There have been very few Indian films which has dealt with - leave alone exploring-the taboo that it is according to the sensibilities of our society "the illness of the humanmind". Kudos to the first time director of the movie "3" Aishwarya Dhanush for choosingto tread this almost uncharted territory, and giving an expression to a love, a lovethat swirls out of the murkiness of that human mind which is in conflict with itself. Thedirector deserves all the adulation that she is getting for expressing such a love in apure cinematic form which is poetical in its own way. The movie is sure quite out ofthe ordinary for the very theme it chooses to express, and its way beyond the ordinarywhen it comes to the performances of all the characters, especially that of the leadingcharacters Ram and Janani played by Dhanush and Shruthi.
The movie starts with a confusing melodramatic scene in which people are showngrieving Ram's death and you see this impeccable actor that Shruthi has turned out intolying on a sofa with her eyes open, her eyes have nothing to say but the blankness thatshe has become after a shock of some kind, probably the gravity of the fact that Ram isno more has pulled her into some kind of deep void, and after a while you hear 'Ram'svoice over' ringing out the name "Janani" with an invisible painting brush strokingthe title '3' on the screen, accompanied by an amazing background score by AnirudhRavichandran and the movie has hardly begun and you know this movie is going to besomething.
People who are so used to seeing things as just black and white, and who have verylittle understanding of the human mind and the myriad ways it finds to express itselfmight get confused by this grey patch the director of the movie "3" has rubbed herhands against at. But this movie undoubtedly makes one aware of the fact that, humanmind even after all these years of research that it has been subjected to still remains as
intriguing as it was, when man first came to an understanding of its supposed existence,and took the first little steps into that tenebrous matrix hoping to understand it better.The movie "3" in a big way tries to bring about an awareness about the existenceof certain kinds of minds and the way those minds need to be looked at. Accordingto a report published by The national institute of Mental Health and Neuro science(NIMHANS) in 2011, there are at least 2 crore people in our country (Almost the Entirepopulation of Australia) suffering from mental disorders of various kinds.
Dhanush's depiction of the contrasting, confusing altercation in moods as a patientwho suffers from Bi-Polar disorder in the climax is easily an "Epic Act", whichis worthy of any award that man has instituted to praise an artist for mastering the arthe endeavored to excel in, and the movie "3" is easily one of his best films. When theend titles roll you leave the theater with such a heavy heart for Janani and you are insuch a deep thought as to how it would actually feel like to be in the shoes of Ram,and you look around yourself for a moment only to realize you are surrounded by a seaof different human minds, and you have already started to see the world in a new light.Go watch the movie in the theater, if you are a student of psychiatry don't miss it foranything this week end.
My rating for this movie is 4/5.