Silent Monk – Mouna Guru

When I was com­ing out after watch­ing a crap movie, a guy was ask­ing his friend — Machaan.. What was the last good film we watched ?! Do you know the basic expec­ta­tion of a reg­u­lar cin­ema fan while park­ing his two wheeler in the lot ? Sim­ple. At least this movie has to ful­fill what he sin­cerely pays for, in a the­atre. I haven’t got that basic expec­ta­tion met, in the recent past when com­ing out after watch­ing.. mayakkam enna, oshti, 7am arivu, velayud­ham, raja paatai [ worst crap of 2011 — needs a sep­a­rate post ]. After a long break, I was thrilled by watch­ing Mouna guru.

Some­times, I stop myself by pre­con­ceived mind block approach­ing  movies, acted by cer­tain peo­ple / who come by back­ground. [ Any of those ‘Nidhi’s who depend on beau­ti­ful hero­ines, San­thanam, for­eign loca­tions, songs ]. I was hes­i­tat­ing to watch this movie for the same rea­son. But I was proved wrong  this time ; I was enjoy­ing through out the movie. It’s like.. the best food we look for comes out in an unknown road side hotel, where you don’t have any expectations.

Story

Instead of story.. let me list the char­ac­ters. Karunakaran —  a sim­ple col­lege stu­dent, his mother & brother Amal’s fam­ily, his sim­ple lover Arthi, a col­lege cam­pus with some trou­bles, mys­te­ri­ous steal­ing in the col­lege hos­tel, kind-hearted col­lege prinic­pal Jayasee­lan,  a group of cops, a crime scene with a suit­case full of cash, a bad AC A.Marimuthu IPS, his con­cu­bine friend Maya, their plans and the unknown con­se­quences, an asy­lum, a preg­nant n clean lady inspec­tor R.Pazhaniammal inves­ti­gat­ing the case [ remem­ber Coen broth­ers’ FARGO ! ], unfold­ing truths towards the end.

A per­fect crime thriller with a grip­ping inter­val block !

View

The com­plete credit goes to the writer and direc­tor SANTHAKUMAR to make such a won­der­ful script avoid­ing cliche’s and hero­ism. Right from the cast­ing to the cli­max, the direc­tor rules. He starts the story straight, with­out any devi­a­tions. Under­play­ing is the theme used in all char­ac­ters and sequences. There could have been a glo­ri­ous open­ing song, furi­ous fight, 6 packs [ Nalla velai ], San­thanam as col­lege mate, cin­e­matic cli­max etc.,  I still won­der how a new direc­tor avoided all these junk ele­ments !!  San­thaku­mar has worked as an assis­tant to Dha­rani and Susi.Ganesan [ Virum­bu­giren ]. The dia­logues were crisp and neat. The basic ele­ment of a good script is the sus­pense. When you expect, that should not hap­pen and some­thing should hap­pen when you don’t expect. It is fol­lowed through out the movie.

The asset of the movie is Mahesh Muthuswamy [ ex aasthana cin­e­matog­ra­pher of Mysskin ]. Yuththam sei was slightly dark but MG is bright and clean. The loca­tions, angles, col­ors, mood don’t over­shadow what the script has — that’s the gram­mar of a good pho­tog­ra­phy. I saw some traces of Mysskin’s ele­ments in this story. There’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for each and every move in the story. For ex., the knife shown in the cli­max — they take it from the asylum.

The flaw I observed is the music direc­tor S.Thaman. Nei­ther the songs nor the BGM [ some times ]  were attrac­tive. In fact, I didn’t feel the syn­ergy — espe­cially in a thriller movie. Also, the cli­max slightly gets dis­turbed for a while and gets on track. I loved the per­for­mances of Arul­nidhi, John Vijay, Uma riyaz Khan [ Sur­pris­ing por­trayal ], Anand Varma [ prin­ci­pal ] and Iniya. The inter­val block was superbly taken and designed like a cli­max — the best block of the movie. One exam­ple of a char­ac­ter study is the 2 vari­a­tions in the dia­log delviery of John Vijay [ with drug influ­ence and with­out ]. None of tha char­ac­ters know the com­plete story and every­one trav­els on their part.

The envi­ron­ment of Tamil cin­ema is highly pol­luted by Mam­bat­iyaans, Suseendhran, Vikram, Simbu, Dha­rani and what not. When it comes to air con­di­tioner, there’s a say­ing that the shadow/chillness pro­vided by a small tree can­not be com­pen­sated by any arti­fi­cial air con­di­tion­ers in the world. Such a small n sim­ple tree is MOUNA GURU. I don’t hes­i­tate watch­ing a good movie twice and this movie falls in that cat­e­gory. [ wathed later ! ]

Sim­i­lar­ity of Yuththam sei & Mounga guru : Iniya. Iniya plays Cheran’s sis­ter in YS and hero­ine in Mouna guru. The dif­fer­ence is this flick doesn’t even have the item song ! Hope San­thaku­mar doesnt give any inter­views to the media and con­cen­trate on his next project.

Happy watch­ing

Trivia : Cli­max was taken in aban­doned NATARAJA the­atre, Choolai 

–Toto.