Tag Archives: dhanush

3

Director: Aishwarya R. Dhanush

Featuring: Dhanush, Shruti Haasan, Siva Karthikeyan, Sunder Ramu (Prabhu, Bhanupriya and Rohini wasted!)

This is a film by the next generation Tamil filmmakers (artists, music directors inclusive). Shruti Haasan, Dhanush, Aishwarya R Dhanush are all people who’ve seen cinema more closely than any of us would have in our lives. Yet, 3 is what they can produce. Sub-standard, unimaginative, insensitive and ridiculous load of trash that they’ve dumped in to three hours.

In the name of love

Ram (played impeccably by Dhanush) helps this girl who can’t help herself with her own bicycle (which happens in the real world, of course) and then falls in love with her when he is all of 16/17 years of age. The girl Janani (irritatating portrayal by Shruti Haasan) returns the favour and they are both in love. The first half of the film meanders across tuition classes, roadside conversations, slaps from the girl’s father and useless trip to Tirupathi.

Nothing in the film makes the audience feel the love between the two lead characters or any hope that the film is heading somewhere this way. The girl burns her passport (which has the Visa that her mother obtained after 15 years on burning herself outside the US embassy! Lolwut?), runs away from home asking Ram to marry her, apparently does nothing that could be called a job but cooks well, of course. The boy fails in his maths and chemistry exams in school, runs after this girl he likes (and scores well in Physics – the subject he takes tuitions with her), drives to Tirupathi without a license and uses an Aircel phone (one too many plugs this Aircel has paid for).

There is absolutely no love that I could see or feel between the two – no conversations, no happy moments together, no display of sanity or self-sufficiency.

In the name of marriage

No surprise that this love goes into marriage. Ram marries Janani and moves into this apartment that his father buys for him. They wait for both their parents to visit them before they have their “first night”. He promises never to hurt her and take care of her. She in turn reaffirms her trust that he would do so. He goes away for long hours, has a friend sleeping over every single day but Janani waits for him to die before she finds out why it is this way. Ram kicks their pet and kills the dog (unimaginatively named Tom). Unable to tell her what he’s done, he cries and she consoles him still not wanting to find out what really happened.

The Director has gone out of her way to beat stereotypes in having Ram and Janani’s wedding at a pub/ discotheque. Ignoring the fact that, though the venue is new, the thaali and the man tying it around the woman’s neck hasn’t changed, it is impossible to ignore that Janani wears Vibudhi (symbol of widowhood) on her forehead for a large part of the film post-interval. Strange are the ways we beat the norms these days.

In the name of mystery

The film begins with someone having been murdered. And then there are these scenes where Janani runs after what looks like Ram’s silhouette. Like most other scenes, this one goes nowhere too. But I refuse to understand the irrelevant plugging of such things to make the movie catchy. Dream sequence or otherwise, if the film is about a man with bipolar disorder, why make him seem like a ghost?

In the name of a ‘disease’

This is the scariest part of it all. Ram, in the film is dealing with bipolar disorder – which is pretty much mentioned as a disease. He acts like Chandramukhi Ganga (while the Doctor character clearly mentions that this is not split personality but bipolar disorder). He beats up friends, walks up to kill his wife, hallucinates and even forgets everything that he has done while he is in one of his fits. He refuses to ‘admit’ himself in a hospital and is worried about his wife “seeing him” with “fear” rather than “love”.

What’s more bothering here is how everything in this entire sequence is so unimaginative. All of the reasons for which he meets his extremes are so stereotypical. He breaks his friends head for merely telling him that he has a problem. He beats up people in a car park like a mad man left loose. He kills a poor dog. Even if I’d buy this for all of them are occurrences in the life of a man, his hallucinations are out of nowhere. There is no reason for why he is seeing what he is  seeing (a smoking kuduguduppandi-like person and a girl). To show us that these are hallucinations, these characters stand in the air and are coloured green. Duh! What’s even worse is that there is no apparent meaning to any of his hallucinations. If he is indeed hallucinating, why can’t writers think beyond two random characters. I am now thinking of Beautiful Mind and sighing. (Not to argue that Beautiful Mind is the best film in the world. Just the imagination of someone to fit one’s hallucinations into a film)

In the name of perspective

The entire film is shot from what I believe is a third person perspective. We are seeing the world not as Ram is seeing but as us watching from elsewhere. So, when Ram walks into the sea trying to reach Janani, I am not able to see it as someone suffering from lack of control over his emotions. I see it with fear that he is going to kill himself. All scenes where Ram hallucinates, loses his mind (and temper), hurts himself, I can never empathise with him because I am always wondering when he is going to hurt people around him.

If the intention of the film is to make the audience feel scared of someone with bipolar disorder, the aim is met. But if you want me to see it as a disorder that is bothering someone I know, you’ve lost your way by miles!

In the name of a film

This is just another flimsy attempt at showcasing a mental disorder that no one in the film making team has any idea about (or worse no experience with). Logical loopholes, perspective issues, meaningless conversations and irritating performances can all be dealt with if only Aishwarya R Dhanush had a vision about 3! Sadly, it falls apart!

Dhanush thaandavam!

With Kolaveri still doing the rounds, there is one thing about Dhanush that caught my attention last year. He has mastered a unique style of dance for himself and does that in every single hit song. Samples below.

See his performance at 0:59 seconds. This is Mayakkam Enna.

Watch this one from 0:29 seconds. He does that practically throughout the song after that! And this is the second song from the same film.

The award winning Aadukalam. This is one of the most popular ones. From 0:33 he is all Dhanush-thaandavam

Of all the contemporary song-and-dance-heroes in Tamil cinema, Dhanush is perhaps the only one I could attribute a definitive style of dance to. Something that seems to be working for him and something he seems to take pride in. What do you think?

Mayakkam Enna – the spin story

Mayakkam Enna is the story of a young man trying to make it big in a profession he claims to love. It is the story of an ordinary man, facing ordinary problems, living an ordinary life in the end to achieve extra ordinary things. In one line, it is good.

The story begins with Karthik (played truthfully by Dhanush) and his sister living with a few other friends in a nicely decorated house. These friends are said to have brought up Karthik and his sister after their parents passed away. Sunder (one of those friends) brings Yamini into the scene as his date (not girlfriend, mind you). She encounters the most asocial of men and supportive of women in the group. Karthik calls her names and ‘sparks’ fly.

As an amateur photographer (wanting to be a wildlife photographer) Karthik goes around taking pictures in weddings and death ceremonies. Discouraged many times, Karthik persists. In the mean time, Yamini develops interest in Karthik while she is still ‘dating’ Sunder. When Karthik realises he is reciprocating the feeling, he runs away. He returns, get caught in Yamini’s arms and then ends up marrying her.

Until here, the film is supposedly about friendship, love and the dilemma in between. The rest of the film is about how Karthik goes ballistic and then finally wins an award for wildlife photography.

Misogyny and some more of that

The film begins and ends with utter disregard for womankind. Every scene, every line uttered is bordering cheapness. All the glorification of womanhood in the second half is merely euphemised perpetuation of commonly accepted stereotypes. Let me explain.

Let’s begin with this song. It is self-explanatory. So, I am saving some words here. If you do not understand why “adida avala, udhada avala, vidra avala, thevaye illa” is misogyny, please use the comments section and I am very willing to explain.

There is a good serving of calling woman “di” in the film, a healthy measure of abusive language and a lot of slapping scenes. If that is not enough, the second half is filled with pseudo glorification of womanhood.

When Karthik falls off a balcony and his nuts grow loose (sorry about the insensitivity for the beautiful mind), Yamini is still married to him and how! Karthik struggles with dealing with his failures (or the world conspiring against his success as you may call it) and takes his frustration out on his wife. She endures domestic violence practically every day, yet sending out his pictures to the Kumudhams of the world. She cooks, cleans and works for him while he beats her black and blue. She satisfies his s3xual desires and he falls asleep on top of her. He screams in the night and wakes the neighbours, but she protects him from their complaints. The marriage is merely her enduring abuse.

If that is typical of woman in Tamil films, Mayakkam Enna goes one step further. Yamini has a miscarriage when Karthik pushes her on the floor and that is when Yamini realises she has had enough. If enduring a psycho at home wasn’t bad enough, she wanted a child to endure a psycho father. Personally, I would say it was good that the baby did not get to see the light of day. I wouldn’t want a child to see its father beat up its mother every night!

Well, Tamil culture, as we know it perhaps does not agree. Yamini returns from the hospital only to stop talking to Karthik for ‘killing’ their child. She does not leave him for almost killing her but merely stops talking to him. Then the man drops his violence and behaves himself.

So, a ‘strong’ Tamil woman accepts and physical and s3xual abuse as if it is in her job description. She still bears his child and wishes well for him. Roger that.

Mental (health)

Throughout the second half of the film, we see that there is something wrong with Karthik. Call it lack of control, lack of social skills, anger management issues or whatever, but nobody seems to believe there can be some kind of medical help given to that. Especially Yamini seems to be in some sort of denial about Karthik’s mental health. Well, that perhaps is also a part of being an ideal Tamil woman. Roger that too.

Real friends and their friendships

Apart from the one woman in the film, nobody else is God, which is as much irritating as endearing. Karthik ends up marrying Sunder’s date. Shankar wants to ‘keep’ Karthik’s wife. Sunder marries Karthik’s sister who is insecure of her own brother’s success. All their lives are intertwined in a complex way, which seems more real than anything else. Ordinary characters with simple problems: It has to be handed to Selvaraghavan for writing these characters.

In all, Mayakkam Enna is a man’s idea of how he should be nurtured while chasing his dreams. It is a man’s justification of his irrational behaviour in the name of social frustration. It is the story of a man whose wife does not have dreams of her own.

Aadukalam – the (un)fair playing field.

“Irene-u, I am lou you!” is one of those lines that will go down history books. And I mean it in a good way.

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

Rooster fights (from the suburbs of Madurai) haven’t been seen like this in Tamil cinema in a long time. A joyous first half establishing Karuppu (rather convincingly played by Dhanush) as a loyal happy-go-lucky ‘irresponsible’ youngster who is very tactful in training roosters for fights. Then, there is our lovely Irene (played by Taapsee Pannu? Is that her name? Like velai pannu, matter pannu, Taapsee pannu?) who is looking for ‘belonging’ (which she finds rather cinematically in Karuppu’s company). There is Durai (played by Kishore who I don’t seem to have watched much before) who seems to be so easily manipulated, that you wonder if the director hasn’t ever lived a ‘real life’. There is a Rathnasamy (played by Nareyn, says wikipedia) who is a uppukkuchappaani villain. There is Pettaikaaran who is finally the real villain. There are lots more Anglo-Indian people (who are Irene’s relatives), disoriented Policemen, drunk friends, submissive wives, disgruntled mothers etc. who make very little difference to the end product.

Image Courtesy: movies.sulekha.com

A poignant story of trust and betrayal placed in the rustic background of Madurai with characters that seem real, Aadukalam is indeed a film worth spending time and money on. Although I thought the love story of Karuppu and Irene is an accessory without purpose, it is very well executed and gives the viewer the few rare smiles in between. Each relationship in the film is very real, characters with whom you can make a connection! (that younger brother of Irene’s reminds me of my younger brother! Indeed a shame that we have come to speaking in English to each other!) The rooster fights are timed to perfection, long enough to keep you curious and not so long that you are bored. The crisp edits work wonders for those scenes.

GV Prakash seems to have got a sudden flash of music sense! ‘Yathe yathe’ and ‘otha sollala’ ring in my head even now! A surprise from GV, for sure!

As a delight to watch for 2 and a half hours, this film is surely not flawless. It is all about manipulation and betrayal in a way that sounds like nobody has even a tinge of intelligence. It needn’t have gone as far as it did (killing as many people on the way) if one person of all those people used basic intelligence! Blind trust could be the argument, but I don’t believe so many people fell for that one ploy.

The film is completely predictable. One can pretty much say what will happen next. But what works for the film is the fact that you hope your guess doesn’t come true. In all, a fresh film written with finesse and executed with interest, no doubt. But Betrimaaran hasn’t ventured too far. It is film very much within the boundaries of normal-regular-cliched Tamil cinema with songs, dance, fights, love story, righteous parents of the heroine, sacrificial girlfriend and a running away scene. Isn’t it high time we dropped the unnecessary adornment?

I’ve just got one question. Why do pretty, educated, English speaking, middle class women still run away with good-for-nothing ‘heroes’? Why ya why?