TWIN REVIEW: LONG OVERDUE

Please note that there definitely is more than one purpose behind this twin review of mine, of the music of ‘Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya’ and the film itself, and none of those is hard to hit on. Firstly, I just want to get this out of my mind, out of the window and it’s something like, “I don’t want to regret having not done this anymore.” Second, I don’t want to waste a lot of cyberspace on something that doesn’t deserve the same, and thirdly, the connection is innate, almost parasitical where the movie and its music are concerned.

MUSIC BY A.R.RAHMAN

A result of Rahman’s experience with Akon and related sound-engineering, and a speculation on my part that he’s let himself into a lot of contemporary pop music (the healthier kind) lately. I can swear that the intro to ‘Mannipaaya’ is a slow-mo rip off the solo of ‘Heart of life’ by John Mayer (Continuum, 2006) and that the piano chords are almost nearly the same in the lead-up, also paralleling with Springsteen’s evergreen masterpiece ‘Secret Garden’. Of course, I’m okay with the chords because chords are chords, but I’d like to think that the solo was more than just coincidental. But the bottom-line? Shreya Ghosal honey-kisses a dead song to life, the effect was amazing until everyone started singing it.

Two pieces of Déjà vu (one being too much so), one that’s too very ordinary to be ‘Hit of the Year’ and two more that delve excessively into a language that the supposed girl doesn’t even know to speak (this requires viewing of the film, but again, this explains why Rahman isn’t the right choice if you’re looking to make the right kind of film). There, I’ve summarized the album for you. Does this mean I have nothing but negatives for an album that’s seen as much acclaim as this one has? Well, this is one of the rare Rahman albums that actually stick to a theme and hence had my head turned his way a little. But it’s certainly not one of those that could coerce the attention out of me, I guess that’s history, of ‘Kandukondaen Kandukondaen’ days.

DIRECTED BY GAUTHAM VASUDEV MENON

STARRING: SILAMBARASAN, TRISHA KRISHNAN, GANESH VENKATRAMAN

A certain ‘filmcritic’ rubbished me for having connected this film in the least to ‘(500) Days of Summer’. I pondered about it for a while, read what people said about the film (the Hollywood version, I mean) and even read what the creator himself had to say about it, and it all makes me to stay where I stood before: That I think this film indeed has a lot to do with ‘(500) Days of Summer’, but it’s not in a plagiaristic way (except for the park bench) as you could think I intended. Gautham Menon could have watched (or heard) about this new English film that a lot of people are talking about and somehow… somehow, the climax didn’t agree with him (not to mention the obvious 'Annie Hall' twist to the tale!).

Well, his climax didn’t go well with me!

I simply cannot see ‘Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya’ as a film, it’s just not complete enough to be one. I could easily suggest ways to do it better, and that’s where the film primarily fails, because people (I) were able to walk out of the hall thinking they could have ended it in a better way. The weird thing here is that they could possibly be right. Apart from that, I’d grow tired if I mentioned ‘anti-realism’, then I’d have to quote the whole length of the film as proof, and inconsistencies too, not of plot but of character in itself, and it just can’t get any more messed up than this. And I’m not talking of Jessie’s state of mind when I say that, I hope you understand.

I simply cannot intellectualize this ‘film’. I can’t lay it on a plate, dissect it and find which parts are edible (although someone with a history like Gautham Menon could bake a cake out of that), it’s just plain absurd. The people in it aren’t people, the emotions are written-out and the film actually needs the music it has to keep it going, because it’s still an X and a Y and that’s pretty much it. We’re driven to forget that we’re dealing with a writer and a coding-expert over here, and too bad I stated that unaware for a moment that it’s a Tamil language feature film – that’s how it’s supposed to be.

People definitely have better work to do, or at least some work to do. This just isn’t their kind of a film.