Mani's Own Selvan

I watched PS2 in theatres. It convincingly ties up the story that began in PS1, though differently from the plot of the novel. A good artist also knows the deficiencies of his medium. So Mani Rathnam, who is aware of the mammoth that he has decided to adapt on screen, chose to trim the complex novel and make a straightforward movie. Under the time and budgetary restrictions, this seems to be the best version that could be made. He also chose to add some action and war scenes to appeal to the viewers' appetite for spectacles, all the while respecting logic and gravity. He has also cut short the importance of several characters who are shown in the first part. The movie is very quick in its pacing, though it takes time to breathe during some dramatic scenes.

Aishwarya Rai and Vikram steal the show with some great emotional scenes. All other characters, including Ponniyin Selvan, get one or two scenes to shine, except those few whose roles were totally butchered. But my only sympathy is with Sarath Kumar's character, who has a great arc in the novel that unfortunately wasn't realised in the movie. Each actor, irrespective of screen time, has done a good job, even if it is just showing up and looking good.

The songs in PS2 are not that catchy. After watching PS1, the tunes of Ponni Nadi and Devaralan Attam refused to get out of my head for days. But PS2 lacked in that department. All the songs complement the scenes but don't stand out. Background music heavily uses operatic sounds along with traditional Indian classical and folk tunes. The use of opera imparts a grandiose effect to the high-voltage confrontation scenes.

If you want a good entertainer that is aesthetically pleasing and not over the top, PS2 is satisfactory. If you have an obsession with the book adaptation being done line by line for the movie, it's better to skip it. If made into a series, this could give GOT serious competition with all the intricacies, subplots, and conspiracies, though that is not to be. Mani Rathnam, to his credit, manages not to spoil the legacy of the Cholas, Kalki, and the epic novel Ponniyin Selvan.

Book Review: Where Are You Going, You Monkeys? By Ki Rajanarayanan

Folk tales are codes of human history transferred to us from the past. Tales that are invented, told, and retold numerous times by numerous generations come with valuable information embedded within them. Folk tales attain a life of their own by collecting sediments from different parts of the world and from different generations of people. Decoding them and extracting these sediments is an almost impossible, though immensely rewarding, task.

I am more interested in just enjoying them, and wondering who else have relished these tales in the long past. I love to imagine that when I hear or read a folk tale, I become one with all its previous listeners, essentially nullifying the space and time separating us. So, when Blaft Publications offered a collection of Tamil folk tales translated in English, in return of an honest review, I was more than delighted. 

I really believe that a folk tale is more alive when someone narrates it. The expressions of the story teller, her tone, pitch and pauses, the reactions of listeners, their laughs, gasps and exclamations, everything makes it more and more alive. When a folk tale is written on paper and recorded, it suddenly become imprisoned, and stop being an organic entity that metamorphoses everytime it is delivered depending on the person who tells it and the period and place in which it is told. 

But the bad news is that, the oral transmission of folk tales is a dying art, as more visually appealing media are replacing old story tellers. Comics, series and movies have created new age folk tales with new age sensibilities that the present generation can identify. World over, ancient folk tales are slowly getting forgotten and along with them, a reservoir of ancient knowledge are breathing the last breaths. So it is the necessity of the times to record and prevent the mass extinction. 

I have read several collections of folk tales, written with the noble intention of preservation. But as written in most of their foreword sections, they have been edited out to satisfy the modern reader's sensibilities. Many stories are edited with the intention of ironing out the parts that are politically incorrect for containing racism, body shaming or sexism. But I believe that this exercise hampers the intention of preservation and stops representing the times when they were told and retold. 

Where Are You Going You Monkeys, the collection of Tamil folk tales by Ki Rajanarayanan, thankfully is one that tries really hard to reduce the distance between oral and written formats of story telling. There is no interference from the collector's or translator's side, except certain footnotes that illuminate certain aspects of the stories that may be alien for today's readers. Author doesn't shy away from stories that portray the primeval value system of the narrators and that makes reading this collection a raw experience. The innocent sensibility of villagers- their prejudices, superstitions, social and economic behavioural patterns and above all their sharp humor, oozes out of the stories. 

Ki Rajanarayanan known also as Ki. Ra is a Tamil folklorist and Sahitya Academy Award recipient. He spent decades collecting folk tales and as per his introduction of the book, he took care to collect them directly from old persons who told these stories after hearing it orally from their ancestors. The folk tales that he collected were published in a Tamil book of around 900 pages. This English translation is an excerpt of that master volume written in Tamil. Translations are bound to miss many crucial linguistic and cultural elements. While translating a book of orally transmitted stories, told in colloquial language, it is difficult to do cent percent justice. But to the credit of the translator Pritham K Chakravarthy, it doesn't feel like the book has lost anything significant in translation. 

The stories are divided into seven sections based on their themes. There are sections dedicated to stories on animals, Gods, Kings, ghosts, married couples, friends and family. In the end there is a section for dirty stories, which is rare in a folk tale collection. Old classic collections like Chaucer'sThe Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio's The Decameron, The Arabian Nights and Madanakamarajan Tales contains tales with sex as the background. Probably because until very recently, folk tales were told for a general audience. But the tales of magic, prince and princess are now totally relegated to kids. That is how there emerged totally sanitised kids friendly versions of fairy tales by Disney and other productions. Collectors usually censor dirty stories or plainly ignore them. The result is the fall of a wealth of such stories into oblivion. 

The stories are narrated in a way that instruct the reader how to retell it to an audience. It is obvious that the writer had a passionate intention to keep the tradition of telling stories alive. Most striking in these stories is their irreverent attitude to the hierarchial structure of the society. We read stories that lampoon kings, queens, priests and even deities. Many stories deal with serious issues like adultery, poverty, greed and treachery. The value systems that are portrayed in many stories are very plastic and doesn't mirror the moralistic beliefs of larger society. This portrayal of staunch defiance that are conveyed by these stories commonly told by lowest denomination of society makes these folk tales engrossing to read. 

Today we have standup comedians who are excellent and entertaining story tellers. But the collective generational wisdom that equips a teller of folk tales is missing in them. Many of the stories may contain elements that are totally alien to a modern individual. But if we go a little deep, we can unfurl a treasure chest of practical understanding that is still relevant to live an enriched life. 

Force 2 Awakened, Rolled Over and Slept Again...

Watching Force 2 turned out to be a total waste of time for me. It has some fabulous action sequences, but what point is there in watching a movie that is totally lacking in plot development and characterisation? Atleast adding some humour or melodrama would have done the trick.

The first part Force was remade from Tamil movie Kaakha Kaakha which was a realistic portrayal of the life of encounter specialists. The charm of the Tamil movie was the stark contrast between the romantic and professional sides of the personality of the protagonist played by Surya. Hindi version was not that good, but it hugely benefitted from the ready made script. The makers seriously botched up the sequel when they thought they could compensate the lack of good script with tons of action and car chases. 

One good thing about John Abraham that I like is his sincerity. He tried his best and failed honorably like he did in many other movies. He has his limitations as an actor, but he had transcended them in few of his movies like No Smoking, Madras Cafe and Taxi No. 9211. It's a pity that's not the case in Force 2. I hated those scenes where he walks menacingly towards villains and in closeup suddenly displays a cute puppy look.

The villain is given impressive screen timing and he shines through most of it. But his role was poorly written. The revelation of his motives in the climax spoiled the whole film. Sonakshi Sinha doesn't have much to do other than run around behind John Abraham in chase sequences. Her character arc is pathetic, unconvincing and doesn't make any difference in the movie.




But one curious thing that I noticed is that Force 2 bears an uncanny similarity to a Tamil movie that I watched recently- Irumugan. Both movies have villains trying to destabilise India from a foreign country. Both movies have reluctant protagonists taking up the responsibility of stopping the menace. In both movies the heroes are tormented due to the death of their wives. In both movies it is RAW who conducts the operation. In both movies our hero is assigned with a female partner, who is officially the leader. In both movies the hero easily bypass the partner. In both movies this causes ego issues in between them. In both movies, villain get a better deal role-wise. In both movies there are tremendous action and chases, but lack of a proper plot spoiled the whole thing. Both movies waste a lot of time in characters running behind one another without any interesting pay-off.

It's no fun ending up watching two similar disappointing movies back to back.

Kaashmora: Lil' Bit This, Lil' Bit That

Contrary to what it's makers want you to believe through the trailer and posters, Kaashmora is not an epic fantasy like Baahubali. It's more of a horror comedy movie. But it has elements of fantasy, crime and action embedded in it. I felt that it was a wrong move. The plot had many positives, but instead of fixing on what it really wants to be, they let the whole thing to run amok. So the result is an incoherent movie.

Karthi plays a dual role, that of both the protagonist and the antagonist, thus very much limiting the screen time and importance of all other characters. Except of course Nayanthara, who makes the best of the limited scenes she got, by looking gorgeous and kicking ass. Vivek who appears as Karthi's father also shone like a shooting star. Most of the other guys didn't had any idea of the purpose they were serving being in the movie.

As protagonist, Karthi's role is similar to the ones he has already specialised in many of his commercial hit films, that of a fast and smooth talking con man, which was predictably hilarious. As antagonist, the role that is hyped in trailer and posters, he gets to show-off himself and he did it commendably well. The comedy was the best thing about the movie. Most of the jokes were laugh-out-loud quality and even the ones inserted in between the tedious horror set-pieces were pretty good.

As I told initially, movie faltered when it attempted to go to places where it wasn't supposed to. The first half was pretty interesting but the second half suddenly left whatever was built in the first, and started telling a story by its own. Many characters and incidents introduced in first half is abandoned in second without any payoff. That was one reason why the flash back of the villain, though looking wonderful on screen, lacked any emotional resonance for me. It was tough for me to root for or even care for many characters. I would say Kaashmora is missed opportunity,  like most of the recent Tamil movies that arrive piggybacking on the hype of multiple get-ups of its stars.