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iView Author: Vasu (Chennai, India)

Email: vasuanish85 [at] gmail [dot] com

Evano Oruvan - “Just another nobody?!”

Evano Oruvan, in Tamil, might roughly translate into “Just another nobody” but the movie with the same title is everything but just another movie in Tamil. Evano Oruvan is a brilliant remake of the Marathi movie, ‘Dombivilli Fast’, directed by Nishikant Kamat.

Tamil Cinema has seen many vigilante movies in the past like Gentleman, Indian, Anniyan etc but what sets Evano Oruvan apart from all of these is the fact that the vigilante is not a larger-than-life superhero who fights the system against a grandeur backdrop but is an average bank officer whose dream is to get a window seat in the local train that he travels by daily and enjoy the breeze and the ride! The premise for the movie is set brilliantly during the preludes to the title : the monotonous lives of the protagonist and of everybody around him, how every day goes by, how everybody just ’survives’ than ‘lives’.

Sridhar Vasudevan (lived by R.Madhavan) and Vatsala (lived by Sangeetha) reflect the routine lives of every other middle-class family in India, so much that one would be relate to every little petty fight of theirs, verbatim. However, Sridhar Vasudevan is not just the regular middle class guy who complains about the corrupt system that exists while reading the newspaper and just rides with the flow. Vasu would not pay the extra 100 bucks to fetch water from the tanker lorry, the extra 35 thousand for a KG admission for his daughter, the extra money for tuitions under the same school teacher for his boy, or even the extra 2 rupees for drinking a cool-drink cool, all of which every other guy like him pays while complaining, talking and writing about the injustice in all of it. His questions and denials give him the image of a ‘blown over the top psycho’, which he more or less becomes after a day when his principles lead him to a dead end. He gives vent to all his emotions that had built up and beats the blues out of people who contribute their penny in building up the corrupt system. A lonely man, on a rampage, becomes a hero of sorts, thanks to some sensationalism by the media! Flash News becomes Headlines and Headlines become Main Features! A shot which beautifully portrays the situation is when a camera focuses on a news anchor reporting on one of Vasu’s bravado deeds with a Superman logo in the background! Within no time, top police officials order a ’shoot at sight’ for their survival and immediately one of the shots comes ripe with cynicism : a hoarding which says “Growth wants protection”!!

From Sridhar Vasudevan’s monologue, ” I used to paint, I used to play. But I had to “survive”. I became this bank officer tallying accounts everyday just so that I could marry and have children so that they also continue doing what I am doing – ” Living like a garbage, feeding on the same”. The movie gives a tight slap to everyone and the effect of which would be just like the beautiful scene in which a boy sketches Sridhar Vasudevan. People applaud him for doing what they could only think of or complain about and they shower their response to it by throwing a 2 Rs. coin on the painting. I wish everyone of us do the same- pay the buck, watch the movie & applaud Nishikant & Madhavan!

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