• Your best friends for life need not always be in good terms with you. They can be completely pissed off with you when you introduce your girl friend to them. They soon can accept that girl in to the gang. Your best friend can be your worst enemy when you realize that he and your girl friend are in love. You can then come back to terms with them over a booze calling that girl as “galeej” and the girl would split them  up. You will even curse them on their marriage “en girl friend-ayae correct panni kalyanam panran” and yet superficially wish them good luck in their marriage. And few years later when there is a huge mess up in your life, the same best friend will be the first one to show up
  • Selva has probably shown a very realistic picture of friendship. This is not the “nanbaen da”, “surya nna yaaru theriyuma, natpu nna enna theriyuma” kind of friendship. But something that we are used to in our lives
• When Dhanush walks out on the streets after getting rejected from the advertisement agency and seems the old lady sitting in the platform the entire scene is shown with a glow around the lady. There is sunlight from the left side of the frame, that diamond ring glitters and there is an element of beauty in those wrinkles of old age
  • The scene is completely from the eyes of Dhanush where his immense interest is in photography is not within the four walls of advertising photography but rather out there in the world. And he can see beauty in normal lives where even the husband of that lady says he hasn’t scene his wife so beautiful in all these years. And for that compliment, its a simple “OK” reaction from Dhanush
• When Dhanush meets his “God” Mathesh Krishnamoorthy with the photographs taken from the forest, he has a “Vibhoodhi” on his forehead. And that’s the only scene where he has it in the entire picture
  • That’s probably the most important moment that he has been waiting for. He has been shown as a simple, sensitive and probably little emotionally weak person who is desperately looking for a break. Something that a very normal person will do even if he is completely not used having a “Vibhoodhi”
• The scene where Richa breaks down to Shankar in the car after the wedding mess up, she sums it up saying that her husband is a genius. To that complaining neighbor she says “en purushan kirukkana irukkalam aana nallavan”. Dhanush’s number is stored as “Genius’ in her mobile phone. “Pirai Thedum” song has the following lines sung by the female voice “Vizhiyin andha thaedalum, alayum undhan nenjamum purindhaalae podhumae yeazhun jenmam thaanguvaen”
  • Shows how much she believes on him and just that she doesn’t understand him completely. The reason why she never gives up on him. And a woman like that, a woman who is that strong, can definitely make a huge difference on any man’s life – however messed up he can be
• The climax where Dhanush comes back and says that he needs to speak few more words. He starts saying about Richa. After the first word that he utters he clears his throat and continues. The most emotional moment for him where he was not able to continue without clearing his throat.
  • For a moment I thought Dhanush was kind of an asshole when he thanked only his friends and didn’t even mention about his wife. Probably it’s one of the brilliant climax by Selva where when the friends were all on tears and proud about the achievement and few even say “He is so smart”, “Such a lovely couple”, “So sweet right”, both the lead characters display amazing maturity in the relationship. When the friends start hugging Richa, she would just peep over them to look a the TV and Dhanush would be looking straight in to her eyes. I think that just sums it all
• “Kaadhal en Kaadhal” song was probably wrongly placed in the film. I don’t think at that moment, Dhanush was so pissed off with they way the relationship is. The song goes by Dhanush completely pissed of with the girl and the relationship and wants to get out of it and the friend consoling him saying that it is not worth worrying off and just move on. Dhanush and Richa aren’t completely into it and its just starting to build up and more importantly the friend doesn’t know that Dhanush is into something. If this song was placed right after the scene where Sundar’s father offers a drink for both of them it would have been brilliant
  • Having said that, may be the song is not about Sundar actually consoling Dhanush but rather its Dhanush consoling himself – showing what he is going through in his head. In middle of the song when the lyric goes by “Aayiram Sonniyae Kaadhula Vaangala”, you can see Dhanush hitting his heart and then pointing his head. And after the song is over when both of the were completely drunk Dhanush says “Ulla vechukkavum mudiyala, Sollavum mudiyala”. Same goes to “Oda Oda” song where the comic character jumps out of his ear all of a sudden and alternatively displays the other world that he is in. It even spits on him showing the times where one would be at the weakest moments of their life. So may be it is all about himself

Of course there are numerous brilliant individual scenes all over the movie. One of the weirdest editing to the marriage scene right after the fight between the two – with a brilliantly placed long shot where you will wonder if it is Dhanush or Sundar getting married.  Dhanush saying with a sarcastic smile “Goyya bayangara kaduppula irukkaen” in the bar when someone asks “Thambi love failure-a”. The scene where Sundar is sitting in the forest room with Richa in the bathroom, Dhanush enters in to the room and you will actually see Sundar’s feet on the fingers and not firmly placed – 🙂

And I don’t want to mention about Dhanush or Richa’s acting and GV’s BGM, its all over the place that they have done a wonderful job. I personally liked GV’s silence in the background scores. It just gives you that additional time to capture the emotions on the screen and this is in line with the tricks that Ilayaraja played for years to give you that feel of the film. GV definitely has got wonderful years ahead if he continues like and it holds true if he has not lifted the scores of this film from somewhere else.

My respect for Selva has completely multiplied by this movie and this movie is just a reflection of what went on Selva’s head. And not everything would be explicitly put across as dialogues or scenes but you would just need to feel it – easier if you had been in similar situations. I still keep wondering what really went on in Selva’s head because lyrics like “Aaathadi aadu mekka raasa vandhaaram…Aadu thinna yechi pull maeya vandharam”, “Karu naakum kaara pulla, karupatti nerathu mulla, yedupatta nerathu tholla, nee kalavani” sounds brilliant and still keeps me wondering.

And women – of course, you are the emotionally strong species here. If you decide and be firm on a decision, you can completely ridicule a situation as if everything is OK when there actually is a storm around. And it would simply show on men’s face. It is this simple thing for which we will never understand you. And the very same reason why we need you as well (though we may never accept it in front of you).

The movie “Kanchana” seems to be a runaway hit with huge crowds flowing in the cinema halls. The movie seems to be a hit mostly in the towns and rural areas and moderately in the cities as well. I saw couple of reviews (online and in the print) which claimed the movie to be good and particularly they mentioned about the comedy sequences. It seems that “Kovai Sarala” (as mom to Lawrence) and “Devadharshini” (as “anni” to Lawrence) have done a very good job in the comedy scenes. This definitely kindled my interest and I started seeing the clips shown in TV and online.

The scenes that were claimed to be humorous definitely didn’t even bring a smile in my face – I don’t think I have a bad sense of humor. The so called scenes involved Lawrence going to “choo choo” and asking Kovai Sarala to come along since he is a kid at heart. Other scene was the introduction of Lakshmi Rai where they mock about the length of her skirt. Cut there and the next scene will be Lawrence jumping and being carried as a kid by Kovai Sarala, Devadharshini and yeah guessed it Lakshmi Rai too. And Devadharshini all through the scenes speaks in a worst possible modulation thinking it is actually funny.

I haven’t scene the entire movie and mostly will not after seeing these scenes. People do say that Sarath Kumar has performed well. So may be those portions of the film is actually better. But what is irritating is the fact that these scenes are actually being projected as the most funniest scenes in the recent times. Add to that, today, being independence day, Sun TV is airing some special program on this movie. The interviewer is actually very intelligent in asking questions like “How did Kovai Sarala manage to hold Lawrence in her iduppu?”. For which the Lawrence kept on explaining things and everybody were ROFL.

It was so disheartening to see where these guys are taking Tamil cinema to. What is currently happening is that the industry is giving all possible crappy movies and in between a little better one (read not-so-crappy amongst the crappiest ones) becomes a run away hit. This is what one of my friend told me – “dei…Venghai laam compare pannum bodhu paravala da”. That’s where we are now instead of comparing against “Yudham Sei”, “Aaranya Kaandam”, “Nandha Lala”, etc…

I firmly believe on a quote by Kamal Haasan “You cannot blame the audience saying that they are not mature to enjoy high quality cinema”. The audience are actually well matured and they definitely appreciate good movies. All you need these days is that little bit extra promotion for these good movies. If Kamal has thought about the same and did only the typical masala movies we wouldn’t have had “Kuruthi Punal”, “Virumaandi”, “Anbe Sivam”. Though there are so many other movies of his that can be mentioned, the reason for mentioning the above is that these movies paved way for some of the good movies that we see today. Ameer, Bala, Sasikumar and the likes saw and grew with these kind of movies and resulted in Paruthiveeran, Naan Kadavul, Subramaniyapuram, etc…

Let’s not get in to a debate if Kamal copied / inspired from Hollywood or Korea or whatever. But, I would say that he was at least 10 years ahead of what the rest of the industry was thinking. And those were days where you did not have internet. Probably people didn’t understand what he was trying to communicate through his script. Probably he was bad at the script. Probably he gets confused and can’t give a clean screenplay. But he tried. He pushed things. If I look back now, even Alavandhan was an amazing movie.The movie introduced camera technology for close double action sequences, some of the amazing stunts and visual effects.

What if Alavandhan, Kuruthi Punal, Virumandi were released now? These would have been blockbusters for sure. From my view it’s probably a loss for Kamal from the timing point of view. But I immediately get reminded of the dialogue in Devar Magan by Sivaji Ganesan: “Vedhai vedhacha udanae pazham saapadanum nna mudiyuma…innaiku naan vedhaikkaraen…nee pazham saapduva…apram un payan saapduvan…apram avan payan saapduvan…idhellam paaka naan irukka maataen…aana vedhachadhu…naan…idhellam enakku enna perumaya…?”