Kuthiraivaal

This movie is kind of a painting and the beauty n detail of it can be interpreted based on the particular viewer's experience on innocence, love, compassion, etc... Generally a movie, will travel with clear director's(plot) point of view and the message he/she wishes to deliver. But this movie, has left tat doors open.. An effort to keep those doors open for viewer's is to be appreciated.. I think one small, fine line drawn here is from the point the protagonist realizes that he has lost his loving self somewhere in life's journey and search for the point where he has lost his loving self and reaching it there to reconnect with it.. Again, it may be my perception on the movie..Showing his innocent part of life using budding friendship with a girl child when he was a kid is beautiful.

Quite a little, Kuthiraivaal is a surrealist, absurd, psychic mode of film and it goes slow and vivid. The subject matter of the film recollects me of a French film Holy Motors where a lot of symbolism and metaphors are there. When entering detail into the structure of the film there lies a lot of elements that resembles to the subconscious condition of human minds. The reference to baby syndrome/mirror syndrome, the importance of the preservation of nature, etc is some of the layered themes inside this movie. The movie is completely a different path of making and it only engages that kind of audience.

This movie overall looks dope. New and decent attempt. Pradeep Kumar did a great job with the background music.

If the movie was cut short to 1.5 hrs without songs and more engaging screenplay, then I might have liked it.

Since hero has a tail, he need to act like an horse humping. But he overdid it. Kalaiarasan's mannerisms irritated me more than the film.

It would be Better if the screenplay is little fast and understandable.

Excellent cinematography

Good sound designing

But iam waiting for another film like this .

The last time i was mind blown for staging in an Indian arthouse was for Pushpendra Singh's The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs (2020) and Ronny Sen's Cat Sticks (2019). I can add few more titles which standout for it's fresh filmmaking like the works of Prantik Basu, Aditya Vikram Sengupta's Jonaki (2018), Ekta Mittal's Birha (2018), Achal Mishra's Gamak Ghar (2019), Ridham Janve's The Gold-Laden Sheep and the Sacred Mountain (2018), Arun Matheswaran's Rocky, Koozhangal by PS Vinothraj and finally one of my favourite Varthamana (2018), directed by Umesh Amshi with late actor Sanchari Vijay. Kuthiraivaal is added to the list now and i must say this film is a labyrinthine that combines the weird with the banality of the everyday and ultimately raises more questions than answers. The tail of existence is told in a Kafkaesque style mind trip that leads to a series absurd moments, but occasionally loses itself in its own pretensions and feels like a random collage of abstract and surrealistic visual elements. I know this sounds like a recipe for pretentious disaster but there are genuine efforts in the filmmaking that turns this awkward undertaking into a total cerebral experience. In few scenes i could recollect films of Latin American arthouse filmmakers, even Georgian director Tengiz Abuladze, Nobuhiko Obayashi, Eduardo Nunes's Unicórnio (2017) and some Béla Tarr. There's so much to say but i'll leave it here, maybe revisit this again. I don't recommend this to every moviegoers, it will be a tedious watch to sit through and seem like a boomer uncle going through existential crisis. Like my Rocky (2021) review, i want to end it by requesting only the passionate/serious cinephiles to support this experimental effort and spread the word.