ஒரு ந‌ட்பு .. ஒரு காத‌ல்.. சில‌ துரோக‌ங்க‌ள்.

In 1985, 3 dif­fer­ent films of great direc­tors came simul­ta­ne­ously with sur­pris­ingly the same story line — A mid­dle aged man’s extra-marital friend­ship with another girl. Sindhu bhairavi [ Nov-11–1985 : KB ], Mud­hal mariyaad­hai [ Jan-01–1985 : BR ] and Chinna veedu [ Nov-11–1985 : Bhag­yaraj ]. The dif­fer­ence is how they worked out the script and visu­al­ized the story. Sim­i­larly, Pitham­a­gan, Paruthi veeran and Sub­ra­ma­nia­pu­ram have com­mon char­ac­ters, love and story but the way the stiry is treated, made all 3 unique and spe­cial. A thug, his lover [ school going or poly­tech­nic — ren­dum onnu dhaan :) ], another rus­tic friend with no lover, Thiru­vizhaa, the killings, no mod­ern gad­gets, gory mur­ders, the cli­max, Madu­rai, theni, Kamudhi are com­mon in these movies. Coin­ci­den­tally, they share the Guru sishyan chain.. Bala — Ameer — Sasikumar.

For me, includ­ing a cell phone makes a big dif­fer­ence in the script. If cell phone was used by Ajith and Devayani in Kad­hal kotai, there wouldn’t ve been a chance for such a dra­matic cli­max. Direc­tor Sasiku­mar clev­erly avoided this gad­get tor­tures by tak­ing the story to 1980s. How­ever, he was so metic­u­lous in using almost all the pos­si­ble ele­ments of 1980s.. not only the bell bot­tom pants and ‘kazhud­hai kaadhu ’ col­lar shirts. What a nice thought !.

Have you ever won­dered why young­sters in Madu­rai were so much involved in cin­ema n pol­i­tics ?! I remem­ber one arti­cle ana­lyzed this and con­cluded that there were no indus­tries came up in Madu­rai region [ like BHEL in Trichy, LC in Neyveli, SAIL in Salem, Mills in Coim­bat­ore ] and hence the peo­ple were attracted to cin­ema and pol­i­tics, dur­ing the period men­tioned in this movie. This story revolves around 5 job­less young­sters in a small time vil­lage and their experiences.

Story

The story, set in the 1980s, hap­pens in a town called Sub­ra­ma­nia­pu­ram, a sub­urb of the city. It is built around 5 friends, impor­tantly Azha­gar, Para­man and Kasi. They are job­less and involve in small time street fights and become vis­i­tors to the local police sta­tion. An ex-councilor and his fam­ily stays in the same area, help­ing the friends gang in needy times. Azha­gar falls in love with the councilor’s daugh­ter Thu­lasi. Insults and iso­la­tion trig­gers the events in the rest of the story. We never know how a change hap­pens in life and why we undergo changes. Whether we accept or not, it happens !

View :

The film starts with a dark n rainy day out of Madu­rai Jail. All the great movies use flash­back effec­tively. That attracts us to get into the story. [ Remem­ber Muthal mariyad­hai open­ing scene — Why Malaichamy the­var sickly lies in a cot of an iso­lated river­side hut !! ]. Sim­i­larly, Who comes out of the jaiil, What hap­pens when he is released kind of ques­tions.. In the pre­vi­ous days, films starts with a song con­sid­er­ing late com­ing audi­ences [ ப‌ட‌ம் ஆரம்பிச்சி ரொம்ப‌ நேர‌ம் ஆச்சுங்க‌ளா.. [ நேர‌ம் ஆகி இருந்தாலும் ].. இல்லைங்க‌.. இப்ப‌ம் தான்.. ஒரு 5 நிமிச‌ம் இருக்கும்.. காலை மிதிக்க‌றீங்க‌ பிர‌த‌ர்.. :) ]. The movie then trav­els from 2008 to 1980.

The three ele­ments shown in the film are friend­ship, love and perfidy.

Friend­ship part is shown so nat­u­rally. The 5 friends Azha­gar, Para­man, Kasi, Dopu, Dumkaan spend time in Sithan sound ser­vices. For me, drink­ing tea or hav­ing a fag can depict the friend­ship flu­idly [ that’s what we do when we gather.. டீ சொல்டா ம‌ச்சான்.. அப்டியே 2 கிங்ஸ்..] They are job­less but happy. They spend their qual­ity time in Sithan’s shop, local bar, bus stand, tea shop, cin­ema the­atre. But every­one has their own idea about liv­ing. Azha­gar falls in love with Thu­lasi. Para­man some­how doesn’t accept this as she is from the ex-councilor’s fam­ily. They believe that the fam­ily helps them dur­ing trou­bles. The beauty is they don’t even own a cycle — they use sithan’s cycle. This shows their social sta­tus and been used later clev­erly when they take another cycle for a pur­pose. Para­man angrily gets involved in when­ever Azha­gar falls in any trou­ble and they are very close friends except Para­man warns Azha­gar about his love.

Love : The bur­den of telling a love tale is reduced tremen­dously when you have the right cast­ing in place. Swathi was the per­fect choice for Thu­lasi and her eyes do more then what the direc­tor wanted to con­vey [ Swathi vand­haa Sasikumar-i marand­hudu­ven :) ]. Azha­gar and Thu­lasi share very less dia­logues in the film. Some­times, a song can speak for the direc­tor and Kan­gall Iran­daal song speak vol­umes of their love. Watch out for the fan­tas­tic cos­tumes worn by the Azha­gar and Thu­lasi in the song. [ Thaa­vani and blouse are in same colour as in 1980s.. Saamee ! ].

Betrayal: In the out­look, every­one was play­ing their part quite well. The char­ac­ters are intro­duced with their mind­set and qual­i­ties.. For exam­ple.. Kasi favours peo­ple of his caste and in need of money, always. But when there’s an issue every­thing gets dif­fer­ent and the prob­lem begins from there. And the con­se­quences were shock­ing and gory. The trig­ger comes from the ex-Counselor’s wife insult­ing him and the cas­cad­ing effect in the fam­ily. Kanagu men­tions this as ‘Pom­bal­ainga kooda mad­hikalainaa apram enna’. This trig­gers the team and the rest changes their lives. The betrayal is shown when the victim(s) stop oppos­ing what hap­pens to them like Azha­gar, Para­man, Kan­jaa karuppu, Kanagu, Thu­lasi. It’s not just one betrayal but it’s a chain. Kanagu expresses anger, insult, pain, vengeance, cun­ning­ness flu­idly in his eyes, body lan­guage and per­for­mance. The betrayal makes us stun­ning as the char­ac­ters become motion­less and express their inabil­ity to digest the treachery.

I favour the best part as the screen­play and the cast­ing. Direc­tor Sasi has done a won­der­ful n bold job.

What are the ele­ments you can think of 1980s ? Paavadai tha­vani, bell bot­tom, rip­pled hair style, bearded young­sters, Rajinikanth cin­ema, Lamby scooter, wired chair, green ambas­sadar car, Radio news and Saroj Narayan­swamy, Idhayak kani MGR rik­shaw stand, Ila­yaraja songs, LP records [ Melodies of Yesu­doss ], large cone shaped speak­ers, betro­max lights, Sol­idaire 4 band TV with dis­torted images and dots [ we had tri-coloured adi­tional screen for a BW TV, TV antenna at the height of a euca­lyp­tus tree, boost­ers :) ], Thi­raigaanam, Neyar virup­pam, adver­tise­ment in cycle bar area, Photo stu­dios with flower designs back­ground, ret­tai jadai and rib­bon [ Rib­bon vacha ore hero­ine — thani para-la vachikkaren ], Maha­lak­shmi dol­lar, jimiki, big buck­led belt, cin­ema posters, wall adver­tise­ments [ eye­tex / tor­toise / nara­sus cof­fee ], cof­fee bar with fam­ily rooms, sithan sound ser­vices, Jatkaa, cycles. These obser­va­tions are the suc­cess of the art direc­tor Rembon.B and cos­tumer K.Natarajan [ New guys ]. Though it’s illog­i­cal for the local guys to have such a great wardrobe, we can ignore it in the name of appre­ci­ati­ing the taste.

Music.. IR is a music­pe­dia.. Any­one can refer his music, songs in any of the Tamil films. The film starts with a seri­ous title music with show­ing the shady n dark night life of Madu­rai [ Sim­i­lar to one shown in “Kaad­hal” ]. Apart from the mes­meris­ing songs, James used IR’s ‘Siru pon­mani asaiyum’ so aptly in this movie for the lovers and the Muratu Kaalai song for a cel­e­bra­tion in the threatre. Watch­ing Rajini movie’s first show is def­i­nitely a cel­e­bra­tion. I eas­ily for­got the ‘Kallukull eeram’ ver­sion of Siru pon­mani asiyum and remem­ber this [ Sim­i­larly, I relate Mam­bazhaam maam­bazam Vijay song to Anjathey’s area light music party — Sathya.. Sarakku saapduvamaa :) ].

The hero­ine intro­duc­tion is so poetic with the bits from Kan­gall iran­daal song in piano and flute and of course, the most catchy song in the film [ “pEsa enni sila naall” line resem­bles “Thani­may­ile oru raagam” song — of course, we can leave this as the com­po­si­tion is for 1980s ]. Sim­i­larly, the Thiru­vizhaa sequence [ the black humour cre­ates a sag in the movie ] score is good. James Vas­an­than did a won­der­ful job in his debut film.

Thu­lasi. the hero­ine with “i-max” eyes and a beau­ti­ful smile :).. I bet­ter take the help of Na.Muthukumar to talk about her.
க‌றுப்பு வெள்ளை பூக்க‌ள் உண்டா
உன் க‌ண்ணில் நான் க‌ண்டேன்.. உன் க‌ண்க‌ள்
வ‌ண்டை உண்ணும் பூக்க‌ள் என்பேன்.. ‍ ‍ நா.முத்துக்குமார்.

Cin­e­matog­ra­pher, SRKathir did a sparkling job, catch­ing the true colours of the town. In fact, it’s not only the story of the peo­ple but also about their town. There’s a chas­ing scene where Azha­gar and kasi are chased by some other gang. That’s one of the finest chases in gul­lies of a vil­lage with an appro­pri­ate back­ground score. Except the lengthy Thiru­vizhaa scene, every­thing else per­fectly fits the movie. There’s long walk by Kasi in the intro­duc­tion and the same long walk is clev­erly used at the end of the movie. One of the most stun­ning cli­maxes, I have ever seen.

Every scene and dia­log is care­fully penned and used to con­nect one or the other part of the movie. The movie has an ele­ment of sus­pense too. Also, the dia­log car­ries the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the char­ac­ters activ­i­ties. Every frame shows the metic­u­lously worked script and exe­cu­tion. Even the fights [ fights with rick­shaw dri­vers and local thugs in the the­atre .. Stunts by : Rajasekar ] were depicted with a nat­ural effect. Thanks to the mas­ter for not cheap­en­ing the fights with sil­am­bat­tam or maan kombu fights :). ந‌ல்ல‌ வேளை..ஜ‌ல்லிக்க‌ட்டு / ரேக்ளா ரேஸ் எல்ல‌ம் வ‌ச்சி ஹிம்சிக்க்லைங்க‌ !

It’s eas­ier to under­stand the movie when you watch it for the sec­ond time. I watched this movie in a the­atre and the whole crowd was jump­ing and shout­ing for most of the scenes.. Siru pon­mani asaiyum song, Kan­galla iran­daal song, the revenge, Sub­ra­ma­nia­pu­ram theme song. The crowd cheers for the gori­est mur­der too. The film has been released in DVD for­mat from Moserbaer.

When I had a chat with Sude­samithran, he men­tioned that Sasiku­mar is from a wealthy fam­ily [ owns a the­atre it seems ] and the film was shot in 16mm cam­era [ a low bud­get for­mat ! ]. Shankar trav­elled to Los Angels to pick n train the 3rd row dancers for Style song in Sivaji in AVM’s bud­get.. Enna kodu­mai Sir idhu ??!!

I remem­ber see­ing Para­man chas­ing Thu­lasi in the trailer as well as in the posters. But it is not shown in theatre/DVD. i don’t know what hap­pens to Thulasi ??!!

Towards the end Para­man says this..

நாலு காசு ச‌ம்பாதிக்க‌லைன்னாலும் ச‌ந்தோஷ‌மாத் தான‌டா திரிஞ்சோம்..

How true it is ! I remem­ber a good friend recently rec­ol­lect­ing his ear­lier days and asked ‘Why the hell did we grow ?! “. Whether we accept or not, it happens !

:)

–Toto.

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1. Kallavaani — Fra­grant Frangipani