Weekend movies - Aaru and Nandha

Aaru - Before entering the movie hall, I bet you will be expecting the following from the movie just bcos it is directed by Hari - the whole story will be set in a town/city, references to routes & roads only familiar to those living in that particular city will be made, lot of fast camera movements to the extent of dizziness and umpteen number of tires screeching scenes. Aaru fully lives up to all these salient features of a Hari movie but still falls short of becoming an exciting movie that one can take home some memories with. Surya as has become the norm now-a-days has given a very convincing performance. Vadivelu does provide with some hearty laughs but again nothing you can narrate to your friends outside the movie hall (something we can do with a movie like Chinna or Winner). Nothing special to write about Trisha except the fact that it is high time she learns how to dance. Hari could have well avoided many disgusting scenes without which this movie would have been much more enjoyable than what it actually turned out to be. The scenes in the police station (particularly the one involving the lady policy constable) were downright cheap & disgusting. Someone has to tell our directors who use Aishwarya to ask someone to dub for her. Her voice is so coarse (manly would be a better word) that it is such a pain to sit through the scenes with her irritating voice.

The problem with Hari's movies is that they are getting very monotonous. While they can be in no way termed as bad or less exciting at the same time they can never be termed great by any stretch of imagination. To rephrase the often used ‘blessing in disguise’ cliché, Saamy has become a ‘bane in disguise’ for Hari. The fact that he hit his jackpot way back in Saamy has made things very difficult for him with that movie in itself becoming a sort of become a benchmark for his style of film-making. People expect a racy entertainer like Saamy from him every time he makes a movie. None of his movies after Saamy (be in Arul, Kovil or Ayya) have been bad efforts but they did not do that great in the BO bcos of the sole reason they could not measure up to the quality of Saamy. So, in order for Hari to give another monstrous hit, he will have to come up with drastically different from his earlier attempts, a task which to me looks impossible as of now. Until then, all we can expect from him are average movies like Aaru.

Nandha - Had been wanting to watch this movie for a long time. Not that I haven't seen the movie. I did see it when it was released but wanted to re-visit this movie now that Bala has become one of the hottest directors in Tamil cinema. All I remembered before watching the movie was its tragic climax where the mother kills her own son by poisoning him. The other thing I remembered about the movie was the fact that Bala had placed his faith in Yuvan for scoring the music for the film at a time when Yuvan had not proved himself. I also have always believed that Nandha was the least best of Bala’s efforts. But watching Nandha last night did not make me feel so. Though it was not definitely as gripping as Pithamagan, Nandha was still a good watch. It had the trademark tightly knit screenplay one would expect from a Bala movie along with some memorable performances from the entire cast (Karunas makes a tremendous debut in this movie). RajKiran delivers a powerful performance and looks like it again took a Bala to spot this facet of acting from RajKiran which he has taken to greater heights now with his performance in Thavamaai Thavam Irundhu.

But the one issue I had with the movie was that I had many unanswered questions after the movie ended with the main question being – why should his mother kill him in first place? Surya's mother who goes into these mood swings when she just hates him, seems to have reconciled nicely with her before the climax and it is in the climax where it has been shown that the reason she decides to kill him is bcos of the fact that he killed RajKiran's son-in-law for killing RajKiran. I am not sure how she was unaware of the fact that there was a valid reason behind Surya's decision to murder him in first place. If Bala had shown that she decides to kill him in a sudden fit of anger when she was in one of those mood swings when the wife of the person he murdered showered all those curses in front of their houses, then it would have made some slight sense. My friend argues that there were many scenes in the movie where the mother’s anger on his son’s brutal character is shown vividly which kind of forms the base for her unusual decision.

Anyway, other than that, I used to think the whole RajKiran episode in the movie was unnecessary. But I was proved wrong after watching the movie bcos it is this RajKiran connection in the movie that ultimately leads to his death. The background by Yuvan, though clearly not in the league of his illustrious father, was still good. It is just amazing to think that he has done this movie while he was still a teenager. The songs in the movie, as we all know, were just awesome. The way Bala sets up the Munpaniyaa song (IMO Yuvan’s best song till date) is just so beautiful. he takes it to a point where we just can't wait for that song to be shown. Truly heart warming song & apt picturization. Special mention has to be made about the photography in the movie. Each and every single shot in the movie was so good & more importantly, fitted the mood of the scene very aptly. Overall, this movie far from being a flaw-less movie (like Sethu & Pithamagan were) still is pretty damn good. My only gripe is that Bala, like Mani Rathnam, is taking lengthy gaps between his films. It has been a good 2 years since Pithamagan came and he hasn't even started his next movie yet. That is where someone like Cheran is far better, in that he has been making movies at more regular & acceptable intervals.