Movie Review: Pachai Kili Muthu Charam
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Gautham Menon, of 'Minnale' and 'Kaakha Kaakha' fame, has come back with a venture soon after the success of his Kamal Hassan starrer 'Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu'. The new flick is called 'Pachaikili Muthucharam' and has Sarath Kumar and Jyothika in the lead, with newcomers, playback singer Andrea and model Milind Soman in the cast as well.
Venkatesh (Sarath Kumar) is a regular middle-class bloke, works as a sales man, regular family - one wife (Andrea) and one son. Reasonably happy home life except for the fact that the son has acute juvenile diabetes. This pulls the couple apart physically and there we see the first chink - lack of intimate relations. One day, on his way to work, he sees fellow train traveller Geetha (Jyothika). Soon enough, they become buddies and chat about their lives. As they sit in a cafe, swapping family deets, for some strange reason, Venkatesh tells her he has got Rs 8 lakh in his kitty, for medical emergencies as his son has juvenile diabetes. From the word go, it seems like Geetha is in the driving seat where this relationship is concerned. She is quite keen to take this friendship to more intimate levels and one day, urges him to book them into a room so they can be together.
They go to a resort on the ECR and as Venkatesh continues with his self-doubts as they prepare to cross a no-go zone, they hear a tap at the door. He opens it and thug Lawrence (Milind Soman) comes barrelling into his life. Lawrence quickly puts two and two together and learns that herein lies his golden goose. He beats Venkatesh senseless; ties him up rapes Geetha and takes leave of them, after taking their cell phone details. Venkatesh wants to go to the police but is stopped by Geetha, who'd rather not face up to the day's happenings. Soon after, she gets a phone call from him, extorting for money. The calls don't stop till all the cash Venkatesh has kept squirreled away dwindles to nothing, at which point, Venkatesh comes clean to his wife. This breaks up their family and he vows to get his hard-earned money back. He starts an investigation that turns up some startling results. How Venkatesh keeps his vow to get the money and his peace of mind back forms the rest of the story.
The film starts off rather slow and when you travel up and down Chennai with Sarath Kumar and Jyothika on the trains every day, you wish Gautham would get a move on and speed things up. But once the movie picks up though, it becomes quite interesting and once we come across the twist in the tale, it becomes a real promising movie. Though I kept wondering why in hell's name would the man tell an acquaintance his bank balance, no matter how much he lusts after her or why the hell didn't they just chuck the cells, thereby ridding themselves of the burden? The latter doubt sort of gets answered as the plot develops and I reckon the former is played out so it links to the plot later on as well. But the execution of it leaves some doubts in some minds.
Despite these niggling flaws, I rather like this movie - mainly for the rather mature and clean approach to extra- marital affairs. After the glorious singing- dancing-overblown saga of KANK, I should take my hat off to Gautham for handling this sticky subject so well, especially in view of the ultra conservative Tamil cinema. Nowhere was it crass, vulgar or shoddy. Of course, he draws the line by making sure the protagonists don't actually 'do the deed', thereby making the bitter pill easier to swallow, I suppose.
Acting-wise, I would say Milind Soman has done a good job. The makeup helps - there is no model peering out of the familiar face. He looks every inch a thug and behaves like one too. Though he does make the usual error of mistaking shouting non-stop for displaying rage, he still turns out a fairly good performance. Jyothika surprises me - there was a time when I thought she was a duffer. But she has been maturing leaps and bounds over the years and in a tragic way, she manages to churn out really mature performances just when she has bid adieu to the career. Oh well! There's nothing to beat quitting while you are on top, is there?
The music score is by Harris Jayaraj and this is slowly becoming a regular combo, rather like the Mani Ratnam - A R Rahman deadly duo. Though not all of Harris's songs are instant hits, he is still a good composer, rather along the lines of Rahman. He understands the nuances of background score but at some places, he misses the mark completely, with overly loud shehnai playing mournfully in the background, with no connection to the dialogues and situations. Having said that, some of the songs are really catchy. His staple, Carnatic music singer Bombay Jayshree sings a melodious number, Unakkul Naan. Though her 'Vaseegara' from 'Minnale' will always be my favourite Jayshree-Harris tune, Unakkul Naan is quite melodious and hummable as well.
All in all, it is an okay sort of a flick - can sit through one time. Unless you are, like me, major anti-fan of Sarath Kumar and need other distractions, you could do worse than sit through this one.
Related link: My interview of one of the Gautham Menon's assistant directors to this movie, Meghana Karthik.
Posted by DesiGirl 11:06 PM 1 comments
Labels: andrea, charam, cinema, gautham, jyothika, kili, kumar, menon, milind soman, muthu, pachai, sarath, tamil
Movie Review: Thiruvilaiyadal Aarambam
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Good hearted male lead, with the honourable intentions of making a name for himself in the world. Dad refuses to lend him money and give him a leg up as son tends to while time away by drinking with his mates and getting into gang fights. Statements of 'get the hell out of my house and never come back' are uttered on a regular basis by either parent. One day, like all our movie heroes, our man too takes one look at the female lead and falls for her big time. Yes, he is 'in love' with her without even knowing her name.
After seeing her big brother beat the rowdies who came a'sniffing around baby sis, hero adopts the novel approach of asking the brother for his sister's hand. Understandably, this pisses the brother off, who sends hero packing with a flea on his ear. With this starts the 'thiruvilaiyadal' (or divine play). The hero makes the girl fall in love with him and whilst they paint the town red, big bro sees red and sends for him to scare him away. Hero stumps him by accepting money from the brother for staying away from his sister. Thus starts the barter system and when his family learns of this, they are aghast and kick him out of their house for good.
Hero now has the dosh to start his business, which he does and becomes a roaring success. On and on goes the movie till the end, where it all ends happily for all parties concerned.
Dhanush plays the role of the male lead, with Shreya as his opposite number. Other notable members of the cast are Prakash Raj as Shreya's brother and Mouli & Saranya as Dhanush's parents. There is nothing new or interesting in this movie. Same old tripe, boy sees girl, falls in love and does a variety of stunts before everything ends on a rosy glow. There is nothing new or exciting about this venture. Of course, thousands of Dhanush's fans disagreed with me and made this a hit! Go figure!
Posted by DesiGirl 9:55 AM 0 comments
Labels: aarambam, dhanush, film, movie, prakash raj, shreya, tamil, thiruvilaiyadal
ARR: The Urban Legend
Thursday, November 30, 2006
A R Rahman burst through like a breath of fresh air with Mani Ratnam’s Roja and changed the way Tamil and slowly rest of India’s music sounded. Ilaiyaraja had ruled the South till then as the undisputed king among the composers. There was none to beat him, no one even to come near him. If the ‘maestro’ decided to do the score for your movie, you can rest easy in the knowledge that you are going to have a hit on your hands.
Raja’s sounds were mostly grounded in a rural background – the harmonium famously was at the composer’s fingertips at any given time. That doesn’t mean that his songs were only of the typical folk song variety. His music for Mani Ratnam’s hit ‘Dalapathi’ was phenomenal. He has composed some of Tamil industry’s most famous songs – ‘Ilamai ennum poongatru’, ‘Idhu oru pon maalai pozhudhu’, ‘Raja raja sozhan’, to name a few.
Most of his contemporaries also went along the same route – M S Viswanathan, Deva (who was more like a poor man’s Raja), Gangai Amaran etc. Ilaiyaraja did not really have any real competition – he ruled alone and he ruled long. Till a 25 year old genius burst into the scene.
A slight difference of opinion between Mani Ratnam and his favourite composer urged him to look for a composer elsewhere, latched onto the young Rahman who was busy composing ad jingles and the rest, as they say, is history. His choice of instruments, the arrangements he used, the different tones and tunes he produced – everything was as different from the prevalent music of the day as the proverbial chalk is from cheese. The public lapped it up eagerly and were soon hungry for more.
He followed Roja with some memorable songs from Thiruda Thiruda, Gentleman, Puzhiya Mugam, May Maadam, Karuthamma, Duet,Indira, Bombay, Rangeela and more recently, Taal, Lagaan, Boys Rang De Basanti and Guru. He was the first ever music composer to win the coveted Rajat Kamal Award at the National Film Awards for his debut effort. He has gone on to win this award thrice more, for Minsaara Kanavu, Lagaan and Kannathil Muthamittal - the most by any music director.
The awards he has won, the global recognition he has achieved, the wide range of projects he’s been a part of is too many to list. More than anything, what he has single-handedly done is changed Indian background music forever. Till he came onto the scene, filmi music was primarily used to give the audience a break from the onscreen action. With his advent, that changed completely – a movie’s soundtrack became as important as the movie itself. Cassette sales soared and became an indication of how the movie would fare at the box-office. 
With Alaipayudhey, he introduced the audience to the new, sexed-up version of the normally staid Hindu wedding mantras. When he sang 'Mangalyam', blended it with those awesome beats and merged it so beautifully with the theme song Enrendrum punnagai - the effect was a thing of sheer beauty. For the first time ever, it it became cool to sing mantras!
But sounding quintessentially urban didn't mean that the man couldn't do villagey music. He sure could and did, in his own inimitable style and the resultant sound is normally something we've never heard before. I am, of course, talking of Then merkku paruva-k-kaatru from Karuthamma here. Even Kummi Adi is a typical village number, Rahmanified as it is!
I shall not be remiss in not mentioning his foray into Punjabi bhangra. Though he has said a lot of times that he felt comfortable with Tamil music, as he did not understand Hindi, he has composed some absolute gems for films like Rangeela, Taal, Bombay, Dil Se and more recently Rang de Basanti. The title song of RDB, sung by Daler Mehendi sounded absolutely fresh and completely different from the usual bhagra songs one often hears. Of course I do not listen to bhangra music much but to me, they always sounded the same - till ARR and the Ting ling ling ling.
Meanwhile, Rahman’s assistants branched off on their own and took the new Rahmanish sounds with them whilst some of the new ones on the horizon were inspired by it and started emulating the same. Harris Jayaraj (Minnale, Kaakha Kaakha, Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu), Praveen, Vidyasagar, Bharadwaj, Devi Sri Prasad were all part of this new brigade. Though all of them have gone on to make some great music scores, there is none to touch ARR, none to match his attention to detail.
The consummate professional that he is, he clearly differentiates between what is played on screen and what you slip into your CD player, unlike the other music directors, whose screen music is no different from the on they release on CD or tape. This makes his music sound that much crisper when you listen to the audio whilst the video has a special extra bit going for it. A classic example of this is his recent Kummi Adi from Sillunu Oru Kaadal - while the CD version starts with a big bang, in the movie there is a slow, folksy interlude before the actual song.
Rahman also has a special music interlude for any crunch / special situations in the plot. Oftentimes, this would be the chorus part of the main romantic song of the movie. In the aforementioned movie, the main part of the song Munbe Vaa was the background vocal for the Gautham – Aishu wedding scene, the same song that they sing during happier times.
These might seem insignificant but attention to little details like this is what sets ARR apart. Devi Sri Prasad, in his latest hit Bommarillu would have done better to have picked up these tips from the master and utilised them in his song Laloo Darvaja. Whilst having Jayasudha sing the Krishna bhajan-type number makes sense in the movie and adds to the plot, it slows down the tempo of the song in the CD and breaks up the whole rhythm.
ARR is also the king when it comes to the quality of his music mixes. His music has a slick feel to it that, despite his detractors’ pronouncement that his tunes would never stand the test of time, have nonetheless stayed the same through the years. His old hits still sound just as melodious as they did the day they came out. Though Rahman’s music take a bit of getting used to, they do grow on you after repeated listens and become impossible to move away from.
The man is not without his particular quirks – one of the most famous ones being his penchant to record at night. He is famous for doing the best part of his recording with the moon; his singers are all well used to getting on the car in the dead of the night and finishing up at the break of dawn. Recently, though, he announced he was going to try to change that habit and carry on his recording work at daytime.
Another of his famous peculiarities is his wish to keep things natural – he is rather taken up by the ‘rawness’ of a voice. To that extent, he used to make singers out of people with no formal music training whatsoever, depending more on their raw tone of their voice to carry the tune through.
ARR has come a long way from his young Dileep days, when he was struggling to make ends meet. Today, he is one of the most famous music composers in the world. He has taken his music far and beyond the country’s shores – collaborating with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber for Bombay Dreams, working on the Chinese film Warriors of Heaven and Earth and even composing the score for Lord of the Rings stage production. He has done all this and more; but to me, he will always remain the man who changed Indian music completely, forever.
His music is everything – slick, beautiful, sublime and timeless. Long may it resonate around the world.
Posted by DesiGirl 10:12 PM 1 comments
Labels: allah, ARR, bombay, composer, hindi, indian, mani, movie, music, rahman, rakha, ratnam, roja, tamil