Tamil Cinema

Vettai – The Madhavan/Arya Brother Cop Movie I Didn’t Even Know I Wanted

moviemavengal1 Comment

My neighbor brought me back a stack of Tamil DVD’s from her trip to Chennai and I’m slowly making my way through them.  I was looking for a lighter movie and took a chance on Vettai (The Hunt), a 2012  Tamil action comedy.  Arya AND Maddie in a movie together?  I’m in!  This movie just made me smile for so many reasons.

Vettai establishes the dynamic between the brothers with a scene from their childhood.  The older brother is actually timid and scared of everything.  When a bully hits him, the two years younger brother comes to the rescue.  Their father is a policeman, who then beats the younger son for getting in a fight.  He stoically takes the blows silently while the older brother weeps and wails even though not a single blow touches him.

That dynamic continues to the present day.  Madhavan who is physically large and imposing plays a very timid adult.  He’s scared of violence and confrontation.  His younger brother (Arya) is a rowdie, and quick to fight and intimidate anyone who threatens Maddie.  Their policeman father suddenly dies, and by family tradition, Madhavan as the oldest son should take his father’s place.  Arya convinces Madhavan that he should take their father’s job, the same one that their grandfather held.  Maddie tries to get Arya to do it instead, but he has 4 charges against him.

At first Madhavan enjoys the stature his uniform gives him, but he doesn’t know what to do when a young girl is kidnapped by the local goons.  He calls his brother Arya, who comes to the rescue.

  

Never underestimate the powers of disguise in a hoodie or a rain coat!

Madhavan gets the hero accolades, while Arya acts as his secret enforcer behind the scenes.

Interspersed with the action scenes, we have the romantic storyline.  Arya meets a very assertive young woman (Sameera Reddy) when he accidentally knocks over her motor scooter.  She turns out to be the young woman that their uncle wants to arrange a marriage with for Maddie.  It was a nice fake out.  Arya then is attracted to the younger shy sister (Amala Paul).  The romantic scenes give a lot of comedy and sweetness to the movie, and some nice music numbers.  I loved when Sameera’s character forces Arya to change his view of his brother, “Are you the older brother?  You don’t even have a job.  Don’t you think you should address him with respect?”

Things come to a head when Madhavan is badly beaten by the goon gang.  As you can probably guess, Arya teaches him to release his inner lion.  Cue training montage and action scenes.

This isn’t the greatest movie in the world, but it was entertaining and I loved the chemistry of Arya and Madhavan together as brothers.  Madhavan was really, really great in all the scenes where he is the gentle timid sensitive giant.  He has a great comic touch.  In his native Tamil, I think he has an even greater comfort in playing comedy.  I haven’t seen as many Arya movies.  I’ve seen his action film Urumi, and I’ve seen his sweet romantic roles like Raja Rani and Size Zero.   He carries most of the water in the romantic scenes in Vettai, and there’s a funny subplot with an NRI that is supposed to marry the sister Arya loves.

Three and a half stars out of five.   Nice entertaining light action romantic comedy.  Plus Arya and Madhavan dancing together!  Who can ask for more than that?

Pizza – A Seriously Creepy Tamil Horror Film with a Disarming Title

moviemavengal4 Comments

I am not really a horror movie person.  I rented the  Tamil Horror thriller Pizza (2012), which was recommended over and over on the Quora post.  It’s the debut feature film of writer/director Karthik Subbaraj.

It was SO intense that I had to take a break in the middle of watching it.  I am really impressed the level of scariness and creepiness the director was able to achieve with a guy running around an empty modern house with the lights out and carrying a shaky flashlight.

It’s called Pizza because the main character is a young pizza delivery guy.  Michael (Vijay Sethupathi) and his girlfriend Anu  (Remya Nambeesan) live together.  Anu is writing a ghost story novel, and doing research by watching lots of horror films.  Anu finds out she’s pregnant, and that causes a crisis in their relationship as Michael doesn’t think he’s ready to be married.  He’s not earning enough working at the pizza shop.   Michael and Anu don’t seem to have any family.  They patch things up, and we get a very sweet love song sequence.

Michael makes a pizza delivery to a house, and then gets locked in when the woman who had answered the door goes up to get change.  The lights have gone out, and that’s when things get super creepy and weird.  Pizza was the first Tamil film to use surround sound, and the soundscape of the film is part of what makes it such an effective thriller.  About an hour in, I was so affected that I had to stop the film for a bit.  It’s that good and intense.  Realize that I’m a scaredy cat and I don’t usually watch many horror films at all.

In the last 20 minutes or so of the film there is a great twist, and then a final double twist at the very end.  Part of what makes the film so good is the performance of the lead Michael,  Vijay Sethupathi.  He was great.

Not my usual choice of flick but I’m glad I saw it.  These scrappy low budget filmmakers have to be so inventive.  I’ll be looking forward to seeing Karthik Subbaraj’s other films when he has a bigger budget to work with.

Irudhi Suttru/Salaa Khadoos – I loved Maddhavan in this female boxing movie

moviemavengalLeave a comment
Irudhi-Suttru

I watched Madhavan’s recent boxing movie, Irudhi Suttru (The Snob) in Tamil.  It was released and filmed at the same time as the Hindi Salaa Khadoos.  I watched it in the original Tamil because that was the version available on Google Play, and I wanted to download it to watch on a flight.

Irudhi Suttru had a woman writer/director, Sudha Kongara, which I don’t think I knew going in.  I learned from Wikipedia that she was an assistant director to Mani Ratman for 7 years.  Maddy was really good, and it’s so great for him to come back with a dramatic role like this.  The newcomer Ritika Singh, the young woman boxer was also great.  It got a bit trite in the dialogue in the second half, but was still quite good.

Madhavan’s character Prabhu had been a talented boxer, but his temper and lack of finesse with the politics of the boxing federation has left him sent to the backwater of Chennai to train women boxers.  Our introduction to Prabhu has him kicking out a married woman he’s having a sexual affair with out of his bed.  We learn that his wife has left him, and he has had a string of these affairs.

After he arrives in Chennai, he watches and assesses the talent of the young women being trained by the local coach (played by Nasser), when he spots the sister of one of the boxers attacking and punching to the ground the boxing judges she feels didn’t give her sister a fair shake.

Prabhu tracks down Madhi at the fish market because he is much more interested in training her, than the sister Luxmi who has been already been training for years.  He offeres her money to come train every day with him, to replace the family income she would lose by giving up her day job.

This causes jealousy with the older sister Luxmi, and at one point Luxmi does something that injures Madhi before an important fight.  We’ve seen the journey, setbacks and comeback fights in boxing movies before, but here we have a young female boxer who gets a huge crush on her coach, who she calls, “Master.”  He shuts that down immediately, not in an unkind way, but a matter of fact, “it happens” kind of way.

02-1454396992-irudhi-suttru-live-audience-response-600

The setup first half of the film was very good, but the dialogue in the second half got a bit predictable and trite.  The songs were okay, but not outstanding.  My favorite was probably this one with the two sisters celebrating having some spending money for once:

 

I don’t know what to think about the ending.  The writer/director left it ambiguous as when the young woman wins her final bout, she runs to her coach and flings herself at him and wraps her arms and legs around him.  Is this still just a coach/student relationship?  You can view it both ways.

When Prabhu gives up his position in the boxing federation so that she can fight, Madhi says to Prabhu, “Is that not love?”

And then when she jumps in his arms at the end, but he doesn’t initially put his arms around her.  I think he awkwardly sort of hugs her back, but it could be left for either interpretation.  If you want to think, since she had gone back to always calling him, “Master” that it was just a student/coach relationship, you can think that.  If you want to think it had gone beyond, you could read that in, too.

And I don’t know what I want it to be.  I guess I lean towards the coach/ student bond.

The one scene that bothered me, was when he thought she threw the national finals fight (when her sister broke her hand) and he throws her to the ground, and then kicks her.  I know Prabhu’s supposed to be this volatile character, but the kick really bothered me.  The yelling I could deal with, even though he was really harsh.  He’s supposed to lose it.  A friend told me she viewed it that it showed how he viewed the girl just as he would have a male boxer, and treated her just the same.

I loved that the actress playing Madhi was so athletic.  I learned later that she is a MMA star in India, and had never even acted before.  I think that was smart of the filmmaker to choose someone so believable in the training and fight sequences.  I can’t believe she didn’t know Tamil and learned all those lines phonectically!  She was great!  Now I’m sort of wondering if she was more natural in the Hindi version of the film.   I haven’t seen Mary Kom yet, so I can’t compare this film to Priyanka’s performance.

But Maddy!  Oh my gosh, it was great to see Madhavan be a bad ass bad boy at the beginning especially.  And then I loved how he was this great coach, and just dealt with her crush — hey, it happens, don’t worry about it, now go put on your track suit and let’s get to work.  He is a flawed character.  I contrast it to SRK in Chak De! who seemed more saintly than this.

And he looked AMAZING!  I wasn’t sure about that whole longish hair and beard when I first saw the trailer, but man, did I love it.  He was so big and buff!!

With a plot like this, you can’t help but think a lot about the Clint Eastwood film Million Dollar Baby.  Now obviously, Clint Eastwood is a million years old in that film.  But it’s also a boxing coach relationship with a young woman, and how intimate and close it is, even if it’s not sexual at all.  Maddy wasn’t QUITE old enough to be fatherly.  At least not in an Indian film world.  (And thank god he didn’t have to kill her in the end!)

I give three and a half stars out of five.  Definitely worth a watch.

On a complete side note I feel like I have been seeing the actor Nasser EVERYWHERE recently.  He was the Dad in Jeans which I recently watched.

And then he was a supporting coach in Irudhi Suttru
Then he was the villain in the Telugu movie I just watched!
In looking up his name, I discovered he was in Baahubali!!  Mind BLOWN.

Some recommended films from around India

moviemavengal4 Comments

For my Hindi pick, Paheli is certainly not one of SRK’s biggest films but I love it.  Fantasy films seem to be unusual in Hindi cinema, and in this film Shahrukh Khan plays a number counting merchant husband, and a Ghost or spirit (sort of a genie, really) who takes his place.  Rani Mukerji is the bride who captivates the Ghost, with Amitabh as a wise shepherd in a cameo.  It’s a fable that is also about women’s empowerment, and the scene where SRK tells Rani he’s a ghost is one of my all-time favorites.

And the soundtrack!!

   

My Tamil pick is Mani Ratman’s 2015 film OK Kanmani, with music by A. R. Rahman.  A young couple (the charming Dulquer Salmaan and Nithya Menon) wants to live together because they are cynical about marriage.  They learn about true love from an older married couple.  Prakash Raj (who we’re used to see as a villain in Hindi films) plays a devoted husband to his wife with Alzheimer’s.  If you live in the US, it is on Netflix streaming, and I highly recommend this wonderful film.  I sought out this film after hearing the song Mental Manadhil at an A. R. Rahman concert.  So glad I did!

Dulquer Salmaan from OK Kanmani is usually in Malayalam films, and that’s what brought me to watch the Malayalam film Bangalore Days.  This is my number one pick of Malayalam films I’ve seen so far.  It’s a wonderful coming of age tale about three cousins and has a great ensemble of young Malayalam actors in it.  Ohm Shanti Oshana is also a great woman centered film (with the same lead actress above), but Bangalore Days, Bangalore Days, Bangalore Days!

For Telugu films, there can be only one — Baahubali!  I was so blown away by this film, I watched it four times in the theater!  This film is available dubbed in Hindi, but you can readily rent the Telugu version on Youtube.  Prabhas plays a dual role, Shivuvu and Baahubali.  It is EPIC.  It’s a fantasy with stunning visuals.  S. S. Rajamouli cannot be matched for his imagination in film (have you seen Eega where the hero is a FLY?)   The battle scenes rival films like Gladiator, and there are several kick-ass women characters.  Mirchi is my second favorite Telugu film I’ve seen so far, also starring Prabhas with Sathyaraj (Kattappa in Baahubali).  It’s so long to wait till 2017 for part 2 of Baahubali!!

Why I Love Indian Cinema

moviemavengal1 Comment

A few weeks ago, I answered a question on Quora, “Does anyone besides Indians watch Indian movies?”  This post is adapted from the answer I gave.  At first I gave a brief answer, but then people commented and wanted to know WHY?  Why would a non-Indian love Indian films?  Many commenters were at first incredulous, but then thanked me for showing them an outsider’s view of their cinema.   As of this writing, the answer has garnered over 170,000 views, and made me a Most Viewed Writer about Bollywood on Quora.  (Which still blows my mind.)

Netflix in the US has over 80 Hindi films at anyone time.  Because of the kind of films I enjoy, Netflix recommended I watch Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge about 2 years ago.  Since I fell in love with Bollywood, I’ve seen over 200 Indian films.  I’m lucky that in my area new release films play in a few local theaters.  I was able to see Kapoor and Sons just last night and I absolutely loved it.

I’m not the only non-Desi in America to love Bollywood movies, but I wouldn’t say it’s very common.

My father’s church has a monthly movie night, and he asked me to show a Bollywood movie last week.  I chose Dil Se, and showed it to 15 people, including my parents, who had never before seen a Bollywood film.  They all loved it!

Editing to add my answer from the comments below, WHY I love Indian films:

I also love old Hollywood musicals like Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly films.  Hollywood does not make them anymore.  I love the singing and the dancing in Indian cinema, but also the earnest love stories are not the kind of films that Hollywood makes either.  Rom Coms are becoming rarer and rarer in American films which tend to be more cynical.  The emotions in Bollywood films are something that is rare to see in Hollywood or English films.  People joke about how much Shahrukh Khan cries in his films, but I really respond to the emotions shown in Indian cinema.  Also, the colors on screen!  Bhansali’s film Ram-Leela is an example of this.

ram-leela_song.jpg

I listen to Bollywood music all the time, as well.

Indian films just give me things I cannot get from Hollywood or other Western cinema.  Plus Shahrukh Khan.  I’ve watched 47 of his films alone (which doesn’t count the countless times I’ve watched DDLJ.)  🙂

Dilwale-Dulhania-Le-Jayenge-shahrukh-khan-25741330-1280-528

I do love South Indian films as well, and I have seen a little over 30 South Indian films.  I fell in love with Prabhas after watching Baahubali last year (four times in the theater!).  I now own many of his Telugu films on DVD.

prabhas-shivudu-role-in-baahubali-movie_143140913210

Recently, I’ve been watching quite a few Malayalam films, especially recent ones with Nivin Pauly and Dulquer Salmaan.  I have watched fewer Tamil films, but I asked my neighbor to bring me back some DVD’s from her recent trip to Chennai, and have been working through the dozen films she brought me.  Last week, I watched Raja Rani, and liked it.

For those interested, I keep track of all the Bolllywood films I’ve watched on Letterboxd.com, and here’s my list of Regional films I’ve seen, up to 32 now after watching the Malayalam film Classmates last night.

I asked for commenters to recommend their favorite Indian films — and oh boy, did they.  I’ve created a Letterboxd list now of all the films recommended there in the comments that I have not already seen.  Now up to 372 (!!) films in several Indian languages:  Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, etc.  The question now is will I live long enough to watch even half of them!

My first Bollywood film ever was Lagaan, back almost 15 years ago when it was nominated for the Foreign language Oscar.  That was back when you could only rent Netflix movies via DVD in the mail.  I then watched Dil Chahta Hai, because that also had Aamir Khan.  But it was not so easy back then for a non-Hindi speaker to find out about other Bollywood films.  The internet has helped so much, and Netflix’s recommendation engine is the reason I fell in love with Bollywood 2 years ago.  DDLJ was recommended to me, then I was able to watch Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi right after that.  I texted my Indian next door neighbor for other suggestions, and she loves Hrithik Roshan and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara was also streaming on Netflix and I was off to the races with my new obsession.

I have been mentored by two other non-Desi lovers of Bollywood who then suggested many other films for me to try, and in some cases pushed the DVD’s into my hand saying, “YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS!”

Kathy Gibson of AccessBollywood.net  and Margaret of DontCallItBollywood

Shout out also to the gang at Bollywhat forum!