bibban

An overwrought movie relying almost entirely upon an implausible plot. And before people go on celebrating this movie's "brave" darkness.. watch for the sequence of clichés: alcoholic, abusive husband who suspects wife of having affairs; intelligent and sincere wife who feels too bad to leave him (wtf?); love at first sight etc. etc. Nauseating.

The characters have little depth, and when they experience emotions it's either jealousy/guilt, or it's unyielding love/sheer cunning/unthinking evil.. usually in predictable sequences. What ridiculous emotional dichotomies.

Weak performances all around, and Juhi Chawla is completely wasted in this movie. So is Sanjay Suri. Both were so promising in Onir's far superior "My Brother Nikhil." Here they stumble around with weakly written characters. Urmila Matondkar is predictably annoying. Jimmy Shergill was kind of okay in his brief romance scenes with his first love interest in the movie, but quickly got much worse in the rest of the movie.

Sitting through this movie was one of the most difficult ordeals I've had to endure. I couldn't wait to get out of the theatre. I laughed out loud during supposedly emotional/profound scenes. It was all so absurd.

To begin with, the movie has no substance. It has the most bland plot I've experienced. I wouldn't have minded watching a very slow-paced film that deals entirely with one man coming to terms with the death of his beloved. But this movie was plain absurd, with pretentious ramblings by flaky characters who invoke Mayan legends and immortality. Can we just leave the Mayan stuff alone already? I mean, I know Europeans went around killing indigenous people all over the world and their descendants might have quite a bit of guilt associated with it, but please stop fetishizing and romanticizing all these supposedly genuine indigenous tales of creation and death.

Also, what's up with all the New Age crap (again back to the romanticization of "Other" cultures)? Are people really ridiculous enough to buy this clichéd crap for art? The soundtrack, and the repeated, annoying imagery of the protagonist (complete with shaved head and everything, in Lotus position), levitating and contained within some vesicle/floating globulet. God, even someone from grade 4 could be challenged to come up with more imaginative and creative stuff. What a bunch of fluff. The fact that audiences might appreciate this film scares me. I want to feel that people are more demanding than that.

I felt there wasn't a single genuine moment in this film. I was never able to identify with any component of the film, let alone the characters. Now, I am not by any means a film snob - I enjoy a huge range of films of several varieties. The genre is dear to me - funny films, romance films, slow films, action films, artfully done films, experimental films, etc. But I can't stress enough that this film is terrible in its conception and execution.

This film tells the story of two friends and the parallel events in their lives. Although Rathnam states officially that this film is not a true story, it is generally believed that it was inspired by the real life stories of M. R. Karunanidhi and MGR during the beginning days of the DMK and their respective film careers.

Everyone always calls this film a "documentary" and tends to emphasize the fact that it supposedly tells the story of Karunanidhi and MGR. I think this film has very little to do with politics. It goes beyond the popular perception of two famous political figures in TN and tells their personal stories and attempts to disconnect these two characters in the movie from the superficial symbols of power we may perceive them as.

People that stubbornly hold onto to the idea that this film is about former Tamil Nadu chief ministers Karunanidhi and MGR (M.G. Ramachandran) will most probably not enjoy this film as much as people who view it as a drama about two ordinary men who turned out to do extraordinary things.

Some of the finer points in the movie are the unsaid words between Mohanlal and Prakash Raj (not their role in politics!). All the invisible dialog that goes on between the two of them is reflected in the background music. Mohanlal plays Anand with a high level of sensitivity. Prakash Raj is also brilliant. Good, controlled performances from the rest of the cast. This film also has two wonderful songs--"Narumugaye" & "Poo Kodiyin Punnagai." Both have amazing lyrics by Vairamuthu and good visuals, as well. Santosh Sivan's camera-work is spectacular, as usual. He impresses in a nicely-captured, post-lovemaking scene with Tabu and Prakash Raj.