Director: Gautham Vasudev Menon
Author: Jeyamohan
Solid: Silambarasan TR, Siddhi Idnani, Radikaa Sarathkumar
Gautham Vasudev Menon’s Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu is most fascinating if you zoom in on the small steps it takes throughout the gangster film style. Written by Jeyamohan, it’s as a lot the coming-of-age story of a helpless Muthu (Silambarasan) from Naduvakurichi as it’s about an outsider coming into after which making it on the planet of crime in Bombay. However the fusion of those two narrative threads are so harmonious that there’s no dissonance between the interior journey of a person destined to a lifetime of crime and the exterior journey that traverses landscapes and morality, language and time.
A fatalistic method to Muthu’s future is planted in our minds proper from the primary scene. Having graduated with a bachelors’ diploma, Muthu asks the postman if he’s introduced the excellent news of a job letter. Within the arid thorn bushes that Muthu calls residence, a job is the most secure escape route. However as a substitute of an appointment letter, the postman brings destiny in one other kind when his half-lit beedi burns down all of Muthu’s farmland. Left with the picture of 100 thorns piercing into Muthu’s again, we’re additionally imagining him as the person who obtained stabbed within the again by the identical parcel of land that’s meant to feed him.
An inescapable feeling of hell surrounds Muthu wherever he goes; an astrologer had warned Muthu’s mom that her son would inevitably turn out to be a assassin. It’s the identical inevitability that lastly leads him to Bombay as nicely. When given the selection between a suitcase full of money and a pistol, he doesn’t select the previous and it’s as if he doesn’t know why. It’s destiny making the primary transfer but once more after we see him attain Bombay with out much more than a loaded gun. Paraphrasing a line from the movie, it’s the gun that selected Muthu and never the opposite means round.
Muthu’s future appears larger than he’s and that is the case with the individuals inhabiting his new world in Bombay. Each essential character we meet right here is someplace alongside the identical journey Muthu has taken. At one finish is his boss who predicts an ending by the hands of Muthu. Far nearer to the beginning line is a personality who turns into a mentor; he offers Muthu his first drink and task and thru him, we see Muthu sensing his personal future, a minimum of when it comes to a household. But it’s the character of Sreedharan (Neeraj Madhav) that makes Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu really feel like a departure from the gangster movies we’ve seen earlier than. The subtext about destiny and future, doubles down after we see Sreedharan because the mirror picture of Muthu, arriving in Bombay on the identical day, maybe on the identical prepare. Their paths preserve converging and to start with, we sense that it’s Sreedharan who obtained the uncooked finish of the deal. By Sreedharan, we’re continuously watching one other story unfold though the blanks are being crammed by us subconsciously. What was till then a narrative a few man who couldn’t escape his destiny, evolves slyly on the facet right into a parallel story a few man who truly might.
It’s a fascinating new course to take to reply one of many style’s most repeated questions—can a gangster ever escape the system he/she turns into part of? In one of many movie’s finest dialogues, we’re advised that individuals like Muthu are simply screws that kind part of an enormous machine, with out even figuring out what the machine does. Regardless of his finest intentions, we see Muthu make the identical errors his colleagues have made earlier than him. And when the movie ends, it will get you to return and query the excessive you felt throughout it’s epic interval sequence. Ought to the gun have remained the place it was? Is that the place Muthu crossed the mellisana kodu?
Jeyamohan’s writing is deftly complemented by Gautham Menon’s filmmaking fashion, particularly when the outsider gaze contributes to a sense of isolation and discomfort in a punishing terrain early on after which in an odd new metropolis. A testomony to that is how the movie maintains the claustrophobia even after we shift from the stuffy prime flooring of a parotta store into the seedier bedrooms of a five-star resort suite. The constant use of lengthy takes for motion scenes in addition to the songs, additional unifies the broad themes of a movie into one singular imaginative and prescient.
Satirically, for a Gautham Menon film, it’s the romantic parts that really feel off-tone in what’s a deep dive into a person’s interior battle together with his destiny. The conversations between Muthu and Paavai (a barely out of sync Sidhi Idlani), feels too “woked-up” and desirous to show a degree that it feels unnatural and compelled. It’s when different characters enter this equation that we sense life being breathed into it. An instance of that is after we see all of Muthu’s cynicism enter right into a hilariously transactional assembly between him and Paavai’s mother and father.
I used to be equally detached to the staging of ‘Unna Nenachadhum’. Once more, with cinematographer Siddhartha Nuni’s single shot, the impact, I assume the makers needed, is that of a tune taking up what appears to be like like a daily dialog between lovers. With out the same old prospers and choreography, it’s as if these lovers are merely talking to one another in poetry, just for it to “sound” like a tune that’s enjoying to the viewer. I skilled an analogous indifference to the best way Rahman’s great songs had been damaged down earlier to sew up completely different parts early on, even when the movie itself isn’t capable of create that cohesion. Add these elements to a very underwhelming sequel bait and you discover the stellar parts of the movie getting diluted by what felt like afterthoughts.
A serious purpose why we by no means really feel the complete blow of those parts is how STR is ready to play Muthu. Even with the movie’s restricted timeline that spans just a few months (not together with the epilogue), we see each little bit of Muthu remodeling from a powerless no one right into a beast who doesn’t need the powers he’s been given. STR will get us to really feel the body-ache Muthu feels after we see him limping from place to put in his village. He additionally will get us to really feel the distinction when the gait turns into extra assured after his transformation. With an ideal return to kind for each director and his favorite lead actor, Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu is a movie that offers you that uncommon pleasure of “rediscovery”. It’s that candy spot you land on when proficient artistes reinvent themselves with out dropping the essence of who they’re. It additionally brings with it the notion that they’ve heaps left in them to supply.