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About Gautham-A profile
‘Minnale’, the 2001 Tamil blockbuster, launched the career of Gautham menon, who later went on to direct the films ‘Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein’,(Hindi remake of ‘Minnale’), ‘Khaka Khaka’, ‘Gharshana’ (Telugu remake of ‘Khaka Khaka’), ‘Vettiyadu Veliyadu’, ‘Pachha Kili-Muthu Charam’.
Introduction:
Gautham, a computer engineer by profession worked his way in to the world of cinema, initially by assisting acclaimed filmmaker and cinematographer Rajeev Menon, later on by launching his own ad agency ‘Photo Fatcory’ and finally by making into the filmdom with ‘Minnale’.
Filmography:
Minnale: Old wine in brand new bottle with accompanied music track
‘Minnale’ was Gautham’s directorial debut and it worked wonders at the box office, thanks to the scintillating music track by, another debutant, Harris Jeyaraj. The music track of the film took the nation by storm, especially, the track ‘vaseeghara’ (‘manohara’ in Telugu and ‘zara zara’ in Hindi).
‘Minnale’ was not a masterpiece and the story itself was not unique. It was mostly contrived and mostly series of coincidences. But what worked for this film were the music and the freshness in the narrative. Unlike many other love stories it’s not violent and the acting was not brilliant but thankfully it wasn’t glaring with the antique histrionics a la many South Indian actors.
After the success of ‘Minnale’, Goutham went on to remake the film in Hindi and the end product ‘Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein’ bit the dust at the box office. In spite of a good performance by Saif Ali Khan and the same music track which did wonders in South India, the film did not score well and the failure was attributed, by many, to the deadpan acting of Diya Mirza.
Khaka Khaka: Ramp it up and jump cut it,
Gautham continued his journey with his next offering ‘Khaka Khaka,’An episode in a young police officer’s Life. Never before in the South India was there a film like ‘Khaka Khaka’ which drew on style over substance.
‘Khaka Khaka’ is a Tamil film starring Surya and Jyothika is definitely path breaking in terms of narration and stylisation. Surya plays Anbuselvan, an IPS officer who believes that a bullet is the definite cure for crime. The story is about the struggles and turmoil of Surya and his team of plain-clothed officers fighting against organised crime in Chennai.
The famous editing technique, jump cut, once popularised by the new-wave French filmmakers, was used, for the first time, extensively in this film. Ramping up the speed of a film clip and slowing it down abruptly was the other most visible technique of the film. Sadly these techniques are aped by every other filmmaker with out a purpose and the end result is nothing but a farce.
Yet again Harris Jeyaraj teamed up with Gautham to deliver another massive hit, especially the tack, ‘Uyirin Uyire’. By far ‘Khaka Khaka’ is the most original offering from Gautham.
When ‘Khaka Khaka’ was remade in to Telugu with Venkatesh it fared very badly at the boxoffice and proved, yet again, that Goutham is no good at remaking his originals.
Vetaiyadu Velaiyadu: Indian cops, Indian serial killers, but in America!
After the stupendous success of his earlier cop saga ‘Khaka Khaka’, Goutham went on to make yet another police drama, ‘Vetaiyadu Velaiyadu’, with Kamal, playing DCP Raghavan, in the lead role. If the villains of ‘Khaka Khaka’ are the drug dealers, the villains of ‘Vetaiyadu Veliyadu’ are ruthless serial killers.
Goutham tried to recreate the magic of ‘Khaka Khaka’ with ‘Vetailyadu and Veliyadu’ and could achieve only moderate success. After the success of his earlier film, audience had huge expectations and what clouded this film was a definite hangover of his earlier film.
This film definitely marked the birth of a new kind of cinema in South India which was to be proved with his next film ‘Pachai Kili, Muthu Charam’.
This film was supposed to be the second instalment of a ‘police trilogy’, the first one being ‘Khaka Khaka’, and Gautham was to deliver a third instalment of yet another flick dealing with the story of a policeman on the verge of retirement. No wonder if this third instalment never makes it to the screen!
Pachai Kili Muthu Charam: Made in Hollywood, shown in our woods!
It was a proven fact that Goutham is bad at recreating his originals. ‘Gharshana’, Telugu remake of ‘Khaka Khaka’ and ‘Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein’, Hindi remake of ‘Minnale’ proved the point.
Having learnt the lesson, Goutham, has tried a new formula this time: remake a Hollywood hit flick. His latest film ‘Pachai Kili Muthi Charam’ is a straight lift from the Hollywood flick ‘Derailed’. When ‘Vetailyadu Veliyadu’ showed many elements from the Hollywood films, “15 minutes” and “Along Came a spider”, not many people doubted Goutham’s originality. This time with ‘Pachai Kili Muthu Charam’ Goutham has definitely proved that he is good at remakes, not from his originals, but freemakes of Hollywood films.
‘Pachai Kili Muthi Charam’ is the story of Venky and whose life goes out for a toss when he meets a beautiful stranger, Geetha, on a train. Surprisingly this film is doing fairly well at the Box-office and it pulled Sarath Kumar out of his sinking career. With this film Goutam paved the path for many other filmmakers to import all the Hollywood thrillers and it’s only a matter of time for the South Indian film industry to grab the DVDs from the nearby rental store to deliver a rehashed, freemakes of all the Hollywood originals.
A new kind of cinema is on the horizon. Thanks to Gautham Menon.
Varanam Aayiram (A Thousand elephants): A stampede?
Gautham is busy with shooting his next film ‘Varanam Aayiram’, A unique story of a unique individual. Motivated and driven, a go-getter. Like Vaaranamaayiram, the strength of a thousand elephants – strong of mind and body.
What will this be – a freemake, remake or an original?
18 Responses to “About Gautham-A profile”
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I have just begun watching Gautham’s movies, and I really enjoy them. Not because of the stories, but because they are just good, fun, fast-paced time-pass thrillers. In fact, Vetaiyadu Velaiyadu could have been a GREAT film had it not been for the love story slowing it down.
I am planning to see all of Gautham’s films, and I am becoming a fan. Not because he is doing anything outstanding or revolutionary, but just because I find them fun to watch, and stylistically I think he does some pretty cool camerawork.
Funny thing? I have never seen any of the American films that you mention, so I can’t comment at all about his freemakes. I only rarely see Hollywood films, yet I see most of the Indian remakes of those films. How silly is that.
i thought “Rehna Hain Tere Dil Mein” was a decent, time-pass movie.
I liked khakha khakha. Being from Andhra i would say the reason for gharshana (remake of khakha khakha) faring badly, is star cast.. venkatesh is’nt made for those kind of roles. It was hard atleast for me , to watch venkatesh after watching surya as police officer rama chandra.
‘Minnale’ was a really good movie, really enjoyed it!
Even the soundtrack is far superior than the hindi one.
Yes the music is the same, but the arrangements were better and ‘Vaseegara’ was kinda killed in ‘Zarra zarra’.
It sounded as if Bombay Jayshree was too close to the mike in ‘zarra zarra’ where as in the Tamil version it sounded wonderful.
Madhvan is an exceptional actor, and very under-used!
‘Kaaka-Kaaka’ didnt do alot for me though.
I mean, i love Jyotica, she’s my fave tamil actress, and Surya is excellent, but the film didn’t do alot for me.
Was surprised to read that Hollywood were to remake it??
Good for Gautham though.
Shame about the arrangements and vocals in the hindi version too…
His latest film
I did prefer KK to VV, but by all accounts VV seems to be a huge, huge commercial success. ‘Pachaikili..’ was quite a letdown though. And his charatcerization of villains is fast becoming stale.
Totally agree with the last comment. His technique and characterization is so marked by a Kaakha-Kaakha hangover. Also, KK had a powerful and unique storyline (the romance itself, as well as the chase), while VV and PKM were both slow and features inispid cliched romances.
gautham never fails as far as music is concerned….top notch..he brought in harris jayraj…and their combo has been deadly…infact listening to karka karka from VV……just that sometimes i feel he looses out on soul while concentrating more on technique….anyway a very very welcome talent to the tamil industry.
love the song…zara zara from rhtdm. its sexy one. but i think the tamil version sounds much better, though i dont understand tamil at all.
GM is overrated. His movies are nothing but trash. I can’t buy his ideas. And certainly not his interviews. He thinks PKMC is a Balu-mahendra-meets-QT kind of film. Basically he thinks all Tamilians are born fools and have no idea about World cinema. He even goes on to drag names like KB and Mani rathnam. He lacks honesty. PKMC was technically bad. The shots were stale. The videos were edited in an amatuer way with some shareware software worse than Sony Vegas, with midtones ranging from blue, violet and green. Damn! His usage of English jargons in movies and the artificial profanity which is ever-so-evident, just sucks.
An open statement to GM:
You can dream of becoming next-Mani rathnam but MR is the best mainstream director from tamil film industry. KB is such a vulgar genius that your PKMC looks like Cartoon next to it.
GM is a bigger wannabe than Shankar. Cheran looks like a saint next to GM. There are much Better Tamil Directors like Bala, Selvaraghavan and if the recent hype is anything to be believed, Ameer could be added to it.
gm films might b lifted frm hollywood but the way he presents it before the indian audience is superb with excellent cinematography,music,editing,stylised acting etc.its a treat to watch his films in theatre its so lively n energetic.there r so many directors who delivered duds insppite of managing to create scene by scene copy of hollywood originals.so the point is that even if u copy,ur talent only can help ur film acceptable to the local audience.
RHTDM was a time pass movie. I liked Maddy in it. Even that Hirjee guy was good.
Don’t know why people criticize Gharshana so much. I liked it, i also liked KK…Venkatesh looked very fresh in Gharshana.
Many times i feel Maddy is different in Tamil/Telugu Cinema from Hindi ones. This dude is amazing in Tamil/Telugu
Thanks for this Venkat
Phoenixnu…”love the song
steve…dont know if BJ was too close or too far…may be i dont understand that much…i just love music. n when that song plays…m in a differnt world.:x
Interesting round-up of Gautham’s work!
It was mentioned somewhere that it was Anurag Kashyap who gave the Derailed book to Gautham…
I believe it was Blogical Conclusion that had this little snippet! Sad that Gautham didn’t have the guts to follow the book completely, the twist toward the end of the book was quite good.
Whn r u starting ur movie venkat!!
Hai Gautham,
Sai here, How are you? Hope you remember me(our college troop singer), you are my college senior (MCE). Really we are very happy to know as a Film Director. My family is in Abu Dhabi. Whenever you come for the shooting, please drop into our home also. See you Bye bye.