First Love. That is something we still do not understand, neither did we at that time. A feeling that we couldn’t explain then, but we had sensed that everything around us just went blank when we saw the special person walk past us, the silence around you was deafening, and your mind just wandered in search of that voice echoing back to us.
Straight up, the first one hour of the movie is just going to be utterly emotional and breathtaking. It would be the best one hour of your day, your week, your month, or even your year, it’s been two years, it still is. It beautifully takes you a trip down the memory lane, back to your school life, wanting to go back in time to live those moments.
The most beautiful part of this nostalgic procession is that when Ram (Vijay Sethupathi) passes through every place of his school premises, it is just plain empty. It does not fill the scenes with a bunch of old students running here and there, does not have a teacher shouting “Idhu enna fish market ah illa classroom ah!”, does not have a love pair exchanging smiles, does not have a PT Master blowing his whistle. That’s only to let our wild memories flow into the scenes wherever Ram passes by. When you fill the scenes with the bunch of students, you are forced to see what’s happening on screen and reminiscing the old memories of yours becomes a miss there. Prem Kumar, the director, comes out quite brilliantly in such places.
Silence is a very unique state of being. This silence has a sense of beauty to it, that we can never find the right words to explain it. The silence that we have in this movie let’s the audience to revisit their own memories and have a lump in their throat.
The music by Govind Menon is deeply embedded in all of the proceedings and the whole experience is just breathtaking, just like how Ram feels when Janu places her hand on his chest. This particular scene is just exceptional, the feel of it is just so real, that your heart starts pumping just like Ram’s. The songs in the movie evoke a sense of nostalgia, mixed with pain, happiness, longing, everything that the lead characters experience on screen. The songs create the magical environment that the soulful happenings on screen thrive on. Also, the scene where Trisha walks in to the movie (her introduction sequence) after a long build-up of excitement and anticipation, the background score just takes it to another level. The Violin creates a spell that hooks you to it immediately when you hear the bow striking the strings.
The younger versions of Ram (Adithya Bhaskar) and Janu (Gouri Kishan) steal the show whenever they come on screen. The cuteness mixed with the childishness makes the proceedings so natural. The friends of them also make things so easy for us to relate to each and everything that’s happening around. The picturization of Kadhale Kadhale song is as magical as the song itself. You know it’s a dream sequence, but you still want that to have happened between Ram and Janu, you are made to root for such a sequence to have taken place, a point where Ram had crossed the road like a “Singakutty” (as described by the older Janu) and a point where Janu thought for a second and realised that someone waiting for her could actually be the Ram that she had been waiting all her life.
Of course, later on Vijay Sethupathi and Trisha (the older Ram & Janu) take forward the performances left by their younger duo. They are as perfect as their younger counterparts were. Especially, there is a brilliant similarity between both the Rams, the childishness has never faded in him, the love for Janu has never dipped even a single percent. You could sense the Love between the present Ram and Janu, yet feel the reality sinking into them as every second pass by. They try to ignore it, and try let go of things to allow their mind play its own game, but the reality latches on to them as tight as a leech.
The movie is an experience. It not only reminds us of our school life, but still when viewed as a movie, it becomes quite realistic. As an audience, you are genuinely reminded of your first love, how beautiful that feeling was, how remarkable things have changed from then on, just like how it is now with the lives of Ram and Janu. The feel is just exceptional during the full course of the movie. You relate to one character or the other, you relate to every situation that comes out on screen, eventually matching them with your own life experiences.