My post is going to start with a confession . I’ve never been a huge GVM fan – so to speak . I’ve seen all of his movies , liked them in parts , been affected by a few of those moments but I always had the feeling that his movies were set in a La La land that I could never be a part of. And that was because to me the average GVM leads were people I could never relate to.
They are not reflections of the society at large . They are slightly psychotic , slightly eccentric and when faced with ordinary day to day situations , they react in an absolutely unreal way which makes way for interesting viewing on screen . Take Vinnai Thandi Varuvaaya for instance , it resonated with a lot of people who had been through the turbulence that comes with first love , the angst that comes with heartbreak ,the inability to move on from a break-up and the searing pain that accompanies your life as a result of that. All of us had a friend who had loved and lost in college and the early career years , a friend who loved so deeply but bowed down to society and married elsewhere . But it was not every friend who faced that and it was never the norm. I could enjoy these movies but they never resonated with me and thus I had almost given up on GVM until AYM happened.
in AYM , You have a chubby , jobless MBA graduate who loves his sister’s classmate . She sees him in the buff , he later examines his figure in the mirror and says yeah I looked good but I can lose the belly . He has a posse of friends who are as normal as they come. He has a bike , plans to go on a road trip yet he stays back because Lovreeeee . She comes to his house for a stay and he tries to build a rapport and relationship with her. He wants her to accompany him on the road trip and yet when she arrives out of the blue , he warns her by providing reasons that are a deterrent . There is this lovely scene , where she keeps eating as they ride and he almost rolls his eyes . They are the normal , next door couple you could meet on your next road trip and boy did the first half resonate or what.
Me and the Mr kept chuckling as our minds went hurtling back to our early days when we dated around , where we did nothing but talk , that trip in Rhode Island where we sat in companionable silence watching the sun go over the cliff , the thanksgiving before the wedding where I kept nodding off because my sleep was ruined etc etc etc. GVM takes the entire first half to underscore this normalcy and BAM right in the middle of Thalli Pogathe throws this normal couple into an extraordinary situation that wreaks havoc in their life . The entire second half is about how this boy becomes a man overnight and how he reacts to this new crazy in an extraordinary way and yet GVM underlines this with a tinge of normalcy. There are no songs in the second half because lets face it who would have time to sing a duet when your existence is hanging by a thread or when your friend has been shot at and killed. The leads don’t make moon’s eyes over each other and they don’t seem to be sure or cognisable about what’s happening with them . They are in a nightmare that keeps getting worse and then there is sunlight. The mood is right , the scenes are set up the right way and Simbu has acted his heart out and yet this second half is so problematic that it has almost derailed the movie for most people.
All that you know of Leela Raman comes from the hero’s view and it seems one dimensional . You don’t hear Leela in the movie , don’t know if she really feels for the hero and hence you are not able to justify why he does what he does for the longest time . He gets into an accident and confesses his feelings and she abandons him in the hospital and goes home . My father has been hacked to shreds and mother has been shot at she says and he goes in search for her because Lovvreeeeee. Even when they meet at the hospital and afterwards , you don’t know what Leela feels because Leela doesn’t tell us. Even the scene where she confesses her feelings is staged from the hero’s POV. Enakku theriyum he says and we are supposed to accept it as a valid justification for the scenes that went past – only that it becomes even more difficult to do that. The movie is about this man called ‘R’ what happened in his life and how that affected him and he is almost always myopic in the way he narrates that and therein lies the film’s strength and weakness. Take for instance the scene where his friend asks R ” If you think you were dying , won’t your parents and friends come to your mind first” and R says ” Yeah I remembered them in flashes but what mattered to me at the point was Leela” and you understand that this guy is myopic in the way he views things . What we see is his retelling of the things that happened so far , the things that are going to happen and its like ek haath ki taali , almost , because he is not narrating each and every moment and he has no way to delve into his lady’s heart. But it is an honest narration and Simbu is terrific as the narrator . He has gained oodles of weight , has lost his good looks , has a beer belly that he doesn’t hide and has finally learned to emote with his eyes. Its almost as if the career slumps he has faced has made him into this no nonsense actor who is here to do his job and he has aced his brief. Manjima is lovely as Leela but given the fact that Leela is told from R’s POV there is very little substance to her – if only GVM added a few extra minutes to flesh her out and if only towards the end Leela and R lived a fairly normal life – him as an IT consultant in a faraway country recounting this incident over a drink in a pub to his friends with Leela by his side but R’s name is Rajinikanth and with a name like that he has to become a cop , get posted to the villain’s precinct and kill him , we feel shortchanged. Next time GVM , name this new normal hero of yours Karthik and give us more tales about the normal.
The Yellowed Parchment 