ந‌ம்முடைய‌ க‌தைக்க‌ள‌ம் பிர‌ப‌ல‌ ந‌டிக‌ர்க‌ளை விடுத்து, ந‌க‌ர‌த்தின் பிர‌ம்மாண்ட‌ம் விடுத்து வாழ்க்கையின் எதார்த்த‌ம் தேடிப் போகும்போது தான் தமிழின் அச‌லான‌ திரைப்ப‌ட‌ம் தோன்றும். -‍ “பேசும் ப‌ட‌ம்” செழிய‌ன்.
 

None of the 5 star hotels will be able to repro­duce the sim­ple irani chai what we have in a sim­ple tea stall [ புத்தி போகுதா பாரு ]. Sim­i­larly, a sim­ple movie does the biggest magic, what multi-crore bud­get movies fail to do. ந‌ல்ல‌ சினிமா த‌ரும் ச‌ந்தோஷ‌மே த‌னி. Peo­ple who watch cin­ema beyond enter­tain­ment value under­stands this.

 It’s always chal­leng­ing to cap­ture the minute feel­ings of a girl in cel­lu­loid. What KB did was noth­ing but gim­micks. In fact, he degraded the value of a girl – his heroes always have 2 or more affairs. Even the very few women direc­tors fail to cap­ture the true girl from life. A ser­ial did that to a great extent – PENN, a tele-serial directed by Suhasini .I liked the episode of Revathy wherein she real­izes her rela­tion­ship with her mother Sriv­idya, after mar­riage. Any­how, all the fic­tion girl’s life is extended until city lim­its and not beyond.

 
Though I stopped Bal­aku­maran long back, he was the first one to define love as mutual con­cern [ mutual fund illainga.. ப‌ர‌ஸ்ப‌ர‌ அக்க‌றை]. When a girl/boy thinks that the other soul has to be happy, be in peace, irre­spec­tive of their con­di­tions, that’s the actual affec­tion. All the great world cin­e­mas share the same stuff – uncon­di­tional love [ like the mother supe­rior in Anbe Sivam ]. Though I am not a fan of woman ori­ented films [ not a fan of ‘Aval appadi thaan’ ], POO fas­ci­nated me very much. It’s the best ever depic­tion of a girl’s char­ac­ter in cel­lu­loid, so far.

 
Once, Mysskin asked Naaser that why ‘Anjathey’ is not get­ting appre­ci­ated to its actual level. Naaser replied that if the indus­try praises your movie as the best in script and direc­tion, what hap­pens to their ear­lier prod­ucts. BR asked Ameer – நீ காட்டின‌து தான்யா கிராம‌ம்.. Obvi­ously, we ask what BR showed us then ?! POO makes the same impact – Our hero­ines in vil­lage are shown till now in films, but not a true vil­lage girl is shown on screen.

A big bou­quet to the direc­tor Sasi !

Poo — 2008/Drama/Tamil

Cast : Par­vathy menon, Srikanth

Music : SSKumaran

Pho­tog­ra­phy : PGMuthiah

Writ­ten & directed by : Sasi

Story : Based on a short story ‘Vey­ilodu poi’ by S.Tamilselvan. Came 18 yrs back

Plot

 The story is about the mag­nan­i­mous n deep love of Mari on Thangarasu, right from child­hood. She is a dar­ing vil­lage girl who just ded­i­cated her entire life think­ing about Thangarasu. Even in her class, she tells the teacher that her life time ambi­tion is to “become the best half of Thangarasu”! But Thangarasu goes out of the vil­lage to purse engi­neer­ing stud­ies. It’s the dream of his father ‘penakaarar’ to get his son a degree. Socially there’s a big gap between them, though they are relatives.

She is accom­pa­nied by her friend ‘Cheeni’, a co-worker of her age in the fire­works fac­tory. She is the all-in-all for Mari. Mari hes­i­tates to express her uncon­di­tional n true love to Thangaraasu. Mean­while, Thangarasu’s father gets into some other sit­u­a­tion. What hap­pens to them in life is to be expe­ri­enced in the emo­tional journey.

View

The first credit goes to Dhanan­jeyan, CEO of Moser­bear for boldly com­ing for­ward to pro­duce this movie. Of course, it’s purely a director’s movie – sim­ply and poet­i­cally por­trayed film. Sasi did a fab­u­lous job in main­tain­ing the con­tent and for the bril­liant treat­ment. It’s not so easy to knit a story with a girl’s per­spec­tive and her minute thoughts/feelings.

The suc­cess of a direc­tor is to bring the good­ness of the story inter­est­ingly in the script. Trust me; this sim­ple story has too many unno­tice­able twists. If you expect a char­ac­ter to behave in a pat­tern, they don’t and exactly the oppo­site, when you don’t expect. It’s full of sur­prises. Sasi had never been to those vil­lage setup in Rajapalayam/Sivagangai areas – in fact, he was brought up mostly in Salem and Chennai !

Script writer Sig­field says that once you build the char­ac­ter biog­ra­phy of dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters, the inci­dents auto­mat­i­cally falls in the cor­rect places of the script. Espe­cially the char­ac­ter biog­ra­phy of Mari.. Even she can­not tell why she cares for him so much. Mari’s total body shiv­ers, the moment she sees Thangarasu.. Her walk col­lapses, her eyes become rest­less, speech becomes blab­ber­ing – Stun­ning expressions.

The script is extra­or­di­nary.. As I say, one shouldn’t know the story of any movie, before watch­ing it. Because the direc­tor plant so many twists / turns in the sim­ple hap­pen­ings. No audi­ence would be able to pre­dict what Maari is going to react in every sit­u­a­tion. The beauty of the Mari char­ac­ter is : Inspite of know­ing all the dif­fi­cul­ties, inequal­i­ties with Thangarasu, she deeply n madly loves him – uncon­di­tional. Her affec­tion is not based on money, beauty, lust but a mere n strongest con­cern about him. She gets rest­less in a scene where Thangaraasu just clears his throat. I find it very dif­fi­cult to digest her char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. Her var­ied expres­sions, dia­logue deliv­ery and body lan­guage are quite com­mend­able. There’s a scene where she for­gets a cell phone num­ber and rec­ol­lects when see­ing Thangaraasu.. Bril­liant expressions !

You know what.. till the end, she doesn’t even shed a sin­gle drop of tear for what­ever the pain she under­goes. She weeps only once in the film.

Thangarasu, his father Penakarar, Cheeni [ excel­lent char­ac­ter ], School vaad­hyaar, Alo tea kadai owner, his wife, Maari’s mother [ I was really shocked to see such an orig­i­nal vil­lage mother on screen ], Maari’s brother, super­vi­sor in the fire­works com­pany, oil mill owner – every­one does the jus­tice to their char­ac­ter with neat performances.

Com­ing to Zham­ing Yimou.. I watched a Chi­nese movie ‘ The road home’ [ ஆர‌ம்பிச்சிட்டாண்டா ! உல‌க‌ சினிமாவை ! ]. The Chi­nese film had some sim­i­lar sequences with the girl [ ஆஹா..அது பொண்ணு.] – where she daily waits on the way where hero passes on. She becomes extra­or­di­nar­ily happy just at the sight of him. Finest movie with a fan­tas­tic back­ground score. In fact, POO ‘s BGM also car­ries the same tune. I really admire Sasi’s sin­cer­ity to acknowl­edge the film, from which he got inspirations.

The way the direc­tor has used the land­scape [ the 2 palm trees in the above photo are used as char­ac­ters !! ] with the help of cin­e­matog­ra­pher P.G.Muthiah is note­wor­thy. Some of the dia­logues are per­fectly sharp, sen­si­tive, and real­is­tic. He effec­tively uses silence too. It’s good that Srikanth didn’t do any­thing in this movie – he just under­played his role.

Con­clu­sion

Sub­ra­ma­nia­pu­ram – vio­lence = POO. The direc­tor doesn’t even show a sin­gle flower in the movie, though he had this title. The inten­tion is to have the fra­grance of the movie, even after the end. There were some flaws but I con­sider this movie as the finest in this cat­e­gory of movies. Great mis­take .. I missed to watch this film in the­atre [ க‌ண் அச‌ந்த‌ போது க‌ட‌ந்து போன‌ க‌ட‌வுள்- Effect of Na.Muthukumar’s aana avaana poem col­lec­tion]. Unfor­tu­nately, this movie didn’t even run for 100 days.

ம‌ழை நின்ற‌ பின்னும்
ம‌ர‌க்கிளை இன்னும்
மெதுவாய்த் தூறும். — ‍நா.முத்துக்குமார்.

‘பூ’ இன்னும் என் ம‌ன‌தில் வாச‌னையோடு தூறிக்கொண்டு இருக்கிற‌து.

–Toto.

Related Posts B

1. Mem­oirs of a geisha — Colour­ful visual.