Anjaadhe – Great effort and it shows
In Anjaadhe Mysskin has proven what film makers, story writers, screenplay writers, creative people in general can DO, if given the liberty by the people with money who think they have figured out what audience want.
In spite of so many masters who have made so many masterpieces, thamizh cinema is still a local fiefdom where the produers and distributors decide what is the movie that is worth seeing the arc light in a dark theatre. So it is a wonder for me that Anjaadhe even got made, let alone distributed and screened. From a distributor’s angle in a multiplex world, the film did not possess a star hero (After Chithiram Pesudhadi, the director could have approached and star and made a movie with him), ‘A’ list music director, commercial heroine, or a hefty villain with 50 henchman. It has only one plus from a distributor -producer angle – the film is by a guy making his second film and whose first film had the gana sensation of 2006 – Vaala meenu song that sadly was seen as the USP of a worthwhile movie that Chithiram Pesudhadi was.
For a person like me thirsting to see more good cinema in thamizh, this movie is like , well a great bottle of champagne ( not that i am a person who knows how such things taste in real life – just give me my little indulgence with English ). I am not going to review this movie as it is one of a rare kind of movies that make me realise that i am not a student of Cinema, just some guy who probably knows a really good movie from a rank bad one. And really good one – it is.
It sure does have its crowd pleasing elements that can piss off a scorcese fan, like the songs for instance. However if you know the language, you cannot help yourself from chuckling after hearing “Kannadasan” song – a bar song without the multi thousand rupee ‘item bomb’ (lack of which the distributors must have been displeased with – hell even a mani rathnam has to use ‘item bombs’ why not mysskin?). Compromise a little not too much seems to have been director’s thought process and I accept and enjoy the little diversion. Even the “villain den dance” of “Kathazha
song is done in a graceful and decent manner with all ladies properly clad and the family audience not made to twist in their chairs (think for a moment – even the great Balu Mahendra inserted the pon meni urugudhe song with silk smitha in the classis moondram pirai that stood out like the scar on the moon’s surface).
By now the reader of this post must be wondering, so the movie has got two songs – one kuthu song and one gaana song and what the heck is this guy blabbering off claiming this one to be a great one. Well the movie that is apart from these songs – if I tell you the story, you would balk and say “well that is not Anbe Sivam by any stretch of imagination- sounds like a 1980s friend Vs friend with a villain gang and extortion-black mail story”. If you were the producer and the guy told you this story, you would have said, well this looks like Kakki chattai(thamizh masala Kamal movie of 1980s) + Kakka Kakka + Kreedom (mohanlal malayalam classic). The guy (mysskin) would have said, “Well I know. but I will make it my way”.The producer must have been an awfully rich guy who would have replied, “Lets see what you come up with”. I hope for the days such conversations happen between producers and directors.
However the point i am trying to make is this.(hold on).
This is what film making is all about. Telling things “My way” or “Your way” not in the “Prescribed way” as there is no prescribed way – that went out of vogue and it usually starts “once upon a time”.
Now back again, this is entirely “our way” of films and in this you would find your masala “Kaakki chattai” as much as how I found my Jeyakanthan in those sugar cane fields and narrow pan spit strain lanes of chennai slum and if such perceptions can be aroused by a “director’s vision”, then I am ready to be awed by it or unknowingly i am already in awe of it.
A big thanks to the actors- i mean ALL of them, in just being folks instead of playing.
However, such a fan of “ACTORS” I cannot but commend the new find Ajmal, Re discovered Pandiyarajan , another rediscovey Prasanna, Naren and Ponvannan as Keerthi vasan. I found Ponvannan’s Keerthi vasan character to be a tad interesting – some senior crack team lead who has to bow down to the superior officer without question fully knowing the fact that what his “superior” is proposing is something stupid – a feeling i have been sharing for a while in the software industry.
Now get back (enough of indulgence!).
Music deserves special mention(pardoning the little bit of “Signs” theme inspiration) and a double cheese burger to Mahesh muthuswamy. One special pat to the actors who play Kuruvi and the father of the second kidnapped girl( who calls her ammukutty). He has done something special and I shudder those moments on the screen and this layering into an oft told story of friend Vs friend – if this is what is “Directors vision” then one more moment of awe at the creative process, specially the release of the girl(slow mo scene) with only the lungi on her and where you see kiruba banging his helmet laden head realising what he has done and police officers rushing to catch the culprits in the qualis while the hero does one of the typical hero stuff of offering his shirt and belt(very thoughtful indeed) to the girl.
So net and net If i dont care for what i want to see in a movie, I came back with some cool stunts, 2 kuthu songs, lot of little jokes by Pandiyarajan and well my money is not lost, and if I am somewhat of PFC type(is there one?), then I have got my Jeyakanthans, my kurosawas and my ram gopal vermas as well. So probably this is what is called “Directors’ vision”. Cool man.
Tags: Tamil
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Seriously! Where’s Anurag Kashyap? The other featured writers too are inactive.
missing Anurag Kashyap in Mumbai Mirror also…guess he is busy wid shooting of DevD..
saw it finally…
highly overrated …
confused with brief interludes of brilliance at best
I liked the concept, but the direction was pathetic. It was indeed an over-rated movie just like his previous movie Chitram Pesuthadi.
Narain just rocks…….. I just love his movie.
He looks inocent but acting is superb, concept, songs….