‘7 G Rainbow Colony’ is not yet another feel-good love story. It’s of the sort you will fondly remember almost like a sad love story of a close friend. Its one of the few movies when brutal reality met true love and managed to create a tragic impact which will linger in the viewers mind forever.
The movie:
A story of love that transformed a rogue to a respectable human being and then a schizophrenic …
Kathir is the sort of a guy whom every well brought up girl would be disgusted with his mere appearance. His psychology is well explained through a single song, ‘Naam Vayadhukku vandhoam’ which almost celebrates the life of wasted young men in general.
And Anitha a decent, ambitious, quiet girl from north India (a north Indian family settled in Chennai) simply loathes the roguish, disrespectful and aimless Kathir’s existence. Her loathing keeps increasing as she helplessly realizes his sudden increasing interest in her.
For Kathir develops a deep infatuation or obsession for her. So deep that he will madly follow her forever, he will patiently bear all her verbal and physical assaults at his repeated proposals (She even slaps him with her slippers and throws a hot cup of coffee at his face.) and he will turn a possessive monster and beat up any guy who messes with her to terror.
Anitha is torn between her initial hatred and her sudden softness for Kathir. The confused bundle of emotions the two lead characters undergo are explained through the lyrics of the song ‘Kanaa kaanum kaalangal’. The realistic wholeness of their characters, and framing of the events than make up the scene (rather than the acting prowess of the actors) are used to depict the complexities in their relationships.
Anitha eventually accepts him, but not before making a man out of him. She helps him discover his only talent in life; and there by finds him a profession. She makes him realize the pain he had cost his parents by wasting his life. Slowly, she transforms him from a monster to a human being. A human being whom the neighbors would respect, parents would be proud of and whom any girl would love to have as boy friend, but unfortunately not Anitha’s parents.
Determined to fight against the odds splitting them, they elope. Just when things are getting fine, cruel fate intervenes to separate them. Anitha dies in a road accident and Kathir who also gets wounded, is deeply affected by the incident and is unable to let go of her lingering memory. Much to the grief of his parents and friends he continues living in an illusion that Anitha is still alive. He regularly dials her old disconnected land-line number and spends hours talking to thin air.
The kind of emotion Kathir undergoes and which anybody who had lost a loved one would understand are beautifully expressed through the words of the song in the background ‘Ninaithu Ninaithu’ which talks about the broken pieces of of bangle, dried petals of the flower which she once wore, echoes of her laughter and words, and the well preserved memories of her revered countenance.
And the picturization of the song takes us to the corridors, stairs, lawns, terrace, windows, near by beach, shops, college bus stand and coffee shops in and around ‘7 G Rainbow Colony’ where Kathir alone sees his Anitha.
My Thoughts & Conclusion:
With decent acting, songs with lyrics that match the script, detailed filming of the subtle events of life and its life-sized dialogues which contribute to the naturalness, the film stands way ahead of the recent spate of masala movies being made by the Tamil film industry.
But the effort taken to project the crude life of the wasted Kathir and the scenes that show the basis of his attraction to Anitha are itself too crude and not so comfortable to watch. Yet, they could be forgiven as there could be no better way to establish the characters convincingly.
In total, just like the director Selva Raghavan’s other movies, ‘7 G Rainbow Colony’ is a poignant and lingering piece of art which is hard hitting and vulgar at times.