Tag: chiyaan vikram

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cinema:tamil FRS

FRS:Ponniyin Selvan 2

So you all know what an FRS is right? Right? 

Seems Mani sir did not find time to read the FRS of PS 1, well maybe he was busy (duh obviously) and it reflects in PS2. 

So our writing team was found adapting FRS points from the PS1 post – uh um rephrasing if you could call it that. 

This is of course purely unacceptable behavior in the FRS writers room. 

We fired the entire writers room. 

That is our commitment, even adaptation needs well you know, integrity. 

So here we are with the new FRS writers, at least those we could find. 

-100: Narration, even if it is by Kamal

Kamal basically summarizes Part1 in few seconds, it could have been the same introduction from PS1 because that too was a summary or a situation analysis and nothing much happened except character introductions. 

+50: Wow, finally a temple in a series about Cholas, the great temple builders! 

Guess it’s Melkote, so long live Vijayanagara empire!  

PS2 begins where Surya was left pining in Thalapathy, there’s a similar “kovilil paadum penn” meets “porukku sellum thalapathy” situation. 

With all honesty, this is the sweetest part of both the movies only to be brought to a close by a song that is about separation. 

Sweet becomes bittersweet. 

We rewinded ourselves to the opening of PS1, where there is the fog of war and Karikalan walks in as it clears almost like a theater curtain. 

Nandini’s introduction is more literal – she draws the curtain of her palanquin. 

Mani makes no bones about both the PS movies being about Karikalan and Nandini, the supposed dramatic high points are created to revolve around them. 

But then the movie could have simply been called Nandhiniyum Karikalanum and not an almost incidental Ponniyin Selvan. 

Welcome again to the FRS of Nandhiniyum Karikalanum- based on the characters from Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan. 

–25: Franchise which aims to tell the glory of an ancient dynasty is focussed on how its hot headed soup boy prince almost brought it to its feet just because he could not get over a girl. 

Good call writers! Good call! 

Ok say last time they left us hanging about the lives of PS and VT- will they survive? Of course they do, they break this suspense in the trailer itself. 

So much for another attempt why did Katappa kill Baahubali moment. 

-70: Odd Madurantaka Thevar is odd max.

In the last movie, he beseeched the help of all the small kings in order to make him King, this time he is holding Kasi Tamizh sangamam with a group of Naga Sadhoo types. 

Sivoham and all that, but the small kings plan seemed slightly better. 

Over the course of the movie he would take another turn and that would be the most funnies of all funnies ever attempted. (not spoiling) 

Madurantaka Thevar Vaazhga! 

-101.5: Mani sir interrupts the tense search for Ponniyin Selvan for a Aga Naga poetic love sequence whose setting was probably suggested to the assistant director by ChatGPT when asked to list a few poetic locations. 

Isolated island with one boat. 

Does this serve the story? Umm debateable, but it surely satisfied all the fans. 

Mani-on-the-nose-poetic-aesthetic-is-poetic. 

Kundavi Devi Vaazhga! 

+42: Wherever you are in this universe, you are never far away from Azhwarkadiyan Nambi. He is everything, everywhere, all at once. 

It almost reads like an advertising slogan, but really it is the truth if his eyes are in Pazhayarai , then his ears are in Kadambur and he himself is somewhere camping with Karikalan but also appears in Nagapattinam. 

Does he have a twin brother? 

The FRS writer room when on ground nut and tea break came up with a theory that Cholas silently invented cloning but restricted it to only their spies so they could put one in each key district. 

Thirumalai Azhwarkadiyan Vaazhga!

+21: The Rashtrakootas might like this movie more than the first part. 

-200: Pandians are not going to like this one single bit, it is like for two movies the same plot element of Pandian Abathudhavis try, try and try to kill the Chola Pulis. 

All in vain, there is even a meta statement that Nandini posts but then that too lands as a joke. 

The Pandian Abathudhavis are the startroopers of this universe. 

Meenkodi Velga!

-34: Confusing motivations are confusing. 

Does Nandini want to kill or not? What does she really want? 

The only guys with clear motivations are the Pandians and they are made to look like the terrorists from last year’s Beast. 

Difficult to root for characters without having to clearly know what their motivations are. 

-101: Director wants to convince us that the Pandian assassins will succeed this time, just before the interval. 

Again there seems to have been no thinking involved in these attempts, they just go at the Cholans with whatever they get, shouldn’t there be some planning? 

+102: Jeyam Ravi as Ponniyin Selvan is the only actor in the ensemble who got his character, but sadly he is playing in a different movie only. 

Ponniyin Selvan Vaazhga!

-302: Loool Tanjore folks not able to identify Ponniyin Selvan because he is wearing mask loool what is this like Tamizh Padam spoof level 

+86: Karikalan accepts Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar’s plan to give away the kingdom to Madurantakar. 

If only they had agreed in part one itself this would have saved Lyca and co some millions. 

As the famous saying goes, for this cotton gunny bags could have remained in the godown itself. 

-201: Mani sir introduces props and characters to either forget them or to drop them on the way to Thanjavoor. 

What happened to the horse Semba? It surely mattered to VT till a point? 

What happened to the throne that Nandini was longingly looking at in PS1? 

Why did a crown which suddenly popped up on Sundara Cholan became the main prop in the climax? Where is the throne that is there in all of your movie marketing? 

Not to forget the fish engraved sword, which again comes to no purpose. 

I mean like…there’s a whole story about characters but that would put us in a very bad place, but still better placed than Kandan Maaran. 

All of this screamed that the movie was not well thought through, besides being rushed into production. 

However it is completely possible to be enthralled by some of the visual flair in PS2

+101: Cinematographer Ravivarman Vaazhga (best thing is to name all cinematographers after painters, as they are in effect painters of light) 

But Mani sir is irked by the idea of having to shoot two people talking and hence has to introduce rotating camera tricks every now and then. 

Embrace the drama Mani sir, it is what it is. The need to be seen as a visual filmmaker is coming in the way of telling a good story through characters. 

-80: Something something happens and we are now in the middle of the war and we didn’t know what to scratch our heads for- whether it is to understand what war is this or why Partibendran Pallavan and VT are now on opposing sides?

Oh wait there was this Nandini seducing Pallavan scene. Whatever came off that? 

Spare a thought about Nandini who is in control of the situation almost all through the movie but then ends up being shown as a victim in the hands of many men. 

Anyhow all’s well that ends well.

Cholas are on the way to their golden age and we went home feeling bad for the Pandian Abathudhavis (again).

You can read the FRS of PS 1 here.

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cinema:tamil FRS

FRS: Ponniyin Selvan I (2022)

So you all know what an FRS is right? Right? 

-101: Narration, even if it is by Kamal Haasan. 

Gather around people, as Tamil Nadu’s most visionary director takes the narration route to set things up. For an entire length of film. 

So exciting. Yay!

The comet’s tail tells a deadly tale

At the beginning we are introduced to the Cholas before the glory days. The elder son is fighting in the north, the younger son is fighting in the south and the king is bedridden in Thanjavur and a comet appears bringing with it bad news and assassins. 

By the end of PS 1 the set -up still remains, the elder son is still fighting in the north, the younger son is still in the south and the king is still bedridden. 

Hi to all screenplay writers and arc trackers. Technically nothing happens in this movie, I mean technically. Should have just released part two after Kamal’s voice over.

-34: Repetition 

The two sons and one father situation gets repeated by every other character in the movie to make us care for them, which makes us feel that the Kamal Haasan voiced intro would have been an afterthought and something that they could have very well avoided. 

Vandiyathevan also keeps saying who he is to every character he meets.

+45: As the smoke clears, Vikram walks into the frame- one of the few dreamlike moments in PS, but nobody really told us that he was reprising his role from Ravanan. 

Should we reduce points for this? 

Honestly having Vikram enact middle age angst and longing is one of the better creative decisions in PS- hope he wins a National Award. 

-50: Unnecessary battle which is neither cinematic nor makes us care about our heroes is unnecessary. Battle also acts as an intro spot for two other characters. 

-21: Rashtrakootas are not going to like this film. 

-2PiR: When two people are engaged in conversation, the camera starts to move in a circular manner – as though Mani sir is done with shooting two people talking, giving new meaning to the phrase going in circles. 

This again repeats with other characters as well, by now some critic would have written a 3000 word article about the inner meanings of said circling. 

<overheard but unverified excerpts from PS1 sets> 

“No no, my fans will expect something cinematic, just go around them and don’t keep still Ravi. Go Ravi go!”

<overheard but unverified excerpts from PS1 sets>

-20: Poor judgment on the part of Aditha Karikalan as he hands an important task to Vandiyathevan, who himself says, he does not know the way around Chola country, in a time when Google maps did not exist. 

-51: JeMo, the dialogue writer tries to make a pun joke with the word Madhusudhanan, nobody in the audience caught it, but we did hence the negative. 

+201: Experience Happy Chola country in this song where every village along the way not only knows the songs composed by ARR but also the dance steps. 

Of course, there is a distinct lack of Tamil Nadu-ness in the proceedings, which Mani-philes would praise as not only intentional but also international. Needless to say that there is very little about the people of time and the customs.

Guess only the best among us become Mani-philes. We are just FRS writers, so no such pressure for us. 

–204: Every dialogue a question-itis 

Who is that on that boat?

Where are you going? 

Won’t you carry my message? 

How great Tanjore looks? 

Umm that’s actually Jaipur, or Jodhpur or some such pur (loop back to the biggest movie about the biggest Tail empire has very little Tamilness in it)

Adapting a thousand page epic did not give the screen writers even one inspiration to write inspiring dialogue. Someone told us that this was a passion project. Considering this is Madras Talkies, maybe even the passion was subtle.

-61: Vandiyathevan abandons his horse Semba, apdiye after trying to sell us that it was his most prized relationship

That should tell us a lot about character development in Maniyin Selvan. 

< FRS will continue immediately after this short non commercial rant on character development>

FRS writers are no fools, they usually spend their weekends watching Glitz, Woods, and Galatta videos of the movie that they are asked to rate- this however comes at great cost to their normal lives- but it is only in these videos they discovered from a Jeyamohan interview that Ponniyin Selvan could be reduced to Vandiyathevan moving from one place to another. 

While yes technically yes, everything is technically correct but we must be able to feel something about the characters before we go along with them from one place to another. Shouldn’t we?

PS is like most epics filled with journeys , but then you have to love the hobbit and his fellowship for you to even reach Bree. 

But here, a result of superstar casting, none of the characters do come alive. And any impression we made were based on pre-existing notions about the ability of the artists themselves- Karthi is case in point. 

PS needed unknown casting where Vandiyathevan’s resourcefulness, Arulmozhi’s resoluteness and Nandini’s tempting nature comes to foreground. 

Here it’s just Karthi, Jayam Ravi and Aishwarya Rai who fill the screen leaving enough space for characters. 

<FRS continues>

-232: Pandians are not going to like this movie. 

They shouldn’t, their discreet assassins are shown here as tactless who attack in broad daylight. 

Success rate of Pandian assassins should be called into question, if this is how they plan to kill the princes then Pandians must recalibrate their strategy for the next movie- they should probably work with Accenture. 

Until then Pandian Abathudhavis sleeps with the fishes. (pun intended)

-100: To us for making a Pandian meen kodi fish bilingual pun. 

+85: Maniratnam decided to repurpose his own content from Nayakan – Nila Adhu Vanathy chi Vanathu mele feat. Poonkuzhali and just like that we are in Pattaya, chi, we mean Sri Lanka. 

-1917: Again needless war based introduction to another hero , we don’t know who Arunmozhi Varman is and immediately we are asked to partake in his sudden victory.

There was a brilliant intro to Arun (in the books) which is again there in the movie but by the team we know who Arun is and the scene loses its importance. 

Seems as though Mani had to forgo all his creative freedom to push two battle scenes, just for scale and for the intro of his leads. 

Again we spend our weekends watching glitz and woods videos where the director explicitly states that the idea was to keep things grounded and not blow up the scale. 

Realistic was the word, oh we love that word. 

We do appreciate closed chamber drama like the average next PVR popcorn popping person person, but the movie never makes up its mind whether it wants to be an epic or just a pic. 

The supposed big moments don’t hit the high notes and the small quieter moments are hardly your “savor-this-moment-so-that-it-ultimately-lives-on -as-whatsapp-love-status – at arms length from every teen in search of expression“.

Take a break as we reduce more points for the song and dance in this movie. 

–72: All songs are unnecessary and are expertly placed at times when you can just close your eyes, take deep breaths and think about existence and stuff. 

Maybe you can also use the break time to think about the average Chola fighter who has not to not only fight for his blood thirsty emo teen now turning 40 Aditha, but also has to learn steps from Brinda master so that he can dance in some Rastrakuta fort to Chola Chola?

Man being a Cholan soldier, tough. 

–300: When we imagined about the average Chola soldier, our imagination also leapt from the screen and went into the books and wondered what team Mani did with the 300 songs that Kalki had in the text?

Ah but never mind, you get a glimpse of acclaimed dancer Shobana’s dance drama here pushed as Ratchasa Mamane which no one expected. 

Since we all got things we never expected, the only way to acclaim this movie is to say that Team Mani has successfully subverted audience expectations. 

+101: Something something happens and everybody talks the plot so that we end up in a somewhat thrilling climatic sequence on a burning ship. 

Again, Pandian assassins are not going to like this film. They might not like the sequel too.

And now for our new segment called, readers write-in

Gentlereader2002 asks: Hey FRS writers, why are you so full of vanmam (hate), your vanmam spills from the screen onto my laptop keyboard and every time I need to get myself Colin’s cleaners to clean the system of vanmam.

Don’t you have anything good to say about the movie? Come on now, it grossed over 500 crores le? 

Thank you gentlereader2002, yes it is true that in the FRS writers room hate is not a bad word, it is what connects us. 

Funnily we try and convert this vanmam into posts – it is the only way we can cleanse vanmam from our systems. Maybe FRS is our internal Colin’s cleaners. 

To answer your second question, of course if you look hard enough, you can find goodness even in the most dullest things, like if Kollywood spends time in reading the FRS for a long time they might also have some point worth taking home. And like that we found that within the short time given, it was actually Sarath Kumar who brought a sense of majesty to the proceedings, we also liked Vikram’s portrayal – so like the rest is there for us to make fun.

Vanman can be a force for the good.

DonChera from Puliyoor writes: You write so disparagingly about the Cholas and you are so sentimental about Pandian abathudhavis, so you must be a secret Pandian, am I right? 

Us: We also rued the fact that Ponniyin Selvan’s big moments were not big like RRR or Baahubali, does that make us English speaking spies of the Vijayanagara empire? 

Guess we will know when Maniyin Selvan is back next year.

Team FRS

Subam.

Categories
cinema

COBRA (2022)

There would have been a time when I would have loved a movie like Cobra. 

There would have been a time when I would have contributed to the FRS of a movie like Cobra. So you all know what an FRS is right?

Now is not that time. 

There would have been a time when I would have loved a movie like Cobra, that would have been in 1993. 

In 1993, Gentleman released and for long stretches of growing up, it was my favorite movie. 

A series of mysterious crimes happen-an unknown hero-an officer is on his tail -their lives intersect and then we learn of the hero’s backstory and his motivation to be involved in these crimes. 

Will the hero succeed? 

Ascribing any sort of invention in cinema is usually wrong, but Shanker really did re-invent this sub-genre for the Tamil screens and he doesn’t usually get credit much.

Gentleman, Indian, Anniyan, Ai even 2.0 have the same story structure, it provided the perfect skeleton to warrant a big star and Shankar smartly could also up the budget and indulge in indulgences. 

There would have been a time when I would have contributed to the FRS of a movie like Cobra, that would have been in 2015.

Guess it’s not a subgenre after all, it is only one if others too are able to make effective additions. 

Movies in the above class made by those who are not Shanker, somehow feel very derivative and uninspiring. 

Shanker himself effectively killed it with Ai, but like after Sati’s death, her body was scattered all across the country, elements from this subgenre make their place in other Tamil films.

I can also see why Vikram would have had no problem in agreeing to Cobra, not only does it have an interrogation scene which is reminiscent of Anniyan, there is the noble motivation of helping orphans along the way, even though he has to assassinate many state heads in outrageous costumes. 

No hero has never turned down an orphanage helping hero. It’s our version of saving the cat.

Now that’s a trope when done badly gives the viewer a headache. 

I got a headache, paused the movie and reached out to get my Amrutanjan.

When the movie began again, even Vikram’s character had a headache, it was because the heroine was in love with him- she was also a math teacher. 

Okay, so if you start playing Cobra bingo every time someone says “Math Genius” in this movie, you might have to shell out more money to print more bingo cards. 

I was almost convinced that this was a Shanker clone, till I found that director Ajay Gnanamuthu had his fingerprints all over the film. If you remember an annoying kid from his previous movie, there’s an annoying student in this one. 

Before I realized why the student is in the picture, I applied some more Amrutanjan. Yes, the girl stays in the picture to give a circuitous connection as to why the movie is called Cobra. 

Just before mid-way, the director discovered hackers can also be geniuses and introduces another character and the movie turns into one brother protecting the other much like Aalavandhan. 

By that time I was out. I fell into a black pool along with my Amrutanjan bottle, mathematical formulas danced to the tune of Thumbi Thumbi as they chased me. 

I kept falling till I reached the Cobra’s lair. I was not surprised that it spoke, because nothing would surprise me more than Irfan Pathan playing an interpol officer called Aslan in a tamil movie called Cobra.

The Cobra spoke. I asked it to stop and bite me instead. It understood that I needed sleep, deep sleep and it granted me the gift of dreamless sleep. 

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cinema:tamil ck and mm

CK and MM watch Mahaan (2022)

Ext- Jil Jung Juk Bar + Garden Restaurant

It was just another pretentious bar with fuzzy neon lights where underpaid mid-life professionals pretended to act like low-life gangsters in the hope of gaining street cred or breakthrough into screenwriting.

All the inhabitants however knew, both goals are impossible.

There’s an 80s Rajni song playing in the background, it’s an otherwise forgettable song, made unforgettable only by the Thalaivar fan urge to never let such things die.

It’s not an immediately recognizable song, if it had been then this would have not been a pretentious bar named after a pretentious movie.

Enter Moderate Manohar or MM in slow motion

Moderate Manohar is now 40 years, obviously he has put on weight, he still tucks in his t-shirt and replies to messages in his family WhatsApp group. There is nothing inherently wrong with him, except of course the fact that he is a foreign film critic for the Chicago Sun Times. His specialty is writing about the intersection of gender, culture, politics and religion- which was a nice way of saying that he could write about anything.

Nobody really liked MM, but he was polite, so people didn’t tell him openly that they didn’t like him. They had separate WhatsApp groups to make fun of him, however.

Enter Caustic Kumar or CK in slow motion

CK is 37 years old, but he looks like he is 52. On his Aadhar card he looks 55, because it’s his father picture instead of his. The government didn’t care, father-son, all the same.

CK is not a Gandhian, but is known to speak his mind. Nobody really likes CK too, but they enjoyed telling him that. He is now immune to such comments and often takes it with a smile, later he would run such people to the ground through his secret twitter account.  

Years ago, CK and MM were a duo of sorts, under the Chief, they were allowed to publish anything under the column: movie reviews.

It came as a shock to the Chief that when the publication was sold off to a corporate house with the promise of ‘repurposing’ content, the company left out all the movies CK and MM covered.

After selling the publication for a small fortune, the Chief turned to drinking, MM had secured a cushy review job and CK was left on the streets, while he returned to his roots: cooking. He came from a family of Cook-u Kumars, including the one who had made a Dosa for Queen Elizabeth when she had come to Chennai for the launch of Marudanayagam.

He now was the parotta master at Jil Jung Juk Bar, he was surprised that it was more comfortable than his previous job, paid well and his customers didn’t complain.

MM Meets the Chief (and CK)

Chief: I want you guys to unite, we can do the reviews again, we had a vision, a dream, we can make it big again.

The Chief was an exceedingly positive person, especially for a person who resorted to drinking after making a small fortune.

MM: Let’s be practical chief, nobody reads reviews anymore and to be honest, you cannot afford me.

CK: He can’t afford me neither.

MM: CK!

CK: Oh, hi MM! I read your piece on the loss of innocence in Pandiarajan films of the 2000s midway…and…

MM: And?

CK: Oh, before I finished it, the boys in the kitchen used it for wrapping vadais, pandemic you see, we are using whatever we get.

MM: Umm, you seem to have done well for yourself (MM was surprised)

CK: There’s no business like Manchow business! Try our soups.

Chief: No guys, seriously, we can publish on those new newsletter sites and accumulate and audience and ask them readers to pay for our reviews. You have no idea the kind of things people pay for nowadays, surely, they will pay for reviews.

MM: Well…

CK: Hmm…

Chief: Oh, come on, you are not the Beatles and there is this new movie called Mahaan that you will surely want to write about.

CK and MM Get Back Together in slow motion

MM: So…

CK: Yeah…

MM: Do you want to go first and give us a peek of your Mahaan Vanmam

CK: But how did you. But of course, you follow me on twitter.

MM: No, I generally guessed based on past experience that you hate 99% of all things.

CK: Well, done, MM. Good to see you thinking. Good to see anyone thinking these days.

MM: What do you mean?

CK: I mean… if someone had thought about it, Maahan would not have been made.

MM: Seriously, it’s not that bad

CK: Good, now you accept that it is not good and I only have to convince you that it’s bad. A small tilt. But I have to get back to being the parotta master.

Let’s continue in the kitchen

CK and MM in the kitchen, various others going about their cooking business, ambient cooking noise and Tamil FM music

MM: So, you were going to say that the movie was longer than it should have been?

CK: No MM, my observations are often on point and not general, that’s one of the reasons I didn’t do well as a movie critic.

For example, I would say stuff like, Karthik Subbaraj, we get the irony, we get the irony like a Gandhian being a liquor baron, it’s there in your script, you didn’t have to spell it out to us in the form of dialogue especially after driving home the point that hero’s name is Gandhi Mahaan.

MM: That is true, sometimes too on the nose.

CK: Yeah, just like the Gandhi glasses, I thought like that was pushing too much. Gandhians wearing caps okay, but wearing same glasses, especially were those for sight or you know something like cos-play.

MM: These are like the points the FRS writers would come up with. I was thinking more like this was a critique of those who follow any ideology intensely, hence they were the butt of the jokes.

CK: Exactly MM, you found the point. Always look at what they are making fun of, that’s the easiest way to find intent from a creator.

There are obviously different levels to this and some critics might say that intent does not really matter; but all along I was feeling that this ideology extremists vs let me just be free and have a drink is not thought through well.

It assumes that ideology has ruined more people than alcohol has, well of course the director does not want to engage in more research, he has made it with the stance that ideology is somehow more dangerous.

MM: Well, I wouldn’t blame him, anything in the extreme is bad

CK: Typical of something you would say isn’t it; well, I would like to differ to know something you really have to be fully into it. The idea must consume you for you to completely believe in it. I’m not saying that we should overlook the downsides of ideology, but to say that it is better to be a liquor baron than be committed to ideology is like elementary school level logic.

MM: But intent itself does not the drive the movie, these are inferences that you make.

CK: I’m trying to say it plainly here, Karthik Subbaraj’s Mahaan is just another film which pushes the one life live it large philosophy, he tries to bolster this by saying that people who are committed to ideologies are dangerous and it is better to have a drink and ruin your life and those who depend on you.

MM: You’re reading too much; this is just a film about repressed desires of a guy who’s been caged for 40 years.

CK: So, the dream of this freedom seeker is to wear color clothes and have a drink.

Wait, this movie is more dangerous in the way it defines freedom: which is the pursuit of local pleasures which is drinking.

By defining freedom as just the freedom to drink, it is another throw of the hammer at family, in fact that is what happens to Gandhi Mahaan’s family.

MM: No wait, don’t you think that how Nachi reacted to her husband’s one night of drinking too much? It’s not realistic.

CK: Wait on one hand, we talk about having relationships wherein we don’t have to tolerate each other and that people should move away from such relationships, while you feel that Nachi is over reacting?

MM: But hasn’t she brought up her son with vengeance in his heart?

CK: Again, Nachi is the only one in the movie who has brought up a son who has amounted to anything, to become a police officer; it’s only because the director feels that this vengeance drives him to psychopathic acts, we feel he is wrong.

Movies are always from the POV of the director, like how many movies had the only motivation as vengeance and we did not even bat an eyelid.

Wait a minute, even Karthik Subbaraj’s Petta was about vengeance across generations.

MM: But that was when Nawazuddin gunned down an entire clan

CK: Here too Mahaan orders a killing of an IAS officer

MM: But you cannot seek lessons for life from movies, they are movies CK, they are meant to be enjoyed. I agree, we do see from the point of view of the director.

CK: Isn’t that an easy argument? My inference is that in Karthik Subbaraj films, morals do not matter and those with any sort of those are mocked. Even Satyavan who has a telling scene and answers to God and realizes that there are defined things such as good and bad and not everything is grey, is made fun of.

Always look at who they make fun of, the intent is revealed there.

MM: And you still have problems with grey characters

CK: Mahaan is not a grey character, he kills for business and runs illegal gambling bars, he kills seven other police officers, he does not even a have a moral reason to get into this ‘business’ like how Velu Nayakan does.

All this exists only to satisfy slow motion fetishes of the makers, to make us believe that this kind of life is actually freedom and we should pursue it.

MM: See this is why, we cannot have any fun, everything is brought within a moral framework.

CK: In that case the movie should not opine on ideology vs freedom, it should probably openly say that I am really fascinated by gangster growth and I will shoot it the best way and idolize it.

MM: Umm…it’s not like that

CK: Only to make the bad guy look cooler and in control, the ones with ideologies are made fun of. And only coolness sells, if Mahaan had been cooler by himself.

MM: Is that your final take? You barely went past the core idea that the movie deals with and I believe the movie is much more than that, for me how the thread of how three friends are connected through life’s ups and downs very interesting and the devadoothan fight had real punch in a Tamil movie fight scene in a long time. The ending of course is too constructed to the point you can see the name of the TMT bars used in the construction.

CK: Yeah, the Daylight Devadoothan fight scene was really something, will have to watch that alone multiple times, but the rest of it I could never go past and marvel at the way the film was told when I could not buy the central idea of it. It seemed unusually light at moments of great weight, almost insincere.

CK turns around another Parotta and MM calls it a night, so that he can go home and listen to Nino Rota. The chief as usual didn’t know what to make of their conversation, but he published it anyway.

At the time of publishing, he wore an Editor’s Guild T shirt which said, “Find someone who can reject you”

CK and MM will return with another movie conversation.

Mahaan starring Chiyaan Vikram and directed by Karthik Subbaraj is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

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cinema:tamil Parking Lot Notes

Parking Lot Notes: Kadaram Kondaan

There is something more frustrating when a movie comes close to greatness and then falls short- it is when a movie is perfectly flat and gives me not enough reason to hate it. 

Rajesh M Selva’s follow up to Thoongavanam is the cinematic equivalent of what is referred to in corporate appraisal meetings as “barely meets expectations”. These meetings don’t end badly, but neither are they the source of future happiness or gross percentage increase in salary. 

It is like just doing enough to avoid being hated by the manager. 

Doubly frustrating if you can relate it to our writers at the Lowly Laureate- this could have been an FRS. 

Lucky for the director  that he has the script from the french film which saved him from doing stuff from scratch- ideally would have given him more time in character development- but who cares what I believe. 

“Let’s just have Vikram walk in slo-mo and hope the audience go bonkers and maybe they will use indeterminables like” chiyaan swag etc.” Let’s also have him smoke a cigar because that would add to the style right? 

Ghibran could add some “BWAAAAH”, that dark knight type music? Ok cool. 

Character development done. 

Somewhere along the line, a set of characters do an exposition dump in the middle of a car ride- this is just after they discover the mysterious KK (vikram)  in the police database. Of course he is ex-special forces, double agent and expert safe-cracker and no one on the robbery unit couldn’t recognize him on the go, because Malaysian police are nothing without their databases. 

I thought maybe the movie should have begun with something like “In a world where everyone in malaysia speaks Tamil” that would have been crazy and fun, but this movie does nothing crazy(or fun), even the tired ‘twist’ comes before the halfway mark. 

The initial romantic portions between the leads Abi Hassan and Akshara Haasan (not related) too look like they have been inspired by a real estate ad asking young couples to invest in a new apartment so that they can claim subsidy from the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana ( but then this scheme is not applicable in Malaysia). 

Maybe I should not be expecting anything. Maybe I should not be so mean. 

Easily one of the worst RKFI films.