Tamil Cinema has caught up with anthologies. Earlier, we had the unique Solo in which the four stories were weaved around the concept of four elements – Wind, Water, Fire and Earth – and Lord Shiva. Last year, we had the cute and beautiful Sillu Karuppatti. We have another one lined up with Netflix sometime later this year or early next year. Mani Ratnam is coming up with a magnum opus production Navarasa, a nine part anthology series, also to be picked up by Netflix.
Amazon Prime Video‘s Putham Pudhu Kaalai has five different directors (Sudha Kongara, Gautam Vasudev Menon, Suhasini Maniratnam, Rajiv Menon and Karthik Subburaj) coming together to create something very beautiful for the audience to see. It is good to see that there are more stories nowadays in Tamil cinema that explore more on ‘other’ human relationships and feelings and not just about the love between the lead pairs of a movie.
Ilamai Idho Idho
This short, written by Francis Thomas & Shruthi Ramachandran and directed by Sudha Kongara, has been beautifully conceptualized. It is about how an old age love turns so fresh and youthful within seconds after they meet. It starts off with actor Madhavan voicing over the pictures of lovely young & old celebrity couples. “Like I said, avanga nammala epdi feel panna vekraanga nu than matter – Foolish, Happy and, most importantly, Young” is the overarching message that the short drives. What better than Alaipayuthe’s Yaaro Yaarodi song to show the liveliness of a young and budding love, that how that one song makes you high-spirited when you are in the “Love Mood”.
Within seconds the love between the old couple (Rajiv & Lakshmi) turns young when he hears the bell of his house. The moment they are around each other, they forget their age, their inhibitions, their own problems, and the only thing that remains between them is the love they have had for each other in the last few years. The way they behave around each other makes us think that they are indeed the new love couple in town. Jayaram as Rajiv Padmanabhan and Urvashi as Lakshmi Krishnan sprinkle their innocence and childishness all over the place that makes it super warm to watch.
Our society has always been judgmental on lovers, on how the human CCTV cameras – neighbours, have always had a keen ‘eye’ on these people, and at times, they tend to poke their nose into the other people’s lives. There is a sequence where Rajiv looks out of his balcony to see if any neighbours had been watching when Lakshmi had walked into his house, he is still scared of this “talk of the town” thing even at this age.
It was so fascinating to see that the young actors, Kalidas Jayaram and Kalyani Priyadarshan, carry the same effervescence of their older counterparts (the actors here). GV Prakash shines in these moments with his quirky and cute songs and background scores. Probably, the real success of this imaginative depiction is that, as an audience, we do not feel the difference when the actors switch, very clearly thought out and executed. They retained their older counterpart’s body language, but channeled their youth through the actions and love that they had for each other.
Avarum Naanum – Avalum Naanum
This short has been written by Reshma Ghatala and directed by Gautam Vasudev Menon. This was a very different outing for Gautam Menon with respect to his usual filmmaking style. He has always had either a young couple falling in love or bloodshot cops running around chasing bad guys, or even both at times, but this was something very new from the filmmaker. Avarum Naanum – Avalum Naanum is a very emotional and a relatable story between an old man and his granddaughter, and also between a young girl and her grandfather, hence the title.
Avarum Naanum
As young & inexperienced people, we never tend to understand the decisions of the old people, their reasoning may seem to be childish and illogical, but when we hear their side of the story, we realize that all their decisions and thoughts were emotionally formulated and do not require any kind of logical explanation.
It is so astounding to realize how life finds a way to give us all a second chance even in these unfortunate circumstances. Ritu Varma as Kanna reluctantly comes to live with her thaatha, amidst the COVID situation, she has hated this man her whole life, the decisions taken by her thaatha had not gone down well with her all these years, and she decides to be with this man just as a caretaker and leave as soon as the lockdown period is over. However, little does she know that the next 21 days is going to be life-changing, and is going to give her a new lease of life that she has been devoid of all these years.
Avalum Naanum
The beauty of the introductory sequence of MS Bhaskar’s is that it shows the pain the character has been withholding through all these years of isolation. When he sees his granddaughter looking through the pictures on the wall, he realizes how much he misses his daughter, how much he misses her voice, how much he misses the music in her voice. However, it is not possible to rollback time, hence he decides to at least be with his granddaughter, get to know her, get her to know the man he has been all these years.
The sequence where he prepares mangoes for her with all the excitement and happiness to see his granddaughter in this house after all these years, on the other hand, there is a voice-over of Kanna bashing him for being such an unkind and harsh person all his life. (Ah, now that is a GVM trademark, the voice-overs!). And, also the sequence when he says the Zoom meeting actually made him realize that there has never been people in this house talking and arguing, makes us drop a tear and feel for the man.
It is always a delight to watch the legend MS Bhaskar on screen, any character he takes up always ends as the most memorable performance of his till date, and he aces it whenever there is a heartbreaking situation that demands him to explain his side of the story – be it 8 Thottakkal or this one.
The climax sequence is like an icing on an already beautiful cake, where within a few seconds of that Aalaap coming out through those speakers, the voice that he has missed all these years rushes back into his life, echoes in this very house now, not just in his heart. If you watch closely, he starts to weep listening to that angelic voice but at the same time, enjoys the song and raagam.
“Kanna Thoodhu Poda. Unmai Solli Vaada” – these beautiful lines explains the untold story of a doting daughter who wishes that her father had understood her and things better.
Coffee, Anyone?
This short, the third in the order, which has been written and directed by Suhasini Maniratnam, co-written by Mani Ratnam himself, is about why and how Hope is always a good thing, even though the circumstances say otherwise.
This short film starts off with Valli, the eldest daughter of the family, played by Suhasini Maniratnam, reaches India from the UK to look after her ailing mother. She is joined by Saras, second daughter, played by Anu Hassan, they are on the way to visit their ailing mother. They are shocked and furious upon reaching the house, demand a logical explanation from their father (played brilliantly by Kaathadi Ramamurthy), to which he replies that it is his wish to keep his wife with him free from the clutches of the hospital treatments.
Earlier, in “Avarum Naanum – Avalum Naanum“, we saw a similar thought of how young people do not understand the decisions of the elderly and how the decisions of the elderly rely more on the emotional side rather than the logical side. That is the case here as well, the husband is bent on keeping his wife with her always even though she needs medical attention but the daughters are trying to understand such a preposterous decision and try to arrive at a logical conclusion for the same, but are unable to comprehend it.
Such a touching premise is compounded multifold when the search for logical explanations fade out amidst the emotional bonding they experience when they are around their family, which eventually makes them believe that Love heals things better even when science and technology have dropped the towel. Again, this is something that seems not have a logical explanation to it, but we have consistently seen the miracle (which is incidentally a name of another short in this movie) what this does to the people in distress, how the right voice and words create a positive vibe that the receiver is devoid of in a closed environment of an ICU.
Although the next film has it named as Reunion, this was more of an actual reunion with the Hassan family. There is Komalam Charuhasan, Suhasini & Maniratnam from the Charuhassan family, and there is Anu Hasan from the Chandrahasan family, and finally, there is Sruthi Hassan from the Kamal Haasan family. Here is another small connect that brings in Kamal Haasan into the picture – remember, Kattupidi Vaithyam from the movie Vasool Raja, same vaithyam is being done by the husband here in this movie.
Reunion
The fourth installment of this anthology is written by Rajiv Menon, Adhithya KR and Krishnaswamy Ramkumar, and is helmed by Rajiv Menon himself. It begins with Sadhana’s (played by Andrea Jeremiah) bike breaking down and she is forced to get help from her childhood friend Vikram, played by Carnatic singer Gurucharan, who lives with his mother, played by Leela Samson.
Due to COVID, Vikram requests Sadhana to stay with them for a few days, and later he is sent into self-isolation as he is said to have been in contact with a COVID patient during one of his surgeries, hence Sadhana decides to stay. However, soon they discover the other side of Sadhana, and Vikram and his mom are shocked to discover this side of the girl who had co-sung with him in all his stage performances during school.
The case of drug addiction was brought up in this short, as to why it is a very serious issue for young people getting addicted to it, and presses on the fact that why is it even more important to get the right help and attention it requires. Loved the way how a drug addict is not judged for her actions, but is being provided with love and care to make things right.
However, this short could have been a little more impactful considering the subject it has taken up. It took little on the lighter (light-hearted) side that it failed to put across the serious issue as vehemently as it needs to be put. May be, that was not the intention of this short, but it could have been much more intense, or could even had more content with respect to issue in hand.
Miracle
The fifth and the last installment of this anthology is written and directed by Karthik Subburaj. This is a typical “Karthik Subburaj” style, with the dark comedy and the concept that has been the trademark for the director for all these years.
This short starts off with a spiritual video of how one has to believe that a miracle is always round the corner, that the miracle is bound to happen today, if not tomorrow. There are three smaller sub-stories that happen in this – Two thugs who believe that a miracle will happen in their lives that would make them become insanely rich. A filmmaker who is in a lot of debt, unable to finish his film, and a Baba who preaches about the miracle on the video that the other two watch. The way that these three set of stories intertwine has been brilliantly written, and how that swamiji is brought into all this was hilariously tweaked in.
This is a completely screenplay based story on how true is that baba’s theory that the miracles can happen at any time, and how those miracles does not always need to be good, that there are good and bad miracles. This short story comes off easily as one of the best out of these five short stories for the sheer surprise element.
One needs to give it to the makers for managing to come out with content despite the restrictions of COVID lockdown. It seems like there were hundreds of technicians who would have been involved in the sets while there were only a dozen. One needs to see how things progress from here with respect to the way cinema goers consume content. With big directors and story writers getting into this space, it is only a matter of time that big actors also follow suit.