Vinnaithandi Varuvaaya

Director: Gautham Vasudev Menon

Karthik starts his film explaining with philosophical mindset about the girl he happened to meet and his journey with her, but only at the end of Gautham’s film do we get to know that he has not tried to understand his girl, rather he has gotten used to her. Call it male chauvinism or not, Gautham has created a mature character named Karthik, a guy who could empathize this girl Jessi whilst not forgoing his prestige even for her; at the expense of making her mad (in Karthik’s words) and elder to her, ridiculing the fact (?) that girls are more mature than guy’s of their age.

Starting from Jessi mouthing “mannipaya” whenever chance arises (even though that’s the theme song and not VTV) till making her speaks lines which any guy will want a girl to speak & lines which they would have seen girls speak but never understood, Gautham has potrayed Jessi as what a guy considers to be the complex mind of the girl and there in lies the only flaw of this well intended film. Jessi creates an aura, a wrap of suspense and it makes us want to know more about her mind her thoughts but we only see through Karthik eyes which doesn't go beyond it. Gautham did try to penetrate the veil only to see that she feels sorry for Karthik and nothing else. Is that such an important aspect of the film that could push down all the brilliance? If you are like Karthik who remains passive to all her rant and finally says “I think your car is there”; if you are bowled over by the passion that glimmers in Karthik’s eyes when his lover insults cinema (Karthik is an aspiring director) manipulating him to go berserk in one of their zillion breakups; if you understood why Jessi decided to break up with Karthik when he tells her to wait and also could sympathize his situation; if you love the way Karthik envisages his proposal to Jessi (and I could go on with the list) you would want to leave aside the weak life-thread and enjoy the moments in the life of Karthik and the ones that he scripts.

What is with Gautham and his semi-autobiographical mode these days? But then he had been like this from his Minnale days; attested by Karthik’s reply to Jessi, that he will tell the answer through his next film when she asks him how he found out her no. But he should stop advising his leads to out stretch their hands always which only returns to touch the actor’s heart recurrently. Like a dialogue in the movie, “love can’t be forced, it should come on its own”, “Aaromale” proves yet again that when Rahman gets driven by passion than commitment it creates magical scores for the ears as well as the eyes, through the songs & the background score captured aesthetically by Manoj who seems to have great command over the content that fills the screen (Ode Café scene, 1^st time at Ganesh’s place, etc). His handling of the close up shots capturing the emotions of the leads needs a special mention, where alone Trisha shines like she never (Maybe Aadavari Matalaku Ardhalu Verule is an exception), especially the scene where Karthik states when she smiled it was like poetry and Trisha did something close to that.

While Karthik’s film has music by Rahman, Vinnaithandi Varuvaya is an A.R.Rahman musical filmed by Gautham and in that order, without back staging the passionate effort of the latter; Vinnathandi Varuvaya is a soft feel good movie as commented by Jessie.

My take on the music here