual medium and it’s just moving pictures but the purists must be carefully filtered for they’re the ones who can’t do away with music and lighting up the subject. They feel those tools are necessary to convey the emotions. The real people who talk about proper cinema wouldn’t have even taken ENPT into picture.

GVM’s liking for Scorsese is well known and the voice over of ENPT is kind of cheeky. Especially the Josiar dialogue, it was really funny. “Elarayum antha josiayara paka solven”, when he escapes death the second time. By the time the audience were already bored and started laughing. I felt bad for Dhanush, how he’d have felt if he had watched the movie in theatre along with audience, that too especially after Asuran (even though I have my own inhibitions for that film). The same voice over didn’t work when he says, “yaenna naan antha kazuthula vazhnthurukaen” Ideally that dialogue should have worked, given that it’s a GVM film, like an “I’ll come into your life and sweep you out of your feet” but it doesn’t. I’d not only attribute that failure to GVM but also to Dhanush who was so infested in playing the upper-class boy.

Dhanush in his pursuit to look like a lover boy fails terribly. Every time he’s in love lost mood, he swings around himself like a yesteryear heroine and his act as a college boy where he uses his lower jaw in front and gives a romantic look, looked like an extension of his school boy acts in ‘3’ and ‘Thanga Magan’. It works there as humor but when he tries to do a ‘Surya’ it fails. The same with Sasikumar who comes in and utters English dialogue, so so artificial. He makes a heroic entry and doesn’t have anything to do post that. “Enga annan oru hero mari sandae potan” and dies. It gets a little confusing as to whom does Dhanush infatuate, whether it’s the heroine or the brother. That’s the problem with GVM films. I’m afraid that he is forming a template like Mysskin with his actors or may be the actors couldn’t give out an individualistic performance to a director who’s not used to them. He has safely dealt with upper class heroes in all his movies who could portray the character just the way he wanted. Like Surya or Ajith. Ajith was perfect in ‘Yennai Arinthal’. Surya is a well-known GVM prodigy. On the other hand, Simbu was a surprise find by Gautham and Kamal, needless to say could do anything. Dhanush who has safely played the roles that would work for him looks so out of place here.

Even though there was not much expectations on ENPT, with every failed scene I was worried of Dhurva Natchathiram. By far the best trailer in recent times. Vikram is ravishing, no doubt but even the other scenes were brilliant, like the scene where Parthiban turns back and gives a nonchalant look. He calls it his dream project, let’s see.

The true revelation of the film must be Megha Akash, what a shame that it didn’t come as her debut film. She’s acting in all sorts of crap now. She did a brilliant job. She’s the one who fitted the film to the tee. Right from being an uninterested actor to the damsel in distress. Her fresh face exuberated more romance through expressions than what Dhanush could do in those funny steps. Seriously, what’s the logic behind him dancing for the songs?

Kuberan (Senthil Veerasamy) too was a great find, a terrific villain who looked absolutely menacing. Loved the way he intimidates Dhanush and how he gets on our nerves. His combo scenes with Megha Akash was terrific. I loved the whole angle of how she gets taken up by him and bred into an actress, great story idea. But as usual it’s half-baked Gautham product. The same goes for his Tamil dialogues. He himself has confessed that for certain lines he can’t bring in Tamil dialogue, then why does Dhanush have to narrate a poem to describe his feelings. It doesn’t gel with the film at all.

In spite of all this, there were few clever digs at the audience like the introduction of Megha Akash, who surely looked with over make up, still liked by Dhanush. Audience were not liking, I could hear the comments like she was not looking good, but later the same people liked her in non-film shoot portions. That was intentionally done and done well. The portion were Dhanush goes to house was also a shocker, instead of finding an English-speaking father we see a regular villain. Then there was the ‘Girls’ and ‘Thupariyum Anand’ poster. Also, the Sasikumar entry to save Lekha (Megha Akash) was like a reverse of Vettayadu Vilayadu scene where Kamal breaks into Jothika’s room to save here. Here the same happens in the reverse angle, through Lekha’s POV. But the scene ends up to be horrible. Just look at that scene in Vettayadu Vilayadu, and see the shock in Kamal’s eyes, how he looks from Jothika to her husband for a couple of seconds. How much meaning those eyes conveys and what directional brilliance by immediately not making a reaction shot, instead holding on those eye lines for one extra second.

But he’s the same guy who uses needless close ups here. I absolutely hated the Dhanush close up after Sasikumar’s death. Needless loading glycerin in his eyes and see his acting. To really watch how efficient Dhanush is in his close up, one has to watch ‘Adhu Oru Kana Kaalam’.

I’ve always been game for GVM’s experiment. I loved the first half of ‘Nadunisi Naigal’ until and unless he didn’t know what else to do in second half and introduce the usual Tamil template of Multiple Personality Disorder. I like his gut in trying out anything he wants, in a civilized manner. Unlike RGV who goes berserk (which again is good in certain ways). But this film was the most disappointing one, which I couldn’t digest. Not liking is fine, I would just take it out of my head (like how I did for AYM, which was utter crap), but this film troubles me because he wanted to try so much. It was like a piece which he knew it went wrong somewhere in the middle but still had the urge to finish it. Wish he takes all this as lesson and make ‘Dhurva Natchatiram’ one amazing film. Fingers crossed.