While watching Super Deluxe, amongst the countless thoughts swirling my head, one thought occupied my mind predominantly. It wasn't the seamless performance of Vijay Sethupathi or that of Fahad Fazil. It wasn't the demonic performance of Budds, who makes me ponder through his no holds bar, yet subtle performance in this film, whether this is how Kamal would have performed Red Chitti in Enthiran. It wasn't the wacky directions and unexpected/ unexplored characters the movie was showcasing. The question was more fundamental: it was about the pacing of the film.
Every scene in the film is painstakingly slow. By slow, what I mean is that after the crux of the information and emotion is conveyed, the scene goes on and on. The worst one was the Myskkin's stoned revelation scene. Is it fear or apprehension which led TK to decide this pace for the movie? For unknown reasons (at least unknown to me), a marvelous debut by TK didn't mint gold at the box-office. Did TK think pace of narration in Aranya Kandam was the culprit? We may never know. But I am shocked to see that his indulgences to extract the last drop of nector from each scene has led to this outcome in Super Deluxe. As an outsider, if I was shown individual scenes from this film, I would have been glob struck by the depth of work. But as a complete film, I can't say the same. That's because of how we subconsciously consume content. In short, it has to do with theory of relativity. If we are watching only a scene, our mind is tuned to expect the end pretty soon. Hence, the indulgences in showcasing the emotions through body language and creating multiple point of focus will look mouthwatering for a cinema connoisseur. But if that same strategy is used for a 3hrs film, it becomes restless. Game of Thrones which has the same pacing issue, smartly solved this age old problem by ending on a high in most of the episodes. Thus the satisfaction overrides the snailpaced screenplay. Here, the climatic wacky idea (Nalan Kumarasamy) doesn't translate well on screen to deliver that expected high. Incidentally, another Nalan Kumarasamy screenplay (Mayavan) faced the same problem. Could it be that the only person who could direct a Nalan's screenplay is Nalan? If you think otherwise, I urge you to look at Nalan's short film, Thurumbilum Errupar to understand why he was brought into write this portion and what Nalan is capable of.
This reminds me of another problem with the movie: it spoon feeds many of the twists. Again, the stoned revelation by Mysskin and that which happens to the boy needed better filmmaking and certainly less dialogues. When Mysskin utters, 'do you know what happened the other day' to narrate a flashback, I facepalmed at the tackiness of the narrative. It felt as if the director got into the characters' body to explain us why things are going bizarre. Sorry, TK you don't have to breathe in our ears. We are perfectly capable of understanding your ideas.
Speaking of dialogues, the weakest ones are alloted for Fahad & Samantha during their car journey. The motive behind the last journey (pun intended) was to create an arc where two people understand each other when placed in an extraordinary situation. Unfortunately this romantic idea becomes a cliché since lines are aimed at completing arc and not to speak the mind of the characters. It also reminded me of the ineffective climatic car journey in OK Kanmani which suffered from the same problem. There is another reason for saying the dialogues during the car journey are the weakest in the film. It's because the couple also get the best dialogues of the film when they are in their home. The theater went down in laughters and claps for every quibble of Fahad's. The icing on the cake was Fahad's explanation as to why he speaks about the system when angry. For a director who is so astute in perfecting the periphery, I was surprised he went for cliché in the core arc of the couple. The religious angle too suffers due to the same problem, especially if one is exposed to a healthy dose of Kamal's ideology.
On the whole, while I was underwelmed keeping Aranya Kandam as benchmark, by other tamil director's standards, Super Deluxe is certainly a class above.
PS: I haven't written about the positives of the film here because every single article about this film will talk about that. My intention to write this post is to explore why the pace and tacky dialogues mared my film watching experience.
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