Category Archives: Movies

Celebrating 25 years of Alaipayuthey!

Back when there was no YouTube or social media and no one uploaded anything anywhere and you had to wait for the right commercial break on TV just to catch the trailer of the movie featuring the dashing lead pair of Madhavan & Shalini, the trailer of Alaipayuthey itself made one want to watch it again and again! The music, the visuals, the dialogues, Shalini and her casual way of conversing and, of course, Madhavan! Even the font in which Alaipayuthey was written was stylish too!

It wasn’t just the trailer that made you go gaga over it. The official website of the movie had such great content too with a writeup on the lead characters and some amazing photos. Waiting for the Shockwave content to load and browsing through the website became a regular activity too, despite downloading all the images from the website.

Oh and the songs! But for evano oruvan which screamed of longing with a tinge of pain, all other songs were so joyful, celebrating life in itself! Back then, not a single day went by without listening to the audio cassette. Pacchai Nirame had to be listened to on a repeat mode every day. It didn’t matter if one had to patiently press the rewind button of the music system to listen to a song again and again.

Pacchai Nirame became an instant favourite and today, 25 years later, continues to remain my most favourite song of A R Rahman and the best song ever portraying such beautiful colours! It’s to Pacchai Nirame that I turn to even today for some colours to cheer me up on a random dull day. 🙂

Then the movie itself – such relatable characters looking even more relatable in their simple costumes and talking such casual dialogues, here was a story set in my very own Madras with each and every scene having some lovely colours and music that added more to every scene.There was a time when watching the entire movie itself was a regular pastime!

Today I don’t really watch the scenes of Alaipayuthey or listen to the songs of Alaipayuthey as frequently as I used to back then, but I continue to watch all the interviews of Madhavan waiting to hear some new tidbit about Alaipayuthey, I continue to turn to some scene of the movie when I want to take a pause and refocus or just plain relax, I continue to watch Pacchai Nirame first every time we buy a new mobile or a TV or a monitor, I continue to get reminded of the beautiful wedding scene of Alaipayuthey every time I visit Kapaleeswarar Kovil!

Every April when I see some content on YouTube mentioning about the number of years it has been since Alaipayuthey got released, my craze for all things Alaipayuthey does get rekindled.

Neighbourhood landlines or common telephones in offices might now have become outdated, searching for a girl by hunting down the stations or medical colleges instead of simply looking up on social media platforms might sound a roundabout way, youngsters having their own start-up might have become much more common now than it was back then, but the love story of Shakthi and Karthik continues to remain a timeless classic!

Meiyazhagan

It was the nostalgia factor and some stunning visuals that struck a chord with me as far as 96 was concerned. Though I wouldn’t call myself a big fan of the entire movie, it’s just for that nostalgic factor that I keep going back to a few scenes from that.

Watching the trailer & some scenes from Meiyazhagan and some interviews with Arvind Swamy & Karthi, I was looking forward to experiencing yet another wave of nostalgia. Meiyazhagan more than fulfilled that wish, since there was so much that I could personally relate to!

Just like how Karthi keeps going back to the summer of ‘94, you will often hear me referring to every single summer vacation of mine during my school days! If my attachment to Madras is one thing, my attachment to my grandmother’s place is quite another! The summer vacations, synonymous with the affection from the extended family back there and the carefree, happy days spent with cousins, is something that I keep craving for, during not just the chaotic, but also the quiet moments of my daily life. Oh and not to forget that pollution-free, lush green, beautiful atmosphere totally in contrast to the city life. You have to visit a village to know what darkness during the night time and a sky full of stars even mean.

As years pass by, we change and so do the people around us. The more you grow older, the more the difficult facets of, not just life in itself, but also the people themselves, that you see. Yet when you go back to that time in life when you were just a child and you saw only goodness around you, the attachment that you felt for people and places was just so pure, wasn’t it? It’s that pure attachment that Meiyazhagan seems to have for Arulmozhi Varman in the movie. To him it doesn’t matter that Arul might have changed over the years and he continues to adore him just like how he did when he was a child, even claiming that he is all that he is today only because of Arul.

For someone like Arul who just doesn’t let himself go back to the memories of those good, old times and keeps holding on to the anger and frustration at having to let go of his life at his ancestral house, listening to Meiyazhagan constantly reminisce about the time he spent with Arul back then, does bring back to him an old slice of himself.

It could be the simple act of placing the mobile on the clothes stand while on a call by Hema (Devadrashini) or the feeling of comfort experienced by Arul when being back in his native – there were several ‘been-there-did-that’ moments in the movie – the morning train from Madras to Thanjavur, the scenes of the pacchaipasel vayal (the lush green paddy fields) around Thanjavur, the huge temples, graamatthu veeDu (the grand village home), the bus journey through fields and villages, it’s-a-small-world moment when the bus conductor turns out to be Arul’s father’s student, the joyous summer vacations, the skepticism that Arul feels, the relationship with relatives and, finally, believe it or not, the hesitation to ask one’s name after having such deep conversations with them!

There are many such beautiful moments like the one where the temple elephant passes by Arul while he is on a conversation with his wife on the mobile. He doesn’t even tell his wife about this. Such is his nature preferring to process the experience of this moment in solitude.

Of course, I didn’t enjoy all the aspects of the movie. For instance, that meeting with his cousin where Arul puts golusu didn’t really gel well. The songs praised by almost everyone were not to my liking at all. I would have preferred it if the entire conversation between Arul & Meiyazhagan happened without drinks in the picture.

Despite all these, Meiyazhagan succeeds in evoking nostalgia in a much more relatable way to me than 96 and that’s why I keep going back to several scenes in this too.
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Watching Meiyazhagan, I kept telling myself that, had it been the good, old days when Sudhish Kamath wrote for ‘The Hindu’, this would have been the kind of movie that he would have enjoyed and given a great rating. That’s when I remembered his Twitter page, scrolled through the posts and found a write-up about Meiyazhagan! There were also comments from a few of them saying how they used to read his reviews in Metro Plus. Yet another nostalgia brought on by Meiyazhagan! 🙂

Kaatru Veliyidai Revisited

I just couldn’t get myself to watch Kaatru Veliyidai again, because the very thought of watching the abusive nature of Varun (VC) was making me feel really irritated! What madness is it that makes the human mind hold on to someone despite all the abusiveness!

I finally got myself to watch a few scenes some time last year and, before I knew it, I got hooked big time to the magic of ARR & Mani Ratnam. What music and what visuals!

It is one thing to portray the initial happy days of a simple relationship, like in Alaipayuthey and OK Kanmani, where the relationship itself is yet to really begin. But it is quite a task to portray a complex relationship like that of VC and Leela’s, which is synonymous with everything but happiness.
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Kurumugil Song & Gujarat Marvels

In recent times, if there was a movie that I really wanted to watch after seeing all the initial trailers, it had to be Sita Ramam. It’s another fact that I didn’t watch until it got released on Amazon Prime!

Seeing the trailers and promos, all the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Ram apart, there was this one song that had me going back to it again and again, right from the lyric video release. The visuals, the music, the backdrop, the charming Dulquer & Mrunal – it was one of those rare songs that was very captivating, both musically and visually!

The colourful, animated butterflies flying rhythmically to the soft, opening music full of old-world charm (The role that these butterflies play in this movie, especially till the climax! Sigh!), the simple, poetic lyrics, the veena in the interludes and in the ending of many lines all through the song, the sight and sound of kids singing and dancing in chorus (do we even have such beautiful chorus in songs, nowadays?), the happy faces of Sitamahalakshmi and Ram 🙂 and, besides all these, the locations with some stunning architecture! What a beautiful setting the stepwell with all its mini-gopurams made for all the kids to run around along with the hero and the heroine!

It wasn’t until the full video of this song was released, that the magnificence of the location became fully apparent. The place fascinated me so much that Google search and much planning later, we visited the Modhera Sun Temple just to see that beautiful step well! Hearing the legend that Lord Rama and Sita once visited this place, we were wondering if that was the reason why this location was chosen to be featured in the song of our Sita Mahalakshmi and Ram. 🙂

Visiting Rani Ki Vav too along with this place, I realized that the famed stepwell featured in our Rs. 100 note is also featured in this song!

The surprise came in the form of the streets of this place called Sidhpur, which we took a detour to, on a whim, on the way to Rani Ki Vav, while googling for any other places to visit nearby. Google Maps said that there was an architecturally splendid, ruined temple named Rudra Mahalaya temple. As we were travelling on the congested market roads of Sidhpur, to our surprise, my husband spotted the Europe-like streets featured right from the opening sequences of Kurumugil till the end! Wow! We had never heard about the Bohra mansions of Sidhpur. Didn’t these mansions just add on to the old-world charm brought out by the opening music in the song? No wonder camels were a part of those scenes in the song, since that part of Gujarat had its fair share of camels and camel carts!

Since visiting these places, Kurumugil has become even more close to my heart, since it no longer just takes me back to the world of Sita Mahalakshmi and Ram, but also makes me reminisce about my epic heritage trip.

Sita Ramam – The Experience

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

As the last scene of Sita Ramam unfolded, I was struck with the realization that how much Roja appears to be a complete fantasy, though I know that it was inspired by a real-life story.

A couple of years back, my then 8-year old daughter refused to watch the movie beyond the scene where Arvind Samy is abducted by the terrorists, since she found it very scary. This was coming from a child who usually watches a lot of movies, though, mostly the masala movies which I usually don’t like. Since then, every time I mentioned Roja, she has always said that she won’t watch it.
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Alaipayuthey 20

Celebrating 20 years of Alaipayuthey with 20 specialties of the movie.

1. Colours

Be it the happy, vibrant colours of Shakti’s salwar kameez or Karthik’s blue shirts or the scenery in Pacchai Nirame or the rich Indian colours during functions in Yaro Yarodi, Alaipayuthey or Mangalyam songs or be it the dark tone when the movie takes on a serious note in the second half. The colours by themselves match the scene in every single frame.

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The Magic of Alaipayuthey – 20 Years Later

This blog of mine has always been synonymous with celebrating all things Alaipayuthey! So, it would be highly unfair if I leave this special occasion of Alaipayuthey turning 20 without at least a passing mention here. But when have I ever been able to stick to just a ‘passing mention’ of Alaipayuthey? 😉 So, here is yet another heartfelt raving about that special movie!

Sometime in the beginning of April during one of those sleepless nights, it struck me that Alaipayuthey was turning 20 this year. Since then, there have been quite a few reminiscences going on in my mind. From thinking of 20 special things to 20 special scenes to recollecting certain write-ups of mine, Alaipayuthey has yet again been giving me quite a few relaxing moments during this much-needed anxious period!

While it would be cliched to say that this movie remains as special to me today as it was 20 long years earlier, it is indeed the case. When I saw earlier in the day that Mani Ratnam was going to be appearing Live on Facebook with Suhasini, I set a reminder and watched it from the start to finish, absolutely hooked to it. And then when Madhavan made an appearance in the show, I can’t tell you how much the Alaipayuthey fan in me was rejoiced! Is there any better way to celebrate Alaipayuthey?!

As Madhavan said the famed ‘Naan onna virumbala’ dialogue in the show, the magic in these words were as fresh today as it was when we first heard it. Madhavan asked Mani Ratnam about why there was such lengthy, filmy dialogue in this, so unlike his usual style. Before I knew it, I was thinking about several of the proposal scenes in all his other films.

When Suhasini showed a mirror with a colourful backdrop, even before she started talking about it, I shouted out loud, ‘Hey this is the Alaipayuthey mirror!’ 😀 She indeed did confirm that this was a mirror which she had bought in Hauz Khas, Delhi and was used in Alaipayuthey. Knowing yet another new trivia about anything and everything related to Alaipayuthey excited me today as much as it did during my teens. 🙂 That mirror in which the thaali is hung 🙂

If watching a mere Live conversation with Mani Ratnam gets me this excited, guess how much the movie still excites me even today!

96

It was during one of those sleepless nights like today’s that I watched the movie 96. The story or the songs or the few scenes from the trailer didn’t really impress me. But when I watched the movie fully, there was one thing that I could identify with – nostalgia!

There was the lead character Ram who was still holding on to his time and memories with Janu so close to his heart and hadn’t fully moved on from the past.

There was Janu who, though seemed to have moved on with her life for all practical purposes and appeared to have accepted all that had happened and not happened, was still holding on to those memories and feelings as fervently as Ram.

Yes, there were some flashbacks that were boring to me and there were way too many tears in the present scenes and the love story in itself didn’t seem any special. Yet, there was this one thing that made me keep watching the movie till the end and even get reminded of it at random moments – the portrayal of nostalgia!

Be it Ram excitedly recollecting the places in Thanjavur, the place where he spent his childhood, from the passenger seat of the car or stepping inside his old school or all the students of the class excitedly catching up wih each other after so many years or be it the class reunion or be it the fond reminiscences of the past by Ram and Janu, it was that nostalgia written all over the movie that appealed to me more than anything else.

Of course, the cinematography was superb, there was this enjoyment of watching Madras on screen and Vijay Sethupathi was excellent as usual!

Chekka Chivantha Vaanam

Spoiler Alert

Chekka Chivantha Vaanam is indeed painted red all through, what with ruthless bullet shots and gruesome murders. As Varadan (Arvind Swami) says in the movie, we are all nothing but a big cipher when death strikes. The internal family war, which we find out in the end is brilliantly planned by Rasool, is fought in this movie till everyone in the gangster family is turned to nothing but a big cipher.
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Jugni – Kaatru Veliyidai

There are those songs that start like a whiff of fresh air. Jugni is one such – the opening soft music as fresh as the air in the snowy Himalayas where the video of this song is shot!

Then those foot-tapping beats change the mood of the song. The constant dance-worthy beats all through and those intermittent exploding beats, the soft layers of short snatches of music in the background here and there – at times soothing, at times intense, but all through mesmerizing – stay with you long after this song gets over.
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