It’s been a while since I wrote a review and this movie is too good that it breaks a 6-month long jinx.
By the end of the first half of the movie, I thought that I should title my mouthshut review as ’’Mani Ratnam: The master of screenplay’’. But, after watching the entire movie, I realized this title will be too inadequate to describe the beauty of a movie.
What does the title mean?
The title is one of the vowels in tamil language. This vowel is represented by 3 dots - think of the points in an equilateral triangle and you get the picture. I don’t think I’ll have to explain the relevance of the 3 dots vis-a-vis the 3 important characters of the movie.
What is the movie for?
Well, ask yourself: Do all the movies you see are created for a purpose and deliver a message? Then why do we ask the same question when it is directed by a famed director? Not to worry. This movie is about you and me and everybody. The basic message of the movie is ’’don’t talk, do what you want to say’’.
What’s so special about it?
The first half of the movie is a superb art work of screen play. Anybody who say ’Alaipayuthey’ from the same director would vouch for the radically different intertwined screenplay of the movie. Here again, the screenplay is good. The movie starts with Madhavan shooting Surya from point-blank and Siddharth being a witness of the action. From that point the story revolves backwards to Madhavan’s hey days (!!!) and slowly the dialogues that Madhavan was delivering at the start of the movie make sense. Now, having reached this point for the 2nd time, Mani ratnam takes you back to Surya’s good old days.
Story slowly unfolds and stops again at the same scene where the movie started. Now, remember this is being witnessed by our Siddharth and the story goes back to Siddharth’s play boy days and comes back to the same first scene for the 4th time. All the 3 characters’ storeis are now told. From now on the movie moves to top gear and shows what happens around them in unison. This is a cool concept - a first for a Indian movie. May be it was copied from a Mexican movie but I don’t care as I’m never going to watch a mexican movie in my life time and thanks to Mani Ratnam for bringing this to the Indian masses.
Madhavan
Madhavan deserves a special mention. His acting is too good that after sometime you really start hating this guy for what he is doing. This is his real success. He has perfectly don his role as a villain.
Bharathiraja
I cannot think of anybody other than Bharathiraja to so neatly fit into the role of a corrupted politician. His acting is awesome and it comes so natural to him (Yes Yes Yes, I do hear a ’’Ofcourse, he’s a director himself buddy!!!’’ from you). Even when you put politicians in a difficult situation they try to hide all their anger and throw a smiling face at you and answer politely. This thing comes naturally to Bharathiraja. He’s the best of all actors/actresses in the movie.
The film is superbly crafted in all departments. Ravi K Chandran’s camera is at his usual best and unlike Mani Ratnam’s desire for dark scenes, the movie is vibrant with slight red tint in Madhavan’s scenes, a light-green tint in Surya’s scenes and blue tint in Siddharth’s scenes. This is so very subtle and blends nicely with the nature of the characters.
Music by A.R.Rahman is good - not in songs this time but in re-recording. It cannot get any better. I had to watch the movie a 2nd time to listen to the BGM. Great work. One of the things that I liked about the movie is the dialogues by Sujata. Though it gets rude and vulgar at some places you start to realise that that is how it is in the real world. There’s no special person identified for comedy most unlikely of a tamil movie. Subtle comedies are delivered in the dialogues themselves.
Now, I’m not going to tell any more of the story. Do watch the movie just for the message. The message is clear - ’’don’t blame the politicians for India’s under development, become one’’, which I wish every youngster (and that is why the hindi title ’Yuva’) aspires to become one.