Kaatru Veliyidai

There are plenty in Kaatruveliyidai that are contemptuous and leave you totally frustrated. At times when you are watching, you might have to look back the clichés of Mani Rathnam for the past 32 years to know he isn’t becoming as he should be inside you. To be or not to be is an unprecedented feeling when a renowned maker mocks at his own style.  VC (Karthi) drives down the lanes of Kashmir tracks with a girl beside him, with an infectious smirk on the passing passenger vehicle and he just takes his jeep to a donut stop after a conversation about marriage and Child. Typical Maniratnam- starts off to bring a flirt before us, but very immature, outlaw, but he also wants bring his sophisticated romance through the Bharathiar recitation and his opinionated fighter pilot image.

But the same VC who chases Leela in a scene “Nalaikku Nee un Varanam thoranam , Vaanaram ellathaiyum koottittuvaa“ I was muddled -  to what  I should be relating "Vaanaram", did he try to typecast or just want to brag that his dialogues are unique. I was sure as director he doesn’t want to rekindle his typescripts but it just happens when you are dropping a dead screenplay. Since the trailer, I was sure it is going to be a complicated character of Karthi which is going to be preying on beautiful Aditi, because somehow a maker can’t not hide crux of the movie. 

I didn’t have problems with VC, he was clear from the word go, He was the one who portrays what Mani had in his white paper script. His expression is how an immature crook can have. He is from an upscale family; his brother marries a 9 month pregnant girl who is delivering her kid on her marriage day and there is a definite insertion in all their names suffixing by their Caste – Awesome; Why does his movie repeatedly hit a time machine of relationship to show “I am the guy who will tell you how this relationships are around you “

Movies have moved on from a period to show what is happening,have become more and more absorbing to show what can be, could be, should be, than what it is. Mani is trying to show a culture attaching to a tag repeatedly cuddled with a bad father son relation. I am not sure what is he looking at or what he is swamped in but  I don’t get orgasm out of that. I too have moved on.  

I had some good moments with Kaatru Veliyidai, the recitations, the plead of a genuine trap, that pleasure of being in a complicated relation, that Gandasala silverlining, Gulzar ghazals, that humming of Leela interrupted by a random fighter jet flying above her home then the answer conveyed through the humming again and a compulsive cliché of his imageries. The just out of bath – Mirror dialogues, the rain and then the windy explorations, you can never take this out of him, and he sticks to it so compulsive again and again. This defines Maniratnam and not his indirect fringes he draws as definition.

It would sound silly that to a major portion, movie doesn’t go in Tamil. It sounded Kashmiri, Urudu, Hindi, Malayalam, English and in Tamil. That being the elites or non-protagonist communication, language drawn towards a relation ends up in Tamil.  There is paradox in the way Leena was affected by VC, you define a romance through a beautiful verse and then you politely invite to transform an infatuation to romance, then inconsequential arguments make him mentally weak before her or to his parents. Every once except me got him as mentally irritable, the whole movie started falling from there, in defining what is irritable or unstable. VC is finding opportunity to prove to the mettle that he is butchering and a nagging cad. So, he selects like before his friends, his parents, her parents and then in hospital. That could brand him hands down as Scoundrel. No – VC is never justified irritable to Leena, He isn’t mad as I conceived, not self-obsessed too. Aditi is the prey, she emotes, pursuits, cries beautifully.

That Kargil jail episode – I would never like to think this movie from that part and it had been and will be a regrettable Joke. I can’t think of this movie without the BGM , I loved the visuals and BGM merging towards the summit like a new language. Maniratnam will keep making movies to live his imageries to visuals and he gets its right at times. I would definitely want a Maniratnam movie drawing inspiration from works or books and not from his own movies. And again the Rawalpindi tunnel escape will be the biggest joke of the movie.