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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

movie review tamil kadal by mani ratnam

                                                        When my cousin told that she couldnt get the tickets for the malayalam movie and got tickets for a tamil movie  to tell frankly  i told Oh God .  Not that i dont like tamil  movies and the pretty heroines dancing and thin heroes(some of them ) bashing up guys three times their size  . But i cant watch it for 2 hours  ...

Few spoilers ahead  .....and little graphic  (you are warned )

The film starts with a man on a rainy day visiting a prostitute in a fishing village  .  He tells her kid to go out and the boy is standing in the rain  .  Within minutes the man comes out and tells the boy her son --"Look, she has been dead for hours"  .  The boy crying when she is not taken to be buried in the churchyard  (  still indecent people have  no place in the churchyard  )  and she is buried by the sea  by a group of drunk gravediggers and when her leg sticks out one of them breaks it and puts ir into the makeshift coffin  .

Two random thoughts  .....Can this scene happen in real life to some child   ?   Yes , it can  ...Because even prostitutes frequently give birth

Who has taken this serious movie?   ( movies are supposed to make you laugh , oogle at pretty women etc  )..   Any third rate director  ???  Or a sleepy award winning director  ?? Its none other than our  dear Manirathnam Sir who needs no introduction and most importantly knows how to take good commercial cinemas with value  .

Dont get me wrong by this first scene the movie has all the elements of commercial cinema even has two three beautiful nicely choreographed dance sequences , a nice romance (with pretty girl included )  and even beautiful music score by A R Rahman  . The story is good a different theme though based on the classic good vs evil theme but a really different way of presentation .

The cinematography is superb and the backdrop is the beautiful Andaman and Nicobar islands  .  Our Roja Arvind Swami is back in action with a great role and he has acted really well . So is the villain Arjun .

When we parked our car for first time in my life  the parking lot was empty  . I thought we were very early .  When we went out it was near empty  .  The "thara ticket " i mean the non -balcony seats were near empty too  . I agree this was a commercial cinema with a serious theme . But considering the "intellectual " malayali movie goer i take it that the movie goers standards have decreased  .  Because i dont think it deserves the kind of reception that it received .

This is one movie i liked because it is really deep (just like the name suggests )  . If you like serious cinema watch it  ...Kadal (tamil )  by Maniratnam


2 comments:

  1. Thank you for this post. I always wonder- there was a time when the malayali audience would rise up to any degree of intellect in a film- be it humour or a serious theme, they demanded a certain standard. What happened to that class of people? Have they all churned out a generation with no insight into movies? Just like the fast food they have turned to, they want an easily digestible movie with slapstick comedy.
    Keep writing!

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  2. dear anonymous , i liked the comparison to fast food culture . Though i am pessimistic about the movie goers standards i am happy that good movies draw only serious movie goers . In that way we can watch it in peace :) thanks for the comment and reading

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