Harish Film views

Director: Gautham Vasudev Menon It all starts with Karthik struggling with writer's block. As his mind longs for Jessi's presence, his hand dials her number, hoping she would bring him out of this abyss. What should have followed is an epilogue to the original film or a prelude to a sequel. However, what I saw was a procedural event. To begin with, the writer's block was treated at surface level without any heft. Just because you write heroine intro scene as her brushing her teeth (Raja Rani) you cannot lose hope in life and take drastic decisions. Once the phone conversation begins, it goes into confession mode listing out every detail the audience needs to know about the life of this couple in the past 10 years. It is of course interlaced with the GVM must-haves such as self-deprecating humour, throwbacks to his successful films, and Mani Ratnam; all in now-intolerable staccato.  When I took a step back, recounting events in the form of confessions inherently is a highly ...

Director: Kamal Haasan When Wissam (Kamal) and his wife Nirupama (Pooja) enter the elderly care to meet Wissam's mother, an Alzheimer's patient, we see that her world of four walls is adorned only by her son's images. It reminded me of another member of the extended Haasan family's film, OK Kanmani.  There too a key character, suffering from Alzheimer's, had a loved one as an anchor. But Kamal the director pushes this trope further. Through a twist of fate, she isn't able to recognise her son standing in front of her. Akin to how Wissam is hit by flashes of images from the past throughout the film, this plot point took me back to the various moments prior to this scene in the series where Wissam is alienated. Wissam's alienation starts when his father leaves him as an illegitimate baby; the Indian Army disavows him so that he can be an espionage agent; his colleagues want to get rid of him at the drop of a hat; his jihadi brethren feel he has betraye...

Director: Sandeep Reddy Vanga The first thing that struck me deeply about AR (Arjun Reddy) is how the love between AR and Preethi develops. She is a fresher with innocence written all over her face, carrying a pair of eyes filled with a mix of fear and sadness. As a result, her gaze towards AR is filled with helplessness. She is helpless because AR, bitten by love bug at the first sight, surrounds her teenage world in every manner possible. In essence, she is his princess-prisoner. This Stockholm Syndrome-ish relationship isn't punctuated with morality, ethics or etiquette that which one sees in star-crossed love stories that occupy Indian screens. The status-quo of the relationship changes only after she believes he is the one and willing surrenders herself to him. Not just that, her gaze too changes from fear/helplessness to unadulterated love.  In this character driven film, from the plot perspective, there isn't anything new Sandeep has done that on...

Director: Mani Ratnam In the poem ‘Kaatru Veliyidai Kannama’, the poet describes the beauty of kannama, how it mesmerizes the lover, captivates him to his core and becomes the torch for the darkness within and around him. VC, the protagonist of the film, Kaatru Veliyidai, takes off from the poem in spirit. He is mesmerized by the mere presence of Leela. Such is the power of Leela that the moment she lights a torch into the eyes of VC, the player gets play ed by the ethereal aura of the rightfully named Leela. Mani Ratnam, here seems to be more interested in interpreting the poem in its various facades. He starts off this ambitious vision with self-indulgence.  Thus, VC, who gets mesmerized by the beauty of Leela, wants her to be his anchor, the human embodiment of his poetry, the breeze that comes along with the air that surrounds him and ultimately the light to the darkness within. No wonder Mani makes the protagonist apologize through a poem, reminisce her through the ...

He made a furtive glance; she gave an approving smile. Love spread as elegantly as the widening smile of her lips.  He would say I am not a fool to wait for you for hours together; she would say sorry for making you wait. Love knows the words between the pauses. She would say I am staying away from you for some days; he wouldn't say anything; but goes away with a smile, enjoying the pain that he is getting due to the separation. Love truly went mad.   If you got bored just imagining what that would look like on screen, the movie OK Kanmani and this opinion piece is not the place for you to be in. OK Kanmani, as you sensed from the treatment above, is a typical Mani Ratnam film, filled with his patented strokes of artistry on a  bright canvas setup by PC Sreeram, Rahman and others. It isn't a film that is cluttered with novel ideas or an unique treatment. But what sets it apart is the ingenuity it poses in saying differently what was already said in...

Director: Mani Ratnam In an interview Mani Ratnam once said, I don’t care about the story. I would be happier if I were to just shoot. What he meant was that, the success of a director lies in manipulating the emotions of the characters and hence the audience with every scene. He meant the director’s scope lies in creating spell-binding scenes. But he failed to bring one more point to the table: without hampering the flow and purpose. A movie can’t be made interesting with just great visuals. How much ever you pan with your camera how much ever emotions you try to extract from the dedicated actors it will remain only two dimensional if there is a dearth of the third angle. The third angle, which not necessarily third in order, is the depth in the screenplay. When you are going to be faithful to the epic (largely) and are going to just make them travel in time and station them in a remote jungle why not give them real challenges to portray what they are capable off. It can be a nice ...

Director: Mani Rathnam Ramayan is a very bold story which along with many knots, put forth that both the good & bad when at fault pay for their sins: a knot worth to be inspired. When you are struck by an idea you start enjoying it in different ways, like how a guy who falls for a girl will go on creating and recreating the scene of submission. As these ideas continuously follow while the creator is envisaging, his analytical mind starts working on ways to connect these random hair rising moments. You know they excited you and you know now you have to connect those points to make it into a plausible screenplay. When you start writing you have all your notes ready and you work on ways to insert them; because these notes – hand outs are the very definition of each character and motive for each & every particular hair rising moment. But the mind has this treacherous power to be excited by the high moments alone that you will want to take great care in crafting them. When you are t...