Tag: Mani Ratnam

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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.

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cinema:tamil

Likeable Wannabeism : Project Agni from Navarasa (2021)

Of all the films in the new Netflix anthology series that I’ve seen (yet to see them all), the only one that does some justice to it’s rasa theme is Karthick Naren’s Project Agni. 

It’s the rasa of wonder and it works for me because it is not an all encompassing wonder theme of something beautiful which is hard to dislike, but a specific wonder that only wannabes experience.

Technically everyone is a wannabe, so the wonder in Project Agni should work for all; but then even those genuinely experience wannabeism are chided for behaving like wannabes and then are forced to lose it to put on the garb of refined taste and culture. Cursed to consume pretentious content for the rest of their lives.

While I have lost my early wannabe animal to growing pains, that animal still lurks and takes more pains when I call out on other peoples wannabeism- like we did when we did the FRS of Mafia, Karthik Naren’s previous film. 

That’s how people drop their wannabe avatars, their curious instincts lost to ex-wannabes constantly telling them so, it is in a way a loss of innocence. 

I am not asking you to embrace wannabeism here, I am well aware of its pitfalls- like not growing an own voice and constantly in awe of any swaying ‘in-thing’. I’m just trying to say that there are levels of wannabeism which are tolerable, when it does not go along for long, when it is really not on the nose- it is likeable wannabeism. 

Likeable Wannabeism is a group of friends (not more than four) sitting in a restaurant talking about the opening scene from Reservoir Dogs (I mean), but of course not for hours but just the right length until one ex-wannabe can groan (predictably) on how Tarantino is overrated (yawn) and then switch on to Scorsese or Antonioni or some such etc. 

Likeable Wannabeism is the goldilocks of Wannabeism and in the realm of cinema, in recent times, it is usually spent in the discussions of films of Kubrick, Nolan, Tarantino. It’s talking about references to and inspirations from, it is looking at important concepts of life, universe and everything through the lens of movies. Obviously it cannot go on for long, because probably your peer group has only seen Inception and the more you go on talking about it, the more they are going to order the main course. 

All I’m saying is, just allow the wannabe their time, don’t call them out on it (always, only when on the nose) and with age and when life happens to them, they too will read the Russian classics, watch Kurosawa movies and listen to Mozart or Beethoven, the generally accepted boring trifecta of books, movies and music or in other words culture. 

But when it is short and snappy, there is nothing like Likeable Wannabeism, it could actually get you noticed, it might actually make the Wannabe an interesting person and not a self suffering movie nerd.

For example, in Project Agni, when Karthick Naren’s short-movie is how we shouldn’t totally chase our obsessions because going too far could lead to tragic consequences and then he name drops a thread from Room 237, the Shining documentary where people almost spend their entire life studying the Kubrick’s movie for meanings to their life and losing it completely: some hair stood on end. 

The connection. The goosebumps. The wonder. 

The wonder that Project Agni goes for is not the general perception of what beauty is or what wonder is, but just speaking to a small subset of movie nerds (not cineastes- urgh what a term) who watch movies not as entertainment or as dinner conversation fodder (although they do end up talking all about movies at dinner- I meant in a non transactional way) or as means to acquire high culture cred but simply as a channel to understand things. Movies as a means to higher purpose. 

It’s why they (movie nerds) go into the details, the set designs, screenplay structures and director interviews- they really want to know what all this is about. Please don’t confuse this with the thala-thalapathy first look poster trailer decoding that things are reduced to on youtube today, what I’m talking about is something in the lines of NerdWriter or Patrick Willems (whose long videos ofc becomes unlikeable Wannabeisms- exactly the point). 

An obsession becomes wonder- when something is figured out and that is the wonder I feel Karthick Naren is going for and he even does some flexes by making the right references and combining genres all within 30 mins while others in Navrasa are not even able to maintain one single mood for ten mins. 

Yes the acting really does help, Arvind Swamy was born to give to exposition dumps and most of the movie is just Arvind Swamy and Prasanna sitting down and talking about the stuff they are obsessed about (another movie nerd attribute of being meta comes to the fore, it’s something we like). And Prasanna is so good that you wonder how good he will be with twice the screen time. 

Also admirable that Karthik Naren chose to go with almost all english dialogue, which the story does demand- try translating ‘subconscious world’ in Tamil and inserting it 25 times in the script, then you’ll know. For some subjects english really works and kudos for Karthik Naren for being himself, it’s a brave thing to be oneself, especially in Kollywood. 

PS

Blue Sattai Maran refused to review the film because it was mostly an English film, maybe this is the solution that the industry has been waiting for to get Maran to stop talking about things he doesn’t understand- just make movies in english, he won’t review. But we would rob the world of much humor.

I know Project Agni won’t appeal to a lot of people, but that is the point of it. We have already killed culture by making it so that it will appeal to all folks. Let this one be.  

So instead of commissioning the usual FRS for Guitar Kambi Mele Nindru, I thought I’ll just write about the stuff I liked. 

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cinema:tamil

Putham Pudhu Kaalai

As The Swivel Chair Spins #13

Anthologies are almost average at 3 out of 5. 

This three is not comparable to the three given to a novel. For the longer form of literature it could mean a “could have been better for all the effort”.

For a short story anthology , the three is a sign of the mixed bag, you never know what you are going to get, and you never know what you are going to like and when you are going to like. 

As days pass perhaps, a singular revisit might have me appreciating what was left behind and quietly accepting that segment for which I  once was over enthusiastic about, was just because of the age and frame of mind I read it in. 

Putham Pudhu Kaalai is also a three on five. 

But it safeguards itself in the sweetest way, so that there is nothing I could overtly dislike, but there was nothing which I was fond of too. Maybe it’s my age. 

Maybe it is about the fact that these stories are really not about anything, they are only placed together because they all revolve around the lockdown. 

I believe (and the Big Book of Jack The Ripper Stories sitting quietly in my Kindle would agree) that anthologies are not meant to be read at one go,they are after all mood pieces, so that’s there. 

A niggling three where you can never quite say what you didn’t like, but also cannot remember what the previous story was about. 

Which is exactly what happened when I was watching director Gautham Menon’s Avarum Naanum, Avalum Naanum (ANAN), the second segment, I forgot about Ilamai Idho Idho. 

Slightly zoned out I was, I guess, also maybe because there was a voice over in the first movie about ‘Kadhal” by R Madhavan, always a non starter. 

Also this is the one with Amazon Prime product placement with Alaipayuthey? Almost thought this was the GVM short, but it was not the Mani fanboi but in fact a Madras Talkies alumnus, Sudha Kongara about how love has no age and all that (insert yawn here) and love makes everyone look younger and all that (can we have another yawn here or is it too short?).

But when the scientist grandpa appeared in ANAN, I was awake, just earlier had slightly thought about sleeping again because the heroine character was doing classical GVM  by way of telling the story through voice over. 

No doubt, M S Bhaksar, is a spectacular artiste (notice how he says spectacular in the movie, haha got you there) and the short almost entirely rests on one of his monologues, but that’s about it, I didn’t get to know about the scientist more. 

While GVM only gave the skeletal frame to chew on, Suhasini Maniratnam’s next is the one with most characters and surprisingly we get to know a lot about them and even more surprisingly it was the one that spoke to me the most, I have my reasons. 

Coffee Anyone? 

I theorize this is the ladies of the Haasan family telling the stories of the brothers, it almost seems like it, I don’t know if Suhasini has spoken about this in any of the promotionals for the movie, but think about it, this short has three sisters Hasini, Anu and Shruti (as opposed to Charu, Chandra and Kamal) trying to grapple with the illness of their mother. The youngest daughter was born when the mother was almost 50, they say, another well documented Kamal family story and how he looked up to his brothers as parents. It’s a similar situation here along with the inversion, okay let’s just say I bought it because of the Kamal reason and some nonsense theory I was making in my head. 

I said reasons, so there is one more, because this is the one that feels almost like a horror film (and not another ‘kadhal’ short) and again with an inversion, which I would not like to spoil. 

There are things in Coffee Anyone which again doesn’t allow itself to punch its weight, like for example the dialogue till we will settle down with the characters and since it’s a short, well you know, it’s over. 

Reunion by Rajiv Menon has much in common with the two preceding shorts about the power of music to change lives (insert classical yawn) but it is also ‘of the moment’ because it deals with the problem of how difficult it is for celebrities to get drugs during the lockdown. 

I mean… 

Of course Oooo Lalala , music is the saviour. 

Even in the next one titled Miracle by Karthik Subbaraj, music (this time by Ilayaraaja) acts as a connector, it’s the most amusing one but falls into the category of ‘slice of life-fate’, you know the ones when you see it, A goes to B via C types. 

Types, I love using the types. I apparently also love typing, the document now indicates that I have written 800 words about Putham Pudhu Kaalai, I hope it means something to someone. 

<Read in Rajeev Masand voice> So I am going with 3 stars out of five for Putham Pudhu Kaalai, because…. Hmm… four of them looked like ad shoots for Bru (filter coffee? Idhu Bru Ma types) and one even had coffee in the title. 

Putham Pudhu Kaalai is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Categories
cinema:tamil reviews

WHAT THEY DO UNDER THE BLANKETS

CK AND MM AT THE MOVIES: O KADHAL KANMANI

Okay_Kanmani_film_poster

Moderate Manohar approached the end of the corridor with much hesitation, in his hands was an envelope, the fine-ness of it indicated its foreign nature. As the door creaked to an open, he could see Caustic head down on the table, the room only filled with the soft electronic buzz of an unsaved word document.

“CK, the appointment has come….” Began Mod quite loudly.

MM: CK, the appointment has come!

CK: huh…what?

MM: the appointment from Chicago Sun Times, it came in the mail just now.

CK< widens smile>: IS it? Wow when are we leaving?

MM: Not we.

CK: huh?

MM: It’s only me they want, as in…they can only accommodate me right now.

<A little background here, CK and MM quite fed up with their lives in Chennai had applied for the post of resident movie reviewers in Chicago, although CK was sceptical about working abroad, he finally realised its importance and was quite looking forward to it, now everything had just fallen flat for him>

CK took a moment, or maybe even shorter than that to recover and went ahead and patted MM on the shoulder.

CK: “Great, you are taking this up right?”

The room was again filled with MM’s hesitation and the soft electronic buzz.

Some higher power intervened in the form of the editor who barged in unannounced like he owned the place, in fact he did.

Aye Sinamika Tamil Lyrics – OK Kanmani

“CK!MM!, OKK review on my table, fifteen minutes, already every major media and everyone with a Facebook account has already written a lot about it. We shouldn’t miss out.” The editor walked out with the same pace.

MM: Let’s discuss the movie first, later perhaps…

CK: Nevermind…whenever it suits you.

MM: Should we start with the bit about how bold Mani Ratnam is, making a film on live-in relationships?

CK: No….this isn’t about that, I mean at least I feel so, it isn’t.

MM: Should I wait for you to tell what’s it about?

CK: It is about validation of love, this whole live in relationship thing is to keep it all contemporary and all that… you know like that skype call and the iPad song

MM: So contemporary that they have T.M Krishna’s latest book “A Southern Music” in the shelf somewhere in PrakashRaj’s house

CK: Understandable, considering the fact that Leela Samson plays an Alzheimer’s affected Carnatic singer, oh my god their walls are the same colour as the zari of the Kanchipuram sarees that these singers wear for concerts, so much richness. Also Thanjavur painting, it is the stuff upper middle class dreams are made of

MM: let’s come to the production design bits later, let us get back to the validation of love part, I think that this is a new concept, the exploration of live-ins

CK: No..no ..Mod, that’s what the director wants you to believe, to linger on the surface, the whole movie is about Tara and nobody else. Tara is the updated version of the Mouna Raagam Revathy.

MM: hmm..wild, willing to break rules and attracted to rash lover boy types and bored with domesticity etc…

CK: exactly, but she is also in a way the Agni Nakshatram Nirosha, not giving a damn because of a troubled past. Tara here hates marriage because her parent’s divorce affects her even now.

MM: But she falls for Aadi….they both fall for each other.

CK: Yes, but she never thinks much of him, atleast he is thankfully never full of himself, he just says “he will become rich like Gates etc”, she doesn’t think much of his game development career also when compared to her overtly passion filled love for architecture, she really doesn’t want anything serious.

MM: so when she really does realise she loves him anyway, he is about to go and he has already done something, but still she will only want him to say it. < “Marriage”>

CK: Yes enough instances to prove that this is a Tara fuelled relationship and not a flirty boy meets serious girl cute love story. First call back, first kiss even, all initiated by Tara.

MM: I see…where this is going, but what about Bhavani and Ganapathy, where do they actually fit in?

CK: they are clear examples for Tara to believe that a traditional relationship can work, she seems to be the one who is most affected by the happenings in their lives. Again a validation that she requires for secure love, in the end she isn’t clear about her career.

MM: So this is how is it going to be written? I mean this line of thought?

CK: What other is there? Isn’t this plain as daylight?

MM: No…no…what about the actors? The setting…the music and PC’s camera work, he seems to have let out this beast of a camera on this couple and the writing itself?

CK: Isn’t it what the others will also be saying? Mumbai trains and rains, mornings with pigeons flying, tastefully lighted blanket interiors and characters who alternate between sophistication and words of yore (“ummanamoonji! Kadavul”), the director’s insistence that friends of protagonists be as beautiful as them, etc, isn’t it what the others will also be writing or already written? OK we can write such stuff as well.

MM: Hmm..yes I think, I haven’t read any of them…in totality I liked the film, even from this love-validation-security angle you are coming from

CK: that’s the only angle I like the film from, and also Nitya Menen’s eyes.

MM: Surely we will throw in a bit about Nitya Menen’s eyes and what about Mani Ratnam’s comeback?

CK: What about it?

The editor walked in again, looked at the manuscript and said, “Throw in a few words about Nitya Menen’s eyes and about Mani Ratnam’s comeback, also meet-cute love story of our times etc”

MM: Yes sir, it’s there

Editor: Good, good Manohar, so this will be your final filing for my magazine…congrats on your appointment in Chicago. As for you CK, you are stuck with me for life.

CK: That, I am, sir.

CK went back to his table to file the final copy, but in the ruckus that the foreign appointment had created, he forgot to mention that the video game within the movie had a more interesting storyline than the movie itself and about The Shining reference he had caught in the film.

It was at this time MM said, “We need to talk”