2018, Tamil, Amazon Prime, 7/10, Directed by Balaji Tharaneethran
An intended celebration on immortality of Art – except the direction displays mediocre act and the unconvincing one-liner, fails to quench audience’s thirst for the same.
When you learn the movie isn’t about a theater artist making big on the silver screen but it is his spirit that lives on to deliver miraculous performance through the bodies of choosen actors who commit to good scripts – you are deeply disappointed..
When the entire movie rides on the one fact that Ayya-Aadhimoolam character played by VJS and his astonishing theater performances, you are devastated that there aren’t a single goosebump moment in any of the plays that is shown in various ages of his life.
The director is all set to convince us with an unusual metaphoric play, where VJS plays Aurangzeb in his death bed, the laborious breathes and the gloomy dark backdrop masks all the miniscule expressions the actor is celebrated for, instead it lays buried under the Indian thatha kind of makeup. His unique common man accent works in rival to the king’s dialogue delivery and you are left utterly disappointed..
When we haven’t experienced the authoritative Shivaji Ganesan’s clan kinda acting skills in the Ayya character, I wonder how the director expects one to buy his story in the first place when the whole script counts on Ayya’s soul entering actors to help them bring their best.
Looks like VJS chose not to put HIS soul in bringing out what the script demanded.. His tolerance might have been tested with the 4 hour makeup regime that he couldn’t jazz through emoting the way he is best at.. I would say it’s the director to be blamed solely for the soulless performance in the first 40 mins.
My mind replayed one thousand times the split second act in Aandavan Kattalai, where VJS works in a koothupattarai and is asked to emote as a king. His performance was phenomenal. The missed opportunity in couple of such lengthy sequences with great scope of capturing the audience attention, leaves you miserably disappointed..
Theater actor turned silver screen actor Mouli scores with his naiveness and his acting nuances speaks volumes, except his character is made questionable and looses integrity in collecting a fee for the dead actor’s soul.
‘Urvasi’ Archana was a good choice and when the name pops up in the screen you are rubbing your hands for the ‘sariayaana potti’ kinda enthusiasm with her playing opposite VJS, but again with no challenging combo scene for the two, you are sadly disappointed..
Now the court scene with the actor’s family being sued that they fraudulently cheated with the ‘VJS’s soul phenomena’ and getting payment on behalf of the dead actor, one naturally is left curious as to how the director might intelligently substantiate his story and the expectations soar high with firm faced actor Karunakaran playing VJS’s family lawyer and director Mahendran playing the Judge. The impactless progress of the scene and the final verdict leaves you desperately disappointed..
Two episodes of ‘patience-testing’ lengthy sequence of the actors who are unable to perform without Ayya’s soul in them, because they cunningly changed the story line to a mundane masala movies kind, you can hear your own soul screaming out loud, ‘GOD SAVE US’..
Sad that all the hype went down the drain and you walk out feeling sorry for the entire team.
VJS can comfortably add this to his number of movies this year and even specially mark it as his 25th, but he’s got to pull his act together and stop doing favours for people around him. He better hurry before he looses the masses who follow him for his uniqueness in choosing scripts. This one is a sheer miscalculated risk, worst than his fantasy outing in Junga..