One of the pres­ti­gious and imme­di­ately avail­able jobs in my home­town was ‘sales­man’ in the local silk house [ ஜ‌வுளிக் க‌டை க‌ட‌ல்  :) ]. My uncle stopped work­ing as a sales­man when he hap­pened to hear the abu­sive words thrown at his col­league. Later, he worked as a sales­man in one of the ‘Setu’ shops at ele­phant gate for few years and their good rela­tion still con­tin­ues. I remem­ber the old Venkateswara empo­rium in NSC Bose road [ comes in the title sequence of old ‘Pol­lad­ha­van’ ] where all the sales­men were above 50 and shop­ping was an inter­est­ing n relaxed event those days.  It’s his­tory and we can’t even imag­ine now to get some­where closer to the sales counter in a busy shop.

 Dif­fer­ent back­drops always ele­vate the inter­est of read­ing a novel or watch­ing a story [ Pandi madam in Sedhu ]. I remem­ber one such Bal­aku­maran novel entirely based on the ven­dors of trade fair in island grounds. We know many such back­drops like beedi work­ers, indus­trial estate / SIPCOT work­ers, export gar­ment, work­ers in east­ern coun­tries, elec­tric train com­muters etc., Vas­an­tha­balan has tried one such movie with the back­drop of a big store in ran­ganathan street and shown us a dif­fer­ent world [ def­i­nitely a bet­ter world than “Naan Kadavul” ].

 Once Mysskin explained how a main script can devi­ate from the story and have a sub plot ex : Gana Ula­ganathan explains his love in ‘Chithi­ram pesud­hadi’ which is not related to the main story. How­ever, Vas­an­tha­balan has tried to col­late all such sub plots and present it. Hence the story doesn’t travel in one sin­gle direc­tion [ like Pud­hu­pet­tai, Katrathu Thamizh ].

Story :

 More than the story, it’s the life exist­ing in a dif­fer­ent world — Work­ers of a hyper­mar­ket in Chen­nai and their life.

 View :

 The only idea I liked about Veyyil was the theme of nar­rat­ing a fail­ure, which nobody vol­un­teers to nar­rate. The main char­ac­ter is a tragic fail­ure in life and apart from that the movie roamed every­where. It’s the way Vas­an­tha­balan is and hence his sto­ries. Like Thi.Ja once said, that he writes what he knows and experiences [ என‌க்கு அம்மாமி ப‌த்திதான் தெரியும் ஆத்தாள்க‌ளைப் ப‌ற்றி அல்ல‌ ].

 The best con­trib­u­tor of this film is the dia­log writer Jayamo­han and Vas­an­tha­balan for mak­ing few best sequences told on screen. The dia­log writer has cap­tured the max­i­mum pos­si­ble nat­ural con­ver­sa­tions that can hap­pen in that world and of course they are inter­est­ing. The story has many char­ac­ters and their own inter­est­ing short stories.

 Every char­ac­ter and their parts are explained with max­i­mum pos­si­ble sym­bols. [ hanger sym­bols in the title,Kolam, Legs, Sneha pho­tos, uni­forms ]. The best per­former is the lead char­ac­ter ‘Kani’ [ Anjali ]. Every­body else has done their part well like Magesh, his friend Marimuthu, Annachi [Pazha.karuppiah –it’s not his first film.. he has acted ear­lier as a judge in a Vijaykanth movie ], Super­vi­sor [ A.Venkatesh ] etc., I liked almost all the petty char­ac­ters that come along the movie. Some of the sequences resem­ble the other movie ‘Poo’.

 Direc­tor knows [ mostly ! ] how to han­dle tragedies and leaves every­thing else in soup [ Songs, com­i­cal moments, crisp nar­ra­tion ]. Hence the story trav­els mostly in the tragedy side. Though he shows ‘hope’ also, only the sad part of the story stays with us. How­ever, it is a new n watch­able plot. The audi­ence never like them to be ques­tioned [ like Mahanadhi ] — either they need a solu­tion or some inter­est­ing /fantasy cli­max at least [ like Indian ]. Once the direc­tor of “Ozama” was asked why he ended film trag­i­cally. He answered that orig­i­nally he had a pos­i­tive cli­max but after film­ing the entire story he said there is no room for hope in that happening.

 Except the song “aval appadi” [sig­na­ture lines of Na.Muthukumar, beau­ti­fully sung by Prasanna ] the music is aver­agely done and some­times don’t sync with the movie. Songs are just humps in the movie and they check our patience.  IMO,  I couldn’t go with the story as the work­ers in real­ity have mul­ti­ple options and bet­ter pack­ages. Too much of tragic char­ac­ters like the olden day sto­ries of KB [ Aval oru tho­dark­ad­hai ] — remem­ber the story nar­ra­tion of Sathyan to Sathyaraj :).

 The back­drop and the char­ac­ters are def­i­nitely new to us and that’s all. The movie is not pack­aged well. Though some of sequences are excel­lent and very inter­est­ing, it ends up like watch­ing mul­ti­ple ven­dors in an elec­tric train. If this movie goes well [ I doubt ! ] Ayn­garan may plan to release Nandalala [ ஒரு ந‌ப்பாசை தான் ].

 -Toto.

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