Tag Archives: Dhanush

Yaaradi Nee Mohini

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This was my very first Dhanush film and the one that made me a fan, despite the fact that for most of the film his character is not very appealing at all. Added to that, the first half contains annoying plot points that seem to recur in Southern Indian films with disturbing regularity and it’s amazing that I enjoyed this film as much as I did! But it’s the performances, particularly by Dhanush and Raghuvaran, along with an excellent soundtrack and a better second half that made this film worth watching. It’s a remake of Selvaraghavan’s Telugu film Aadavari Matalaku Ardhalu Verule which I haven’t seen, but it does seem a lighter romance than Selva’s usual fare.

Back in 2008 when this film was released, I’d never heard of Dhanush and the Tamil films I’d watched were all either Rajinikanth or Kamal Hassan starrers with the odd Vijay or Madhavan film that somehow made their way into my DVD collection. But then I saw this song on the bus heading out to work in the villages around Trichy and I was instantly intrigued. I wanted to know why the guy was wandering around in a total daze following a girl who seemed totally oblivious to his presence and since I loved the song too, I knew I had to find a copy of the film!

Dhanush plays Vasu, a rather miserable layabout who half-heartedly applies for jobs where he doesn’t really ever seem to have a hope of being employed. He has a couple of good friends, Cheenu (Karthik Kumar) and Ganesh (Karunas), who seem willing to put up with his morose disposition, and a long-suffering father (Raghuvaran) with whom he has a difficult relationship. But just when Vasu seems to be going nowhere, he sees Keerthi (Nayanthara) and falls instantly in love – although this does seem to be based solely on her appearance and enjoyment of the rain. Which is where that song comes in. We’re back to the disturbing premise that stalking = love for this part of the film, but as Vasu follows Keerthi he finally becomes motivated and manages to secure a job at the same software company. Keerthi is his boss, and although she isn’t impressed with Vasu, her irritation with him doesn’t deter Vasu’s enthusiasm or belief that she will fall in love with him too.

Despite never having shown any previous signs of genius or diligence, Vasu turns out to be a computer whizz-kid and manages to single-handedly save a project by working all night. The power of love I presume since he also has to teach himself basic programming along the way!  As a result he is sent to Australia with Keerthi and a few others from their team for a short-term contract. I have no idea why Selvaraghavan’s screenplay demanded that the job should be in Australia since these scenes are quite clearly shot in Thailand with Thai extras, even though director Mithran Jawahar has tried to add an Australian flavour with the addition of surfboards and a song on the beach. It’s still not very Aussie though.

The best part about the first half is the developing relationship between Vasu and his father. Raghuvaran is excellent as Vasu’s father although his illness at the time is apparent in his frail appearance, and sadly Yaaradi Nee Mohini was his last film released before his death. He complements Dhanush in their scenes together and their relationship feels very genuine as a result. As Vasu gains maturity through his job he becomes better able to relate to his father and there are some great moments between the two as they explore their new rapport. Dhanush is very believable as the young man gradually discovering his self-worth and makes Vasu’s developing confidence seem very natural.

But after such promising character development, the next few scenes are just awful as Vasu declares his love for Keerthi and is rejected. There is some completely inexcusable dialogue as Vasu threatens Keerthi for insulting his father, and his immature and aggressive behaviour here is disappointing after an hour of watching his character supposedly grow up. Keerthi also seems to act out of character but thankfully the screenplay quickly moves on and things do improve for the rest of the film.

The action moves to a rural village in the second half as Vasu is persuaded to visit his friend Cheenu after Vasu’s father dies suddenly. Cheenu is getting married to his cousin who of course turns out to be Keerthi, and Vasu is forced to confront his unresolved feelings for her as well as deal with Cheenu’s large and very traditional family. The strangeness of village life for a city-bred boy provides some comedy, and Vasu lurches from disaster to disaster as he tries to cope with the lack of sanitation and contend with Cheenu’s tyrannical grandfather (K. Vishwanath) and Keerthi’s eccentric grandmother (Sukumari). Keerthi’s younger sister Pooja also presents a complication as she falls in love with Vasu and stalks him relentlessly. I was waiting for some realisation from Vasu that Pooja’s obsession for him was similar to his own for Keerthi but sadly this never happens. Still, Pooja’s character is very entertaining and Saranya Mohan is excellent in the role. Her attempts to get Vasu to notice her are amusing and I love her fantasy as she imagines them together in this remix of Palakkattu Pakkathile from the Sivaji Ganesan and Padmini starrer Vietnam Veedu

Although Vasu still mopes around miserably for most of the second half, his interactions with the children and Keerthi’s grandmother are charming and the development of his relationship with Keerthi seems natural and sweet. There are some funny moments as Vasu struggles to adapt and since the comedy is integrated into the story it flows well without disrupting the romance. The one fight scene is rather less successful since the only reason for a gang of rowdies threatening Cheenu’s grandfather seems to be just so that Vasu can defeat them single-handedly, and as such it doesn’t add anything to the plot.

While the story is fairly routine, there are a number of reasons why this film appeals to me as much as it does. Firstly the performances are excellent and there is good chemistry between Dhanush and Nayantara as their relationship develops. Dhanush really is impressive and fits well into the role of a rather ordinary young man while still capable of displaying a wide range of emotions without veering into melodrama. His attempts to do the right thing and keep Keerthi at arm’s length are very well portrayed and he gets the facial expressions just right to portray his inner turmoil. Plus he is funny and can dance – that’s pretty much everything I need.

Nayantara has a role with a reasonable amount of depth and she does a good job in making Keerthi more than just an average Tamil heroine, while Karthik Kumar makes Cheenu an interesting and likeable alternative to the hero. All the other cast members are excellent in their roles and I love Sukumari’s grumpy and fractious grandmother and Saranya Mohan’s determined younger sister.

Another plus for the film is the soundtrack by Yuvan Shankar Raja which has some great songs and in general they are well pictured. This is my favourite,  and it’s still one I watch regularly. I love the way the backing dancers are added in to the choreography and I think it’s  just a beautiful song that fits into the development of the romance perfectly.

There are also lots of little touches that keep the film feeling realistic such as the general clutter and disarray in Vasu’s house and the organised chaos of the family house in the village, while a shopping trip to buy sari’s is scarily familiar! These very normal scenes contrast nicely with the really quite wonderful dream landscape where Vasu dances with Keerthi which seems to be the only place where their romance can possibly happen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the issues I have with the first half of the film, I love the second half and Yaaradi Nee Mohini will always be special as the film that introduced me to Dhanush. It’s not just for Dhanush fans though as all the cast are good and it’s nice to see Nayantara in a role with a bit more substance. I give the first half 2 stars, but the second half 5 which comes to a probably just about right average of 3 ½ stars.

3

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I’m a big Dhanush fan and since Shruti Haasan had impressed me in her last Telugu film, I was excited with the prospect of seeing them together in 3. In addition I wanted to see how Aishwarya Dhanush would approach her first film considering she had worked with one of my favourite directors, Dhanush’s brother Selvaraghavan on Aayirathil Oruvan a few years ago. The hype surrounding 3 since Kolaveri Di became such a hit seems likely to have been the reason that this was the fourth Tamil film to be shown here in Melbourne with subtitles and I really do hope that this trend continues. So it was with high expectations that I headed in to watch 3 and while the film as a whole didn’t quite meet them, the first half surpassed them easily.

3 follows the lives of Ram and Janani who first meet while they are both at school and relates their romance through three stages of their life together. The two leads somewhat surprisingly don’t look too out of place in school uniforms and certainly with their attitudes and mannerisms they are convincing as high school students. But the real star of this part of the story is Siva Karthikeyan as Ram’s friend Kumaran.  The interactions between the two friends are very natural and the dialogues between the two as Kumaran deals with Ram’s sudden infatuation are snappy and very funny. They had the whole cinema in stitches and it was fantastic to be able to understand and laugh along with the audience for a change.

The love story progresses with the usual hurdles in the form of parents and familial expectation. Janani’s family are preparing to move to the USA and she has to deal with the prospect of leaving Ram just as she has realised her feelings for him.  Shruti Haasan excels here as the young girl infatuated with her lover but struggling to conform to her family’s wishes and she finally makes a decision in spectacular style. The young actor playing her sister is also very impressive and overall the romance is beautifully developed. Shruti and Dhanush have great chemistry together onscreen and their relationship progresses very naturally. The interactions between Ram and his father (Prabhu) were also very genuine and well written with plenty of humour and a real sense of the sincere relationship between father and son.

However the promise of the first half doesn’t carry through to the rest of the film. I can appreciate that Aishwarya wanted to show a total contrast in the second half but it gets carried to extremes and the screenplay starts to drag as the melodrama goes into overdrive. The film starts with a dead body and Janani in mourning before moving into flashback mode, so we all know that there isn’t going to be a happy ending – well this is a Tamil movie after all, but the story just doesn’t make sense.

Janini spends most of the second half crying and Shruti Haasan is not an actor who can cry prettily, so the excessive amounts of sobbing become wearing very quickly. The assured and determined young woman of the first half totally disappears and while it is likely a much more realistic reaction it doesn’t make for such interesting watching. Kumaran has also vanished from the story and Senthil takes over as the concerned friend trying to help. While Sunder Ramu puts in a good performance his character is generally less convincing as most of his actions aren’t consistent with the family relationships shown in the first half. Dhanush puts in another amazing performance but it’s a role he has done shades of before in Mayakkam Enna and Kadhal Kondein so while impressive, it does feel a little overdone in the last scene. The general idea of the twist in the story is good but it seems let down by the over the top screenplay and some very dodgy medicine and ethics.

What does work well is the music. Anirudh Ravichander’s background score fits the screenplay very well and the songs are well placed within framework of the film. Kolaveri Di is certainly not as expected and although there are a few odd moments, specifically with a blonde tourist, it generally succeeds and adds a bright moment to the otherwise very heavy second half.

The first half of 3 is a delight to watch and for that reason alone I think it is worth seeing in the cinema. The support cast are all excellent and while Shruti Haasan does overact later on, Dhanush is as impressive as ever with a very convincing performance. The film is let down by an unconvincing and over dramatic second half but there is still much to enjoy. As a friend remarked on twitter, if only the second half had matched the first this would have been a perfect film. It’s still good, and an impressive debut by Aishwarya Dhanush, but it could have been even better.

Mayakkam Enna

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Going to see Mayakkam Enna was a whole new adventure since not only did the film not have subtitles, but it was also showing at a cinema somewhere out in the suburbs on a university campus. Thankfully I found my way to a very bijou but comfortable cinema and was very happy to discover that they sold plenty of snacks at half time – I will be back!

I expected a lot from Mayakkam Enna since the team of Dhanush and his brother Selvaraghavan have made some of my favourite Tamil films together. And I wasn’t disappointed. My only complaint is that I really did miss subtitles for this one. The audience were laughing and applauding for a lot of the dialogues and I wanted to know what was being said to get such good reactions.

Karthik Subramaniam (Dhanush) is an aspiring wildlife photographer with a supportive group of friends, who all appear to live together in a house with its own bar. Excluding the bar, I could really relate to this, as I had a similar set of friends back in my final undergraduate year. We all lived together and went everywhere as a group so I had an idea of the changes caused by adding a new person to this dynamic.  Karthik’s best friend is Sunder (Sunder Raman) and as expected the gang aren’t too welcoming to his new girlfriend Yamini (Richa Gangopadhyay).To make things worse, Yamini and Karthik don’t get on at all and constantly dig at each other. While I missed the dialogues that generated a lot of laughter from the audience, there were a few barbed comments that really didn’t need translation as both Richa and Dhanush did a good job in getting their feelings across.

Over time however their enmity turns to attraction, leading to a love triangle with Sunder blissfully unaware of his girlfriend’s change in her attitude to Karthik .

Meanwhile Karthik is slowly compiling a portfolio of wildlife shots in between running around taking pictures of weddings and tourists at local temples. His role model is award winning wildlife photographer Madhesh Krishnaswamy (Ravi Prakash) and Karthik is determined to get a job with him to learn from the best in the business.  However Krishnaswamy has no interest in nurturing Karthik’s career and repeatedly sends him away with scathing comments about his work. I have to admire Karthik’s persistence as he gets no encouragement whatsoever from his hero but still keeps trying to get that elusive ‘perfect picture’ which will persuade Krishnaswamy to give him a job. The shots in the countryside are absolutely stunning here and cinematographer T. Ramji captures the wildlife flawlessly. These visually stunning moments are in sharp contrast to the much more claustrophobic scenes between Karthik, Yamini and Sunder and this accentuates the tension in their relationships well.

The first half of the film concentrates on the love triangle and despite the subject matter, there are plenty of light hearted moments along with the drama of the relationships. The pace is fast and the dialogues seem snappy and well suited to the action. The second half is much darker as it documents Karthik’s slide into alcoholism and his emotional breakdown as he is unable to come to terms with the events that unfold. While this part of the film is slower, it does feature an excellent portrayal of despair by Dhanush, although he is matched by Richa’s fantastic depiction of a loyal and long suffering wife.

Although this is Richa’s debut in Tamil cinema, her previous performances in Telugu films have been impressive and she is even better here in a role that seems to have been made for her. The two actors have plenty of empathy together and each complements the others performance.  Apart from Sunder none of the other actors get very much screen time but all seemed to do well enough in their roles.

While Mayakkam Enna is in some respects a typical Selvaraghavan film, focusing as it does on darker emotions, Karthik is a much less damaged lead character than I’ve seen in his other films. Karthik doesn’t appear to have had an abusive childhood and is a well-liked and popular person with a large and warm circle of friends. This makes his descent into depression and substance abuse all the more shocking since he does have a strong support network. It also makes him a more realistic and sympathetic character, although in reality I don’t think anyone would have put up with his self-pity for quite as long as they did here.

The music by G. V. Prakash Kumar is another high point of the film, particularly since Dhanush sings on two of the tracks. I loved the soundtrack when I first heard it, and the songs fit well into the film, althoughI think the picturisation of Kadhal en Kadhal is a little strange. I loved the cartoon characters in Voda Voda though and this is a great song.

While the film does become overly dramatic in the second half it’s still enjoyable due to the strong performances. But please, someone take that long-haired wig Dhanush wore in the closing scenes and burn it! It’s terrible and really doesn’t suit him at all. That aside, Mayakkam Enna is definitely worth watching on the big screen and both Dhanush and Richa are fantastic. I think that with subtitles this could become one of my favourite Dhanush films – I loved it.