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cinema cinema:tamil FRS

FRS: Remo

The last time we did FRS or the Fawlty (Faulty) Rating System, we decided that this does not in anyway add to the discourse on film, it was a cheap way to get back at films that we did not like.

But things change.

Maybe some movies still do need to be ‘tried’ by FRS.

We thank Sivakarthikeyan for bringing us back to life.

remo-sathyam

-3: Narration

-6: Narration by Sj Suryah

-23: Hero is jobless, but one respite is that, he is trying for a job. Job here is to become the next acting sensation.

-10: His friends equally jobless, their lives are entwined with the life of our hero; who has no life anyways.

-78: Irritating yellow antique car is irritating, like let us spend a moment on this; i guess this car whatever model that is (soon to be a quiz question) is the male equivalent of the yellow vespa which is the default vehicle of all Tamil heroines for the past few years. I mean I understand that this is done to increase the classiness of the picture, but hero can sell that car for fortune and make his own movie only. Edho da, this is the poor hero with antique car- kadhalikka neramillai 1960s trope.

-12: Hero has doting mother, but of course. No, ok let us settle this right here, just because we know that Saranya Ponvannan is playing mother should we like think this is the extension of all the mother characters that she has played before? How do you even convey the script to her? ‘Madam, this is the same thing that you did in OKOK and zillion other films”. Also all mothers are doting on sons, except when not scolding kid for not getting job.

-5: KS Ravikumar wants to make Avvai Shanmugi part two

-45.6: Hero can do everything in life except love scenes, because he is very shy yaar, no experience with other girls

-24: Number of Rajni+Ajith+Vijay references in the movie is more than the number of pages in the movie script (well this is a fairly passable assumption)

-10: Apart from the above mentioned references, SK (which is SivaK rebranded and dumped on us as an excuse movie character-regular hero) makes references to his own films, atleast most of them in his looooong career. No we like self referential irreverance and all that, just we are being extra unkind here. Yes our tone is set.

-3000: LOL Cupid uses iPad for project management. Like how are cupids able to procure these gadgets? What is their allocated budget? and how many arrows are cupids allowed to have? How do they decide on projects? No i seriously want to know! Atleast that would be more interesting.

-78.99: Love

This is where it begins. Cupid strikes arrow at SK, now he is in love with some random girl walking on street on the way to work. This could happen to anyone.ANYONE

-100: AIM OF EVERY BOY’S LIFE IS TO GET LOVER GIRL WHO IS CUTE

-26: Hero believes that he is in love, because director has arranged for cute breeze to hit his face while heroine goes past. Dei in chennai no breeze da and you are not standing in beach road also. Summa.

-52: Hero follows heroine to supermarket. Maybe he thought it was important for him to know her favorite brand of curd. many serious reviewers have written about the different ways in which stalking is advocated in this film, if we start deducting points for each and every attempt then this will become like one 2G scam number only.

-52:  after what seems like 11 years of stalking, hero finally wants to speak to girl thing, but girl is getting engaged to some pune guy at the same moment.

+30: Girls parents think it is good to conduct engagement on flat terrace, i mean this is the sort of cost cutting that one likes to do in real life.

-10: for an engagement that happens on a terrace, it is WAY TOOO GRAND, only elephants they didnt call.

-40: whenever such engagements happen, hero will come and stand exactly opposite to the stage, so that camera man can focus on his sad face cliche, also flowers that he brings will fall on floor in slow motion. We would like to cut more points for the roses, but being kind here.

-3: You guessed it right, guy who is not hero but engaged to heroine is an ass of the highest order, although this will be revealed to you later in the movie. Yikes, spoliers

-10: for us, we gave away spoilers.

-15: Weta Workshop,

-98: Heroine is a doctor. But obviously the every moment she is on screen confirms our fears that surely she got through due to management quota or being cute.

-100K: Cuteness. Default character toolkit for heroines, if you do not want to take the glamour route that is (however eventually that too happens). Will come and say in any court that cinema is the main contributor for some stupid men thinking that girls like these actually exist and yearn for them. Being cute is to be a puppy but in human form, you have to appropriately curve your lips, widen eyes, take 300/moment selfies, draw in smileys, basically do these things so that some male fantasy is satisfied somewhere.

Because self righteous men can be graciously seen as fans of ‘cute heroines’. In the battle for cute vs hot (hot being the other kind in the heroine character toolkit, which is basically baring midriff and grooving to folk songs in some rustic background and biting chilli in close-up), hot is actually more honest (which is like, this is what you want, this is what we will show which is again wrong. Dei everything in heroine character writing is wrong only)

But this cute variety is a major killer and casual disrespect and utter disregard for heroine’s intelligence and esp in this movie when she is said doctor. And that cuteness happens only in U certificate films is an even more troubling thing.

Again, how does director come and say, “Madam, you have to turn up on set and be cute?” What fakery.

-20: Hospitals have advanced to the level that now they are indistinguishable from day care centres.

-150: using a child’s illness to progress your plot. yes, this happens.

-20: All songs, whenever.

All songs look the same btw. if you watch on mute, you might think all picturisations are same. Also some three colour gradient is used in the songs, we dont know why.

-5: Prataph Pothen

-20: Hero is best reader of body language, he can see love in heroine’s eyes. Also he wont take no for an answer (maybe he has not seen Pink). Heroine after saying no many times finally says yes, because arranged marriage is for fools and ugly peoples (actual dialogue)

-60: Suddenly pune doctor becomes villain, suddenly hero also becomes bruce lee type fighter.

-80: Cheating and confusing girls is ok as long as you spend some 20 seconds being remorseful. Also hero’s mother believes that what hero does is actually valiant. Hero’s friend advises against it, the only sane voice in the movie, no wonder he is playing the comedian.

+20: Chennai, some snobs still will call ‘madras’ but yeah good outdoor locations, this actually felt like a city film because mostly was shot outdoors in the locations that we go and come on a daily basis, and chennai still has a lot of those locations, good use of chennai metro as well, but as in all movies, here also it rains whenever hero and heroine want to kiss. But actually in chennai, it rains only for three days or something. I guess this is a very PC Sreeram thing, of shooting outdoorsy, dunno just guessing.

-10: For everyone telling, dei this is entertainment da, it will be like this only. What da we shouldnt ask anything? And why should we leave our brains at home whole watching films, is that even a valid expression

-3: for every reviewer who used the phrase “leave your brain at home”

Atleast i dont know, i have never made a film, maybe it is difficult to make a film which is entertaining but not irresponsible, but state that with your ‘alcohol is injurious to health’ message.

We are actually sad that people are profiteering from movies like these, I’m all okie if such movies come and no one watches them, but this will be a Blockbuster Budhan and now everyone will continue to make them, hence we can never stop FRS, which is even sad.

All this sadness is making us angry. Hulk level.

Edho da. Be happy. You have cracked the commercial code. We are only idiots.

As in every FRS, all numbers are surely random and arbitary, they do not mean anything.

Categories
cinema cinema:tamil

FROM NOW EVERYTHING LIKE THIS ONLY

25 YEARS OF NAYAKAN

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Twenty five years is a long time, especially when public memory is only limited to what you did the previous week, this is probably the reason why actors and filmmakers are so insecure on Fridays. Films that have broken this barrier of time come to stay with us not just as preferences during a dinner conversation but as important moments of everyday life.

For those who have grown and watched Tamil films in the last twenty five years; Nayakan would be one such movie.

The film begins silently on the shores of a southern town, a town which hints of some union trouble; nothing is shown though, just that the leader has gone underground and that the police are willing to do anything to get to him, here anything means even deceiving a young boy into showing his father’s hiding place, thereby messing up with his ability to distinguish between right and wrong.

What is right and what is wrong?

Sakthivel even asks his fugitive father this, he never gets a satisfactory reply, not through the entirety of the film; but Sakthivel convinces himself of an answer which he seems best, to do right for his people he will be willing to do anything that was wrong.

An answer he derives from an ageing pious Muslim who moonlights as a smuggler at night so that the dead in his slum can have a decent burial.

Nayakan is Mani Ratnam’s first great film, some might say his only; but it is a story told with much ambition and sadness that it can only be called a classic. It is also the most popular Kamal film among people who despise Kamal Haasan, a film that owes more to the city of Mumbai and Varadaraja Mudaliyar than to Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola.

It is the much told story of the outsider, the immigrant who stands for his people in an alien land, dispensing justice; his version of justice but nevertheless justice. In one of the scenes, Kamal rues over how the oppressed cannot truly get justice from the existing system and they shall have their own route until such a time when all differences are done with.

Hero among his people he might be, but his personal life falls like a badly stacked card castle; for he is in a profession where one does not differentiate between home and external affairs, to a point such that he is made to realize that his version of justice to some might be the perfect example of cruelty to others, but he never sways away from his people or his people from him. It is the story of how runaway Sakthivelu becomes Velu Nayakan

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Mani Ratnam employs P C Sreeram’s camera which fights its way through the populous streets of Dharavi, or between two pillars relentless in search of light, it does not mind even a jail keyhole or the mosquito net that adorns Nayakan’s bed; pausing knowledgeably and letting Ilayaraja’s  masterful and timely music take over creating that special place for Kamal Haasan to live in one his memorable roles. Nayakan is the first film that said a film can have foreign sensibilities, but still be Indian in its core; like there is a love track but it doesn’t take much of the time and hindering the path of the story, it just takes one song and the love makes more impact than films which take two acts to establish it. Every song finds a place, even the derided item number has much to tell.

It is not a perfect film, but it is a film that you remember fondly and come back to it, for years I have wondered how Velu Nayakan never speaks much of Hindi for all his years in Mumbai and requires a translator when he needs to communicate or how the sub-plot involving his son somehow seem forced. But these things do not mar the viewing of the film and only discussed when the pulp of the film has been enjoyed.

Debates can be held through the night to know if Nayakan is one the greatest Indian films, leave alone Tamil films; but one can never arrive at a conclusion in these matters, but the fact of the matter is that the movie rests alongside The Godfather, its inspiration in the TIME 100 list of great movies (again a very relative things these lists). One of the three Indian movies to make it to the list and the only one made after the sixties. Nayakan is after all the Enga Oor Godfather and it seems only right we celebrate this silver jubilee especially at a time when a person’s 25th (or lesser rounded numbers) film is being is heralded as artistic achievement itself.

Incidentally Nayakan was Ilayaraja’s 400th film as composer; it is indicated in a much smaller font and within brackets, so much so one might even miss it. Such were the times.

PS

Nayakan made way for Mani Ratnam to become one of the country’s most respected directors; his later works however are open to discussion.

Kamal Haasan went on to win one more National Award for acting after his nod for Nayakan.

Maestro Ilayaraja still composes although his work with Mani Ratnam came to end a few years after Nayakan. 

Nayakan was remade into Hindi as Dayavan, best remembered for a Madhuri Dixit kiss video which has more than 1 lakh hits on youtube.

Nayakan still remains my favorite Mani film.