A Perspective on Aayirathil Oruvan

The fantasy genre is the easiest to pull off on paper. Irrespective of whether you’re going by the assembly line or your own imagination. But it is quite another thing to transfer the brilliance on screen. Not only because the genre has been beaten to death by Hollywood – which is not even done yet – but also because of the thin line between fantasy and suspension of disbelief.

Selvaraghavan’s Aayirthil Oruvan doesn’t know where to draw that line. It’s extremely imaginative, well written for most part but with several loose ends in the latter portions, the execution hangs in balance. It starts off quite weak, with some bad lip sync, sudden introductions of characters, builds up to be amazingly racy, with some brilliantly directed sequences in the first half. The few WTF moments of the first half are explained cleverly with the twist after the interval. But from then on, Selvaraghavan is clueless what to do. He shows sparks of brilliance with some set piece action, but the WTF moments here remain a mystery till the very end.

And that is where the movie falters. It’s like they had a great story(which it is, by the way), with some interesting ideas for the events in the beginning, the quirky but satisfying twist to reopen the story and then started the shooting. One of the well directed sequences comes just before the break when Karthi, Reema Sen and Andrea stumble upon a stonehenge like site and the desert landscape caving in with each step forward. That sequence right up till the break has been wonderfully done and the song Un Mela Aasadhan is just the icing on the cake.

Karthi walks and talks with oodles of charm though charm is not a word you would often associate with the character he plays. He has more lines than any of the characters and delivers them with such panache that you would think he is a veteran and not someone just two films old. Truly a star in the making in every sense of the word. Though he sounds like Surya with his monosyllables, I think he is far more capable histrionically.

Picture Courtesy: Indiaglitz

When it comes to ambitious movies we often settle for the argument of “applauding the effort”. Almost all of Kamal Haasan’s ambitious movies has his fans going, “Hey, but you have to praise the effort”! But where and when does this stop? When do you stop feeling satiated with just an effort and look at the bigger picture, the accomplishments, the missteps etc? Selvaraghavan is exonerated by the genre he has chosen to put all the effort on. Sudhish Kamath gave the movie 3/10 and suggested Selvaraghavan should immediately join a screenwriting course. But then this is fantasy. I think most directors are on their own when not importing the story from a different medium(like novels, TV shows etc.). And for that Selvaraghavan can be given one more chance.

Well, Selvaraghavan may just take that chance without our permission. The ending left a lot of people bewildered. They probably hated the movie even more for it. But I personally thought it was a wonderful ending. It wasn’t unpredictable or brilliant by any margin because the story coming a full circle was always there for the taking. The question was whether Selva would dare to take it and end it that way. And he did, and that was quite admirable. What I didn’t like was the text  appearing after, that seemed to push the allusion down everyone’s throat. Just so that everyone gets it!

Here is the kickass song from the movie. I loved it when the music came out back in June/July ‘09 and forgot all about it by the end of the year. But after watching the movie, and that picturization, the love is back all over again. Dhanush, Aishwarya Dhanush and Andrea are sure having a blast with the vocals but you should really see the kind of fun Karthi, Reema and Andrea have on screen. Superb picturization aided by the scenes that lead to it.

P.S

One WTF moment that just needs an explanation: The boobs. Yes, they actually show boobs in the movie and everyone was left wondering how did they manage? Really, I am clueless how they got away with that and how come so less has been written about it. Did I miss something? It’s only an issue when a popular actress is involved and not some unknown woman playing a tribal?

Few Observations from “The City”

The first thing I noticed about Bombay, on that first day, was the smell of the different air. I could smell it before I saw or heard anything of India, even as I walked along the umbilical corridor that connected the plane to the airport. I was excited and delighted by it, in that First Bombay minute, escaped from prison and new to the wide world, but I didn’t and couldn’t recognise it. I know now that it’s the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it’s the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It’s the smell of gods, demons, empires, and civilisations in resurrection and decay. It’s the blue skin-smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the Island City, and the blood-metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and loves that produce our courage. It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churches, and mosques, and of a hundred bazaars devoted exclusively to perfumes, spices, incense, and freshly cut flowers. Karla once called it the worst good smell in the world, and she was right, of course, in that way she had of being right about things. But whenever I return to Bombay, now, it’s my first sense of the city-that smell, above all things-that welcomes me and tells me I’ve come home.*

• The above is true.

• Some of the best and closest friends live there and it’s as good as a second home. Even a loss in touch doesn’t dampen the enthusiasm or the chemistry. The now mandatory trip is totally worth it.

• People show their wealth. Be it their dress sense, the way they walk  and talk, what they do, what they don’t do, they sure show a lot of wealth. And in a very nice aesthetic non-showoff-y way. And I believe it is a good thing. That is something the city of Madras is not so great in. There are loads and loads of wealthy people in Madras but they all like to be locked up somewhere.

• And they sure know how to dress. And that is a something I would quite love in anyone.

• How much ever wealth you might possess, Rs 250-450 for a movie ticket is not justified. Sathyam, I love you (whether this love has lifetime guarantee depends entirely on you).

• Crazy couples still make out inside auto rickshaws. Any time of the day.

• They know how to build malls. The malls in Bombay kick the ass of the ones I’ve been to in NJ or Raleigh. And what are we in Madras stuck with? Spencers and City Center? Have to visit that new Ampa Skywalk and see if anything has changed!

• The kids that came up to between my knees and hips in 1999 go to college now. They talk about visiting Hard Rock Cafe, hookah and sex. And I tell people I am only 24? Bah!

• Madras-avdhu, Bangalore-avdhu. Bombay is Bombay.

*That’s from Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts.

3 Idiots & Why We Need Writers Guild of India

The Review:

There was a pop culture greatness to Rang De Basanti at the time it was released. And Dil Chahta Hai infused a flavour of freshness and kick started the urban upmarket genre reproduced by almost every filmmaker in Hindi cinema today. Apart from Aamir Khan, there isn’t any other common thread between these movies. The zeitgeist sensibilities of 3 Idiots springs from the identifiable depiction of engineering days of almost any Indian engineer. It can be safely claimed that engineering and aspiring for it has become a way of life for most of us.

Rajkumar Hirani is a very simple filmmaker. Predictable but instantly likable writing and staging has become his trademark so much that we would like to believe that he deliberately uses some recurrent themes in his movies. The righteous  correcting the flawed, the practical convincing the emotional, the simplification of complex issues, the bride walking out of her wedding etc. Hirani is the only director today who probably comes closes to Hrishikesh Mukherjee  n terms of writing. As far as film making is concerned, today’s market doesn’t allow him to retain Hrishi-da’s simplicity.

The first half is masterclass in writing by itself. Of course, only if you discount the couple of unoriginal jokes copied from popular vidoes and email forwards. I didn’t care much for the them but they do bring genuine laughs. The college scenes are a riot right from the ragging bit to Chatur Ramalingam’s speech that’s arguably one of the best directed scenes in recent times that would merit repeat viewings on Youtube. At the point when you just think the atmosphere is going to turn melodramatic, Hirani gets into the shoes of a bunch of pesky undgergrad engineering kids and walks around in them. The case in point being the scene right after the threesome’s visit to Raju Rastogi’s(Sharmaan Joshi) home. Ask any 19-21 year old in college and more importantly, an engineering college. The ability to laugh at almost anything, the absolute chalta hai attitude and trivialization of issues are like bread and butter. It’s as natural as pissing outside a hostel room door.  Another of those great sequences comes when the three break in to their professor’s home so that Rancho can propose to Pia. The scene gets into a high point when they decided to break in and even do it, and maintains a low key until Rancho realizes he is babbling holding the wrong girl’s hand,  and reaches a high when the professor recognizes Rastogi which leads to their ultimate downfall. Even literally.

Once the second half twist is established, the film is a sine wave. The present tense punctuated with occasional brilliance but fairly predictable and the return to flashback greeted with applause. Until we reach a midpoint where the film completely falls flat. The childbirth scene exists solely to tell you “See this is how helpful you will be if you are not a product of rote learning”. Though it starts off with lot of potential, once you see the whole dramatization with the baby stillborn, you lose every bit of interest in the scene. Another stagy bit is Raju’s interview sequence. Isn’t this an engineering college campus interview? Where is the technical interview Mr. Hirani? You need not have filmed it, but a passing reference? And the recruiters talk like they are recruiting an MBA and not an engineer! That’s why Farhan (Madhavan)’s closure seems more plausible than Raju’s. The cinematic license seems more justified in his situation.

Aamir Khan deserves a standing ovation for his business sense. There isn’t any other actor today who has that kind of business acumen. He knows exactly what’ll work, what won’t and how to hard sell a product. And even sell products that really don’t have much going for them (read Ghajini). There is a suspicion of method acting in the way he meticulously plays Rancho. The swagger that he’s developed, the loose trousers, hand inside pockets, the boyish enthusiasm from Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander that he’s brought back with aplomb, all work beautifully. Kareena Kapoor impresses in parts and her best scene is the one where she visits Rancho drunk to give him the Director’s office keys. A very fine performance, there.

3 Idiots is not an achievement in terms of mainstream filmmaking the way Dil Chahta Hai and Rang De Basanti were. But  real characters, real lines and almost flawless performances lift the movie to a different level. It doesn’t have many high points where we feel elated or we are rushed with excitement. But we are made to care for the characters throughout the film and that single high point makes this worth your while and deserves repeat viewing. If not for the final half hour, this could have very well been another Dil Chahta Hai this decade.

The 3 Idiots – Chetan Bhagat Controversy:

I am not sure how well I have understood the issue, but it is an issue that can easily be misinterpreted. I did see the “Based on Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone” at the closing credits. Chetan is peeved by the fact that the  credits don’t appear in the opening but only in the closing credits. And basically, it means that Chetan’s name, according to him, should be right up there under Writing/Screenplay/Script along with Hirani and Abhijat Joshi who adapted it. Surely all this looks too amateurish to bicker over and what we need here is a solution to define the kind of credits accorded to the different contributors in different medium.

The only solution I can think of is to have something like the Writer’s Guild of America for Indian publications and films. Does anything like that already exist in India? With the way this issue has been played out, I doubt it does. Now sample this:

If there is no source material (novel, play, article, etc.) and the same writers receive credit for both the story and screenplay, the credit is “written by”.

The “story by” credit is used when the basic narrative structure was originally written with intent to be used for a movie (as opposed to a short story) and the actual screenplay had different authors. A shared “story by” credit is the minimum awarded to the author of an original screenplay.

If there was previously existing source material but the writer creates a substantially new and different story from the source, then the “screen story” (or “television story”) credit is used.

Finally, the “screenplay by” (or “teleplay by”) credit is used to denote the screenplay (teleplay) authorship if the story credit had to be separated as above. [link]

Now can it get anymore simpler than this? The original novel author is not left out. No matter how much the story and narrative structure has been modified, the author is and was the prime source. If not for his creation, the film would have never happened. Similarly, if Five Point Someone had not been written, 3 Idiots would have never happened. From what I understand, according to WGA rules, Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi must be credited under “Screen Story”. Right? Tony Gileroy was credited with screen story for The Bourne series because they modified a large part of Ludlum’s original writing. With the increasing number of books being adapted to screen in India, it’s high time we had a guild of our own. As much as I like 3 Idiots and thank Hirani, Chopra and Aamir for giving me one of the best movies of 2009, it’s sad that they decided to consider the whole “writing” part their own, when it is not. How can we expect the likes of Sanjay Gupta to credit Hollywood flicks they shamelessly rip off from, when people of the caliber of these three fail to recognize an originally Indian creation.