In a recent interview to rediff the director ram of Tamizh M.A attributes the reason of cinema being a powerful medium as the reason for his transition to a filmmaker from being a literary personality. It is the very same reason i despise him and his film. Having acknowledged the efficacies of cinema the medium it would have been only sane for the director to be clinically precise in his deliberations, especially when handling a sensitive issue like economic inequalities. The movie is all about a first hand narration of vicissitudes of the protagonist who is supposedly a tamizh graduate. I, after all those out of blue sky rocketed pre release hype for this movie , still managed to not carried away by all those hypes, which is very difficult for the movie buff i am. Let us be clear that the movie has nothing to do with tamizh. It is a story about a psychotic protagonist. And tamizh cinema as such has seen many such characters. The most recent one being selvaraghavan's protagonist in kathal Kondein (Interestingly the psychotic protagonist in here is an engineering student). So again am emphasizing that this is a movie about a psychotic guy and nothing to do with tamizh. And that was one perfect reason that made to not like this movie. Why do they want to promote a movie on something which they have not done? Also the director who manages to capture the varying timeline across the whole movie fails miserably to capture the exact time line where in the protagonist pursues his M.A at all. What a lackadaisical effort for a movie whose original title was TAMIZH M.A? So is the movie all a bad one. No not at all. Many a things sans the pseudo tamizh affiliation is perfect in the movie. A top notch casting, a riveting performance delivered by the cast, aided to their best by other technicians like music director, cameraman, sound engineer all makes this nothing short of a brilliant technically sound movie. A heartful applause for jeeva to have submitted himself yet again to a director. That is how actors are born and groomed. To cut a real long story short, Jeeva who though not sufficient, doesn’t complain either and sails with life with his Rs.2000 salaried tamizh teacher job. A petty incident, which could happen to anyone on the street, leads him to kill a railway station clerk accidentally. It is from here he turns completely psychotic and runs amok, roaming around like a vagabond and finding solace among doping saints. Amidst all the squalor nomadic life he murders 22 people for no reason or rhyme. And it is not all about that accidental murder. The director, flashbacks a little to show the growing of this protagonist, jeeva. Right from his childhood the protagonist is suffering separations from his relations by all sorts. Be it his father who is a military man or a horrid accident which deprives of him his entire family. So in all those transitions of life he also gets separated from his childhood sweetheart anandhi (played aptly by Anjali) with whom he shares a different world and lives a entire different life. These scenes indulging a kerela border location and the children are pretty plain sans any amusement, which is a natural outcome of children acting. Then he proceeds to do some more killings, meets his childhood sweetheart in the most obvious of the cinematic situations and spends some boring time with her before they end their lives, as it would have been totaly unsatisfactory for the director to let them live having had killed almost anyone and everyone in the movie.
Although it is a movie about a psychedelic person, still the director goes overboard in many sequences. Especially the sequences where in the director thrusts his apathy for software, IT people whom he portrays as sinners who have done indelible betrayal to their mother tongue by having learned english. Such a myopic portrayal it is. There is this scene with the call centre employee, which is a shit load of nonsense. It was the most shameful depiction of a bharathiyar's poem on screen. The director cum music director fails here in the most miserable way. And about the other scene in software company the less said is better. The directors’ intention whatsoever it was for these scenes are not real. So why try spreading what you don't believe. And at the end in a hurry to pass on some message the director makes the hero to mouth some angry lecture on the economic inequalities. And he defines economic inequalities as the difference between people who can afford to be inside a Spencer or a sathyam Cineplex and those who couldn afford and are forced to stay outside them. Yet another myopic, non self-believing view of the director.
Dealing with economic inequalities is no new theme for tamizh cinema. People have gone to become stalwarts, superstars & chief ministers after depicting to have fighting all those inequalities. But here what we get to see is a colossally wry half hearted depiction of a issue and more also with a squalor premise, sauntering s & slipping screenplay and a somber feel all over it. Jus in case you thought this review is a mindless& meandering blame the movie, for it was one.
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