I came out of the cinemas after watching ‘Pachaikili Muthucharam’ with a question in my mind. When Gautam Menon (one of the most overrated directors of Tamil cinema) is going to give us a completely satisfying movie? I doubt whether he really means it, when he says, ‘My inspiration in Mani Ratnam and not Martin Scorsese’. Because the kind of commercial cinema that he has been making is not a fine mix of masala as in Maniratnam films, it is irritating like a sensuous song peeping out of nowhere in a Balu Mahendra’s movie. Infact I would say in treating realism, he goes a step ahead of Maniratnam(what I felt after watching just the first half this movie) and only when he tries to fit it in into the commercial format, he goes far behind Maniratnam.
Gautam has chosen a simple story and has given it a very realistic and interesting narration until Venky remains as Venky in the movie. The movie looses all its credibility, when finally hero Sarath kumar takes over Venky. Even the twists and turns in the movie are not surprising or shocking. It just falls flat. The moment you see Jyothika in the train, you can easily guess why she is there. But inspite of this predictability in the screenplay, I think the movie would have worked and worked much better, if Gautam had started rolling the end credits when ‘Kadhal Konjam’ song starts to play.
Though I left the theatre with disappointment, I liked few things about the movie. The relationship between a couple and love angle between two strangers are handled in a very realistic way. I found the conversation of Sarath and Jyothika, interesting. The camerawork of Arvind Krishna is very different from what we have seen so far in such movies. I don’t remember watching such tight close-up shots all through the movie and also there is no much of camera movements here unlike other Gautam’s films. That definitely adds to the reality of the film and easily takes us the audience close to their world. When there are so many close-ups involved, actors have to be really experienced and a lot of help from director is required to pull it off convincingly.
In this movie, I think Gautam succeeded in getting those right expressions in actors’ faces in all those continuous close-up shots. And the same adds more difficulty for editor Antony, because the expression on actors face in the close-up shot and the next usual frame should sync and Antony has done a brilliant job in maintaining this continuity of expressions. Harris Jeyaraj yet again shamelessly copies the theme of Forrest Gump as background music for scenes involving Sarath and Andrea. I completely lost faith that I once had in his music. Sarath is very natural and so is Andrea but Jyothika overacts towards the end. Watch the movie once but if you want to like the movie leave the theatre immediately after Kadhal Konjam song is over.