Tag: visu

Categories
cinema

Ala Vaikunthapurramloo

As The Swivel Chair Spins #6

Just a week after Visu’s demise, I saw Ala Vaikuntapuramlo which is the 2020 version of a Visu film. 

Had he seen it? Had he commented on it? I’ll never know. 

It is really a familiar set up of a change maker (Visu by default) who enters into a family, observes their problems (usually they dont get together) and solves it for them. 

Happy families are alike. Unhappy families (especially in Visu films) are unhappy in their own way. 

But here, director Trivikram Srinivas is greatly helped by lead actor Allu Arjun (Bantu) who seems to have built in to power a large mansion for at least a year. 

That mansion is Vaikunta Puram. 

Where a husband won’t speak to his wife. A son constantly disappoints his father to the level of doubting his birth (and rightly so) and a couple of good for nothing relatives and a scheming co worker (Murali Sharma is brilliant). 

Classic family set up. 

But Bantu by himself is a very well developed character, invested to the level of announcing to the audience what his “mannerism” is. Bantu is also developed using the one rule character development- he believes that telling the truth at all times is the best rather than lying. 

Obviously, this creates the main conflict when he is faced with his ultimate truth. 

Even though this is the most recent fun I have had streaming something, the movie by itself is not without problems- there is a paper thin villain and of course the women in Vaikuntapuram are criminally under developed- Pooja Hegde gets to be a start-up entrepreneur who gets tongue tied while speaking to an investor (?) and Tabu barely gets the scene, we only know about her from other characters. Nivetha Pethuraj doesn’t even get that. Most of the critical decisions are made and agreed upon by the men, even those who were at fault.

Yeah that’s a big paragraph, now let me shoot it back to say that this movie does not operate in any immediate reality, these constructs only exists in the mind of screenwriters a sense of hyper unreality as seen in the fights, dances, relationships etc- but they have managed to keep a family film at the core and still sell it, that’s really admirable. Add to this with Telugu cinema’s fascination with epics like the Ramayana. 

And heroine’s character name is Ammu, what’s not to like about that? I mean…

This streamed well. 

Categories
cinema:tamil

On Visu

Was dreading this for sometime. Writer-director-actor Visu no more

His films were the first I could sense a real director’s touch, later I came to realize the confidence he had in his plots and characters as a screen and dialogue writer, no matter what criticism was kept against him. Like a mother he would defend his films till his death.

Visu had his own way to show the problems of the middle class even when KB was still making movies. (KB even produced some of Visu’s works). KB made ‘better’ movies (Visu would probably disagree), KB approached it from the head, while Visu would bring his bleeding heart. It wasn’t just sentimentality, but also with humor.

In a video on what makes a great movie, critic Mark Kermode noted that how words like sentimentality and humor where not used in the charitable sense by movie critics because movie criticism was purely treated as an intellectual enterprise. Emotions were not treated as part of the craft.

In my view Visu was most disadvantaged by this, he did not receive the appreciation for his craft, when he needed it the most.

Critics would carry KB to another generation, but Visu would be largely ignored by critics, but even more by his audience, whom he lost to either apathy or television.

Even at the earliest viewing of Kudumbam oru Kadambam I could see that Visu was not offering solutions- the movie was basically a debate on whether men should marry women who worked or women who stayed at home. The movie really stacks up arguments on both sides and the solution is left to the characters themselves- it depended on that family.

I still think this is one of the most mature ways to approach a domestic issue and by the time we come to the end I would have cried and laughed a dozen times.

Visu had made me see these characters as he had seen them or created them, I think this by itself is the greatest achievement for any creator. Visu sir, you rocked in your time.

The TV which depleted his audience did some good deeds by fate or design by repeatedly showing his movies which made it possible for me to catch it, enjoy it repeatedly. Yes they had some issues in quality, but never in confidence or the lack of color in characters.

Kudumbam Oru Kadambam.
Dowry Kalyanam
Varavu Nalla Uravu
Manal Kayiru

These are his movies that made an immense impact personally and of course he wrote Simla Special which for me is the gold standard in friendship movies in Tamil Cinema.

He would have liked to have read this perhaps, but alas I should have written earlier. Obits don’t matter to those for whom it is intended.

As an affected party (audience), the first duty towards a creator is a mere acknowledgment and I am guilty of being late and I will do more to write about his films.

Go well Visu sir. Om Shanti.

Vartuthapadala, vendapadala, kavalapadale, perumapadren to be your fan Visu Sir

Categories
cinema Essay Essential viewing

SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE SELECTION| ESSENTIAL VIEWING: MANAL KAYIRU

“Scenes from a marriage selection”

4

I do not remember when was the first time I saw Manal Kayiru, but it must have been a very long time ago and with  some certainty I can say that it was an afternoon movie; I have since watched it multiple times at multiple points of time; classic is a word that has been tossed around as tags for many movies and is a word that should be used only after much deliberation, but Manal Kayiru has the word classic written all over it.

No one has made films relentlessly on the problems of the middle class woman like Visu, can only be compared to the nothingness and existentialism in the films of Woody Allen.(Unmeasured comparison)

And in the core of the problems of the fairer sex was marriage.

Oh but wait, weren’t Visu’s films stagey? Thoroughly dipped in the sentimentality of the time and mostly adapted from stage plays and really looked like a televised one, that they may be but, they are not without their own inventiveness.

To continue with the Woody Allen analogy, Manal Kayiru can be called the ‘Annie Hall’ of Visu’s career which began from the stage, the film in which he found the balance and his own space within Tamil film making.

It is the world of 1982, unknown and seemingly distant to the now world of shaadi and bharat matrimony; a middle class man has aspirations, not two but eight(including bizarre ones like failing in college). If you had been a daughter’s father in eighties and before, conditions is not a word that you would have wanted to hear.

2

That is the thing with comedy, it takes away that tears that go behind the thought of these jokes; and this is where Visu stands tall as a maker of socio-comedy films, he never cuts down on the seriousness of the issue; yes the eight rules seem ridiculous but by the time we reach the end, these rules represent the stupidity of ourselves and how big a deal it was to get a girl married. An achievement worth putting into your CV types.(Again now, everyone will put anything on the CV, I was talking about the eighties)

To thank God for how things have changed is being childishly optimistic, marriage selection has remained a sort of gruelling job interview, the only things that have changed has been the medium and now that both sides can do this ticking of checkboxes exercise, before thanking God reflect on Darwin and this quite unnatural selection.

3

Enter Naradar Naidu, who completely randomises this process; with Manal Kayiru, my formative thoughts about marriage has been about co-existence rather than the one of selection, and this is primarily because of Manal Kayiru, selection in this case so seems like a recruitment for a slave, but what about expectations?

Is it possible to live with someone who does not meet even one of your expectations?

Pardon my middle class movie loving brain, but the act of marriage is really much higher than fulfilling individual’s expectations and that is what the world is moving towards, bespoke dating.

Visu is like that teacher who comes back to the starting point of the lecture at the end of one, most teachers don’t. He knows his subject in depth, the lesson here is: let not your expectations bring tears to the other party.

Like the job of the ‘marriage broker’ whose occupation has been quietly replaced by the match making sites, Visu’s family dramas have been replaced by television soaps starring murderous mother in laws and wailing working women, but more so it has the generation that has been replaced, a generation that looks at marriage and family in the long run, as this India Today article puts it ‘obliquely’.

Maybe the events that happen in Manal Kayiru are exaggerated, and the days of conditions are long gone; but as number of divorce applications and new family courts suggest that there are more broken marriages than broken hearts and the saddest part is that there will be no Naradar Naidu to liven things up for you this time.

Epilogue

Dowry Kalyanam can be seen as a companion piece to Manal Kayiru, while the former deals with the struggles that happen during the course of marriage, the latter covers the pre-marriage irritations

Sve Sekar plays the fool of a groom in both these films and is tremendously effective.

While lovers of good old drama might not have anything to complain, cineastes might be pleasantly surprised by Visu’s handling of a deaf character. Gimmicky and stagey yes, but the film is not without substance and the characters hold up well even after years have piled over the film. Class apart, Manal Kayiru is an extremely easy film to love, proving again the best way to approach serious stuff is by making comedy.

PS:  The title of this column was originally called “we cannot be friends if you do not like this movie”, but changed to the more boring but just-about-doing the job “essential viewing” because the previous title was considered antagonistic to our already dwindling audience.

PS2: None on the staff of the Lowly Laureate is married, except the 86 year old printing press operator. His Facebook relationship status as of today is: I won’t tell you, go.

Xbox: Naradar Naidu is the first in a long list of typical Visu characters, a wily outsider who sets up the film’s flow and provides the solution as well, but here he faces a saddening end, not unlike the one Kamal faces during the climax of Panchatantiram(well, almost)