Soodhu Kavvum

Vijay Sethupathy is not a great actor. Or to be fair, he hasn’t yet been offered meaty roles to showcase his talent. But what is commendable is his choice of films. Much like the earlier version of Abhay Deol in Hindi films, Vijay Sethupathy tries to punch above his weight with the quirkiness of first time directors and their interesting – even if lacking in execution – subjects. Pizza, Naduvala Konjam Pakkatha Kanum weren’t great films but they had the novelty factor and an earnest indie blood within them and Soodhu Kavvum joins that very list.

Soodhu Kavvum directed by Nalan Kumarasamy is about three slackers and a self-confessed small time kidnapper and his imaginary friend. If there is one thing that Soodhu Kavvum gets right, it is the depiction of these slackers, their daily tedium and attempted misadventures. There is a thin line between making the audience abhor such characterization and making them invest in them and this film does the latter admirably with great staging and conversation (and some TR posters). Now this is the kind of talent that Rajesh (of Siva Manasula Sakthi and Boss Engira Bhaskaran fame) should kill to possess. But then that’s another debate.

In addition to being a slacker film, Soodhu Kavvum also dips it legs briefly across genres. It has noir undertones with all the stylized crime and background score (which was terrific), a B-movie feel with tons of unexplained acts and a deus ex machina resolution with even the yellowish natural lighting for the interiors and the bright colors of cars and clothes contributing to the look and feel of the film. Not everything is done well or in a complete manner though. It gets inconsistent after a point and most of second half is directionless and just a sequence of montages put together lazily but the leads keep you interested enough.

The seeming twist with the imaginary girlfriend plays out only for two scenes and regrettably so. The way it is introduced, with her sort of squatting behind Das and therefore eclipsed is one of the many commendable visual gags in the film. It’s a brilliantly sly conceit, to treat that character as the motivator and/or the conscience keeper. There is wonderful potential here to keep it going at least till the interval point. I admit I haven’t thought this through but that just sounds like a better film. Another wasted potential is as much as the character was intriguing and did not come across needless, once she is done away with there is no hole whatsoever. It’s almost like she did not exist [sic]. Well. I expected some sort of a change in the thoughts and actions of Das (Vijay Sethupathi) after her jettison. This should have been huge and if it was intended, it lacked a bomb in execution.

True to its title, every character – good or bad – is sucked into a web of evil one way or another. The reluctant participant who loses his job joins in due to desperation. The politician’s son cannot stand his do-gooder dad and devises his own plans to eliminate the latter. The small time kidnapping syndicate, ill-advised, goes in for retirement plans when they are on top. The psycho cop who does his job in questionable ways is delivered his comeuppance. Pack into this some not-so-heady messages (they thankfully don’t come across like that) about politics not being a field for the good. Also note how the good minister walks through the metal detector at the party office entrance three times in all – it beeps twice when he is empty-handed but does not when passing with crores of money in hand. Must check this.

One sure winner here is Santosh Narayan with his music and background score. The songs are also used intelligently and the background score is simply outstanding in several scenes. The superb scene where Das takes the cash from the banker dad and walks out is a standout. Ellam Kadandhu Pogumada is a bonafide masterpiece and the kidnapping and chase montages won’t work without a score of this quality.

Soodhu Kavvum may not be the zeitgeist force it is touted to be but it is one solid debut. More than stifling the modest achievements of the film it’ll prove to be more prudent to celebrate it as an indie success and a sign of better things to come for the love of cinema. I may not be looking forward to the sophomore effort from the NKPK stables but Nalan Kumarasamy’s, I will.

Nautanki Saala

Did Rohan Sippy release this film a week before what could have been the perfect date? This is a zany part interesting, part laborious take on Ramlila and exactly a week after its release was Ramanavami. But more than the perfect timing it could have helped if Sippy had made the final portions of this film a bit tighter and more funnier, little less theatrical (this is most definitely intentional but the fact is it doesn’t work)  and cut off a couple of musical interludes.

But credit to Sippy for keeping things intriguing and greatly winning on the atmospheric front. Rohan Sippy has always been impressive, to me at least, with his films and a sense of establishing a world. Almost all his opening credits are well thought out. It is always Bombay, but it is Rohan Sippy’s Bombay and Rohan Sippy’s Goa. The colours are vibrant yet natural. This was more pronounced in Dum Maaro Dum than anything else. The neon signs for Tibb’s frankie and the like; large movie-poster like hoardings for a play and the overacting producer who is also Surpanakha! All this lending it a more noir look for a comedy film. It is also littered with film references even if he is a bit partial to his father, it falls subtly into place in almost every script. Sholay might itself have a Ramayan connection but here too there are two friends, a suicide attempt and then there is the title itself.

Ayushman Khurana’s RP might well be Dittu from Bluffmaster. The same sort of humbling naivete mixed with cunning bravado and if you’ve watched Bluffmaster you’ll know that Dittu turns out to be the director of it all. And this film has top notch performances from both Khurana and Kunal Roy Kapoor. The comedy and the play portions are probably the best things about the film while the love story, though initially good, becomes painful by the end. Also, Evelyn Sharma – who plays Sita in the play within the film – would have made a far better Sita-in-the-film than Pooja Salvi.

The Ram-Raavan dichotomy is played for laughs all through the parts that work and this film could have turned out far better if it had retained its absurdity (Think the board on the gate that roughly says – “Don’t explode bombs here. The media becomes a pain.”) a bit longer and decided not to take itself seriously. But the good news is Rohan Sippy continues to be one of the directors to look forward to.

Zero Dark Thirty

(An edited version of this appeared in WTF magazine)

Zero Dark Thirty starts earnest enough with more sounds and little sights of 9/11 and its aftermath. The search for perpetrators of widespread terrorism started then and specifically the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, that this film primarily deals with. The rest of the film may not come across as impassioned and is mostly a mechanical depiction of the detainee program and the clues that led the US to Osama Bin Laden. That’s where the film enters documentary territory and its mess of moral problems.

Jessica Chastain plays the role of a CIA officer, part of the investigations in Pakistan. The veracity of such a character (in the real investigations behind Osama Bin Laden search) is in question and her name probably alludes to that – Maya. Maya is first shown mildly flinching when her colleague Dan interrogates a detainee, Ammar in ways that were then described as enhanced interrogation techniques. This is probably the slightest of remorse shown to be felt by anyone on the US side of affairs in the whole film. Maya comes to terms with it, albeit unconvincingly and quickly to hold her own interrogations once Dan leaves the scene. It doesn’t help that we jump between timelines and are never sure what year it is. There is little in terms of any introspection the characters go through in effect of this beyond stressful actions on their part. It is always fine to give only one side of the story. Steven Spielberg’s Munich did exactly that, showing us the Mossad side of events but it wasn’t one-dimensional like Zero Dark Thirty. It delved into the effects of the agents’ actions, their fear and how it impacts personal lives. We don’t see any of it and maybe it is intentional and essential since a story spanning a decade is condensed within 2-3 hours but the results aren’t all that great.

The film may do a bit of US chest beating but it tries to be as less dramatic about it as possible. That’s one of the good things. We never see an Obama on the screen (except for single news footage on tv). Nor are we shown Osama Bin Laden clearly before his death or after. It’s all kept vague so as to suggest the real and more authentic representation of events can never be filmed. The final 20 minutes or so are breathtaking with the Navy SEALs clinically going about their business of storming the household in search of Bin Laden. Here is where Kathreyn Bigelow establishes she works better on the field with the army men, bringing those deft touches that she showed throughout The Hurt Locker in building up the adrenaline. In contrast is the ridiculously staged sequence where Maya’s colleague is looking forward to an Al-Qaeda informant in Camp Chapman. The scene is predictable from the beginning but it also tries too hard to be and too long drawn out to make any real impact.

Zero Dark Thirty’s flagship is the final shootout. In its attempt to showcase that, the film gives a halfhearted account of the entire investigation leaving a lot of moral questions in its wake. If not for its political nature and events affecting the entire world, lending it an automatic credibility, this wouldn’t have made it to the Academy nominations in any form.