Growing up in Chennai, I have constantly run into Illayaraja - songs on radio, titles on posters and movie credits, articles in news paper and praise on people's tongue. I have always liked his music, I think (S.A.Rajkumar and Chandra Bose were not much of a choice anyway). Some of his songs stay with me forever while others I forgot till hear them in some odd place. The songs from Mella Thiranthatu Kadavu, Nizhalgal, Mouna Ragam, Idayam, Agni Nakshathram, Apoorva Sahodarargal and some others are songs are memorable. Then there were those non-film music "How to name it" and "Nothing but the wind", which I remember for reasons other than the music itself. For a long time I wanted to own these albums but could never lay my hands on them. I kept thinking I am missing something big in the music world till the time I realized it did not matter. For me the greatest liking for Illayaraja songs is the nostalgia of my very young days that comes by when I hear a segment from his song.
But things started changing in the 1990's. MTV landed in India and the spectrum of music that hit me suddenly grew exponentially. With more music to digest than my small head can take, I had to make choices. Thus Illayaraja's music started moving to the peripherals of the spectrum. In the end, what remains today is nothing more than nostalgia. Even that loses out when I think of that traumatic evening when I was trapped among a few hard core Illayaraja fans. These guys were going gung-ho about "Rak muthu Rakku" from "Yajaman" in a small hostel room. They went on and on; playing that song in a loop a million times. A bloody mediocre sound that these guys claimed had the greatest beat on earth. The trauma of that evening turned my mind and whatever else against Mr.Rasas mujic. Of course, A R Rahman's music which came by around then impacted my expectations from Tamil movie music and since then Illayaraja's music just could not live up to it.
The coming years brought in a new generation of music directors, including the Illayaraja's reasonably talented son, and many a fresh ideas. The book of history started getting chapters with the name Illayaraja mentioned in it. Still a few directors (especially in Malayalam) stuck on with the tried and tested Illayaraja music. But Guatham Menon decided to rewrite history by making an epic love story that revolves around Illayaraja's master pieces. The sun which was at the brink of the western horizon started moving up to the east. Old fans cropped up on facebook. Old Illayaraja songs were back (but no "Rakku muthu Rakku" thankfully). Reviewers talked about the current breed of music directors owing their bread and butter to the great Illayaraja and how these fellows showed their respect by playing a bit some old song at this and that spots in their movies. This went on for many weeks till...
Finally, the day of the music release came by. The songs came out on the Internet. Facebook was filled with "Wows", "Amazing", "Maestro" and what nots. I listened to "Ennodu va va" and "Sattru Mumbu". The former a retro song that filled me with indifference and the latter a bombastic number with many violins screaming out in agony that filled my senses with god knows what. Many people thought these were the best (or should I say bestest) songs of the lot. Apparently, these two songs were proof enough of Illayaraja's magical touch continuing to exist. "It shows" they said "Illayaraja has not lost it" (whatever that is I did not know he had it in the first place). I did not like the songs; to me they seemed less than mediocre. Had it been anyone other than Illayaraja people might not have given it more than a listen. As a matter of fact, if Rahman had been the music director then people would have protested by fasting to death in front of his house. Thankfully, this is Illayaraja's music so everyone's happy and rest of us (who don't belong to the group called everyone) have to grin and bear it.
The movie finally got released a few days back. Gautham Menon (GM), I believe, is one of the most over rated directors in the movie industry. I found his great "Kaaka Kaaka" (or was it kaake kaake) barely tolerable. The story line was not the common sort but the execution seemed quite miserable - it did not seem natural at all. Everything seemed like an act; an attempt to let us know this is one cool movie from one cool movie maker. His "Vaarnam Aayiram" seemed much worse - it was quite incomprehensible. Before we could connect with a scene the movie had moved on to another scene and I was left with the feeling of watching a disjointed photo album. Again it seemed too cool for its own good. Then came "Vinnaithandi varuvaya". This movie was a much different experience from the earlier movies and for the first time my opinion of GM was pointing towards the positive side. The movie proceeds beautifully (both flow and look), with great music and possibly a career best performance by Trisha. If not for the slight botch up of pre-climax sequences it was a good movie. The only spoiler was Chimbu's dialogue delivery - he somehow seems to have the ability to convert words in wooden blocks before they a spit out at us. Maybe he uses some bold-ed font, which hurts our fragile ear drums. The Telugu version was a bit worse. Nag Chaitanya belongs to the other end of the spectrum from Chimbu and Samantha's Jessie seemed a trifle too sweet compared to the what-the-hell-cloud-she-be-thinking Jessie by Trisha. So on the whole, I was in a positive frame of mind about Neethane En Ponnvasantham due to the marked improvement in GMs movie making abilities. This resulted in my being present in the cinema hall running Neethane En Ponnvasantham a day after its release.
The theater was half filled in when we walked. The expectations, as expected, were high due to the coming together of GM, Jeeva, Samantha and Illayaraja. The posters screamed that this is the greatest love story ever made. It would be like growing up with these two characters, Varun and Nithya. The ups and downs of their life and more importantly love life. Soon a group of boisterous guys walked in and they were rambling aloud about "Machan, this..." and "Machi, that ...". "There seemed to be the end of the movie experience; these guys would comment their head out and not a word of the movie would be heard" thought I. I should have picked up one of "very nice" multiplexes rather than Mayajaal. But the damage is now done and the movie has just started rolling.
It starts out well with some college scenes and a song that starts off with "Pudikila mamae...". For some reason, the song and sequence reminded me of Twisted sister's "We are not going take it". Reasonably amusing start with Santhanam some decent laughs. Then Samantha enters and Jeeva falls in love at first sight or maybe not the first sight but more like the first re-sight (Hey Samantha and Santhanam spell nearly the same, are they long lost siblings is it?). These are mushy and gooey scene with Santhanam being the saving grace. He seems as embarrassing as I was to be a part of that scene (must be much worse for him being on the wrong side of the screen - wait a minute, does this movie have a right side of the screen?). It has been a few weeks since I have seen that movie but I remember Jeeva and Samantha being too giggly in that scene. But I liked the way that scene end with the the two lovers (maybe) deciding to talk to each other and then we jump into a flash back.
As the flash back unfolded, I realized that I was right about the "love at first re-sight" thought. The previous sequence was not their first meeting, they had met earlier, many times. The first Varun - Nithya meeting happened when they were young and as in many movie they seem to fall into something that can possibly be called loved unless someone says "What the hell! How can they fall in love so young?", in which case, it can be called affectionate feeling that can be misunderstood as love to a few silly onlookers (who probably should not be onlooking in the first place - it is none of their business). Then he ditches her by choosing to play cricket rather than merry go rounding with her, in which his heart lay. She loses heart, swears never to fall in love with or show affection (for mature audience only) to anyone in her pretty existence. God obviously listened to this swearing and decides to move Nithya's house to an area far enough from for Varun's so that they don't meet for next six or seven or eight years.
We jump to six or seven or eight years later when Nithya ends up looking like the actress Samantha and Varun like Jeeva. They meet at some tuition class where not school children looking school children meet. A glance from the corner of their eyes results in instant recognition of each other ("Oh God! Its that bugger who refused to merry go round with him", "Shit man! I should have merry go round with her"). I basically don't remember much of what happens after that but soon soon Varun asks Nithya for a coffee date at the you-can-find-it-everywhere-Chennai-of-movies potti kadai right outside the tuition center. GM chooses this meeting to enlighten us how it feels to be in the middle class. Enlight 1: Middle class folks vacation in Yercaud a not Australia. Enlight 2: The middle class chap can only buy two cups of "chaya" with the money in his pocket; a biscut to dip into the "chaya" is out of the question - too expensive. That per-se does not sound too ridiculous on paper but it was pure cheese that was dripping from the screen. It must have been the way Jeeva explained what a cool place Yercaud, (which in fact it is). But that looking at the pocket when Nithya asks for a biscuit what bad. I found that whole sequence cliched. I thought the middle class concept has been brought out very well in movies like "3" and "Naan Mahaan Alla". I think it is GM's ability to be unnatural in the most natural of the sequences that is the issue. This is definitely not cool.
Post vacation, Varun shifts schools to spend a lot of time with Nithya and they romance around freely. Soon jealousy strikes and they split unceremoniously. The next meeting occurs at the college. They fall in love all over again - meaning some more singing (I don't think they dance since this is a realistic movie), some more romancing, a lot of hugging, dialogues filled with more cheese than pizza hut's cheese stuffed crust pizza. We go through the whole process of falling in love again. This time we have Yuvan Shankar Raja crying out "Adadaaaaa" for our pleasure. I was completely lost and disinterested by this time. I was desperately clawing at my phone trying to play tic-tac-toe for some time. Then my interest turned to the cynical comments from the front benchers. Ironically, the movie and Illayaraja's heavenly music were far too distracting. But the snatches we heard from them were satisfying - We were not the only ones goinf through the pain. Seeing others go through the pain with us is always satisfying. As Vadivelu said "Why blood? Same blood!". By the time, interval strikes us, the hero learns a very important lesson about life - if you don't make money then life is going to a bummer and pretty much every one is going to walk over your father, mother and brother (but if you are lucky enough to have the greatest family on Earth then each member of the family would sympathize with someone else in the family and not call names at each other). This lesson leads to Varun taking a big decision and the loving couple falling out of love with each other. So by now, the match is evenly placed with Love and Breaking up scoring two goals each. Let us see what happens in the second half and the big question - will this match go into sudden death.
At the interval, I heard someone mention "Hey, let us not tell him how lousy the movie is. Let him come and watch. Heeee heeee heeeee". How can the world end when there is so much good will available? The second continued the downward trend. It somehow seemed a trifle better than what happened in the first. While the first half was boring and cheesy, second was sporadic and melodramatic (not necessarily the acting but the situations were definitely melodramatic). The flaws were many but it is the pretense of realism and what I ended up perceiving as a display of GM's utter conviction of his greatness that made the movie unbearable. Some of the annoying aspects that came up in the movie in the second half are given below.
1. The "ennodu vaa vaa ..." sequence with all those mails that the hero wished to send but did not till much later that makes the heroine blush with happiness.2. The penultimate scene where the heroine and hero spend some time together a day ahead of the important marriage.
2. At the end of the above mentioned sequence the hero's father gives the most important piece of advice (how many times have we seen this shit?).
5. The whole climax by which time everyone in the audience were screaming "Adadaaaaaaa..."
Obviously I did not like this movie but I have seen so many comments and reviews mentioning that this movie is a classic. The only reason I could decipher - It says love is a bed of rose plants; there are roses but there are thorns too. Why is that very different and why should we appreciate a movie for that? I can understand if this is a first time movie maker. This is Gautham Menon who has made God knows how many movies. I mean if the reviewers keep encouraging this guy he will not make another movie half as good as VTV. Anyway, lots of money wasted on a boring two and half hours that completely ruined the reputation of Jeeva and Santa Maria (or was it Santa Clause, Santhanam; oh no it was Some one that).
