Mani­van­nan asks in one of the films, about what hap­pens to the lovers after they cross the river / bridge or the state. [ The irony is that he wrote “Alaigall oyvathillai” ]. Alaipyuthey has exposed the other side of the coin — post mar­riage session.

 Let me begin from the title. Mani­rat­nam [ Sir ! ] always use pure Tamil words and a short title [ with a nice selec­tion of font ].The title is not exactly for the stand point of the lead pair but the entire con­cept — unset­tled or back and forth. Even the script is tried as shuf­fling between present and flash­backs. This is reflected in almost all the shots.

The story is the sim­plest pos­si­ble story that’s told the nth time on Tamil screen. I was lit­tle upset that the direc­tor of direc­tors has moved towards Hindi cin­ema and a larger mar­ket after Roja.  This was a con­sol­ing effort that just hap­pens in our native area. A pair get­ting mar­ried oppos­ing their fam­i­lies. The script is done both by R.Selvaraj and Mani­rat­nam. The entire pack­ag­ing is a com­mend­able expe­ri­ence but let me try to touch upon few nuances which I liked very much.

Cap­i­tal­ism meets Com­mu­nism: The 2 par­ents meet for the first time and watch out for the excel­lent and crisp dia­logues which express the char­ac­ters’ nature very flu­ently. Varadara­jan gen­er­ally com­ments about the same look of rail­way quar­ters where Sel­varaj. Sel­varaj says that the way mid­dle class lives in. The sar­cas­tic dia­logues of Varadra­jan and the def­ne­sive replies of Sel­varaj not only expose their agony with fam­i­lies but the way a com­mu­nist expresses his views against an upper class lawyer. The way Sel­varaj is por­trayed as com­mu­nist is by few red­books [ IBM ille :) ] and men­tion­ing his name as “Thozar” once. The other exam­ple of char­ac­ter biog­ra­phy is that there’s a dia­log about the hair type of 2 sis­ters and their char­ac­ter type. You know.. Shalini’s house and the hos­pi­tal were sets. An excel­lent work by art direc­tor Raghavan.

Loca­tions.. Except Istan­bul in the film Guru and Sri­lanka in Kan­nathil Muthami­taal, Mani­rat­nam never shot any unwanted songs or sequences in any of the for­eign loca­tions. “Sep­tem­ber Mad­ham” song was shot in Port Blair and the pleas­ing “Sne­hid­hane” song was shot in Mahesh­war, Mad­hya Pradesh. I have never seen that exotic loca­tion again in big screen. The song itself is a poem and it also expresses the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the char­ac­ters — a con­fi­dent girl and lov­ing hus­band. If you watch closely [ adhaane namma velai ! ], the lines from the song gets it pic­tur­i­sa­tion in the other song “Kad­hal Sadugudu” [ Und­han sat­tai, nee kullikkaiyil ].

Chez­ian [ he assisted PC in this film ] once explained the  mak­ing of “Sne­hid­hane” song in Magesh­war and the other song “Yaaro Yaar­odi”. he explains that the way the song pic­tur­i­sa­tion goes with the speed, beats and the lev­els of the music. The light­ing was taken care accord­ingly. Coin­ci­den­tally, the sun­light gets cov­ered by clouds when the line comes as “Gar­vam Azhind­had­hadi” [ kon­jam over dhaan ! ]. I expected “Vasee­gara” from Min­nale in this level of pic­tur­i­sa­tion and it was shot like just another junk song

The Sne­hid­hane song took 3 days and the other good song “Yaaro yaar­odi” was fin­ished in 7 hours. The steady cam and crane was com­bined to have a fast pace accord­ing to the song. One of the sim­plest mar­riages shown on screen — this was also shot in Magesh­war. The col­ors shown in “Pachai nirame” was fab­u­lous and none of them were done with CG. I like a shot wherein Mad­ha­van alights in Ker­ala — shown from a river bank. The beauty of Mani­rat­nam film songs are that they carry the story to the next scene and move along with the film.

The assis­tant direc­tor Azhagam Peru­mal comes as a friend and his dia­logues are a great one. Inter­est­ingly, the other per­son who inquires a con­flict at rail­way sta­tion was “Susi Gane­san”. The asso­ciate direc­tor UVBaani [ worked as asso­ciate in Idhay­athai Thiru­dathey – another clas­sic ! ] did the post pro­duc­tion for this film.

The shot where they sign the mar­riage reg­is­tar is shown in dark depict­ing that as a secret mar­riage — it was told by PCSri­ram once. The good thing in my opin­ion is that Sujatha was givena break from Mani­rat­nam com­bi­na­tion. He didn’t write much about this film except that he liked few scenes. Katrad­hum Petrad­hum some­times worked as pro­mo­tion for the films he worked with [ Craps like Anniyan ].

This film is one of the finest exam­ples of great tech­ni­cians Mani­rat­nam and PCSri­ram; they never pre­sented any­thing as flat as it is. Mani­rat­nam  is like Sachin and they never speak but their per­for­mance speaks a lot for them.

Yaaru.. theriyud­haa ???!!!

Happy watch­ing

:)

Toto.

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