BEHINDWOODS CELEBRITY COLUMN

My ready reckoner to decide on catching Tamizh movie releases comes from my younger brother who watches most big releases on the opening weekend itself. He represents the typical youth of Chennai who like million others have that trait of not over-analysing the nuances of frames, continuity jumps, minor directorial flaws or expecting heroines to act. He watches a film with the expectation of any normal moviegoer and takes it or trashes it for the overall movie experience. But good, bad or hideous, he will watch anyway and give his verdict only when asked for his opinion. So when I ask him how a particular movie is so I can decide if it’s worth my two and a half hours of time, energy and money, he gives me three grades of answers depending on how the movie was. If he says ‘Taaru maara irukku”, the film in all likelihood will be a mass hit and worth leaving your work and brains behind and go catch for the sheer fun of being entertained. If he says “Padukevalam”, I don’t even bother to make plans to self-torture myself to just see how terrible the movie is. If he leniently says “Oru dharava paakkalaam”, it means the film could’ve made it big had it not been for those lagging scenes in between, mediocre songs and negligible humour.

While I wait for him to give his verdict on ‘Veeram’ and ‘Jilla’, based on his thumbs up there was one film that I saw as the last movie of 2013 and then again as the first movie of 2014 since there were two different groups that wanted to see the film. And gladly I didn’t mind watching a film for the second time, something that is as exceptional a case as a ‘hot’ polar vortex. The movie being the much raved, reviewed and lauded ‘Kalyana Samayal Saadham’. If there’s someone like my brother who doesn’t question the logic of why a bride would inauspiciously remove the wedding mehendi that she so enjoys / flaunts in one scene to the maruthaani in South Indian style the next scene and with no color traces of either of the style the next day at her muhurtham, I belong to that clan that frowns at such creative liberties or complacency that good films as this sometimes take and let the bar of a perfect film down. But the good thing about this film was strikingly one consistent thread all through the narration. It was a ‘dare-you-to-attempt-this-subject’ film that shattered all stereotypes of portraying a hero with a delicate issue that questioned his very manhood as against the typical 10 goon bashing stud single-handedly, a tam-brahm heroine usually shown in half-saree in every possible movie who is otherwise casually clad in mini shorts discussing the prospective groom sitting in the kitchen slab with her mother doing her chore or the most naturally performed US returned friend who gives a piece of his mind to the confused hero about his love by moving away from the clichéd friend of the groom who either turns a villain to break the marriage or ends up eloping with the bride.

I heaved a huge sigh of relief when a South Indian family belonging to a tam-brahm community was accurately portrayed like normal families of today. Bollywood probably has a lot to learn from such true-to-reality portrayal than showing those tyrannical goons, thugs wearing half the rings of a jewellery store rack and Tamizh women in Kerala kasavu sarees visiting a temple that has Perumal in the sanctorum and a priest with horizontal pattai on his forehead offering viboothi! Phew! So much for all that research about South Indians and misguiding the rest of India as South Indians eating Noodles with curd by hand! And in a world ruled by sheer marketing than the product, those are the movies that go on to make hysterical collections at the box office nevertheless. So the makers still had the last laugh all the way to their banks.

Numbers and collections shouldn’t matter to us if we’ve no return on the film’s investment or been a part of it. All that matters is coming out of a movie hall and feeling good about how a director has managed to keep us engrossed and make us leave the hall with a smile or a thought or a light heart by showing us atypical content beyond what Indian cinema has churned for a century now. That respite from stereotype is our return on investment we make in taking the pains to watch a movie. It’s high time we urge film-makers and creative-interfering (oops should it be contributing) heroes to break away from labeling, classifying and crafting the roles in a yawning portrayal of clichéd character artists, heroes, heroines and the whole system in which the story is set like people have never evolved. It’s time to tastefully explore the changing culture and time that has played a major part in refining people’s way of living, behavior, attitude and mindset. We definitely need more films that are a mirror of today’s times with a dash of spunk and off-beat touch to the role, story, narration and the entire film’s presentation. Probably then we can proudly give our verdict after watching the film and say ‘Taaru Maara Irukku’.