Spoilers ahead…
Had Kaththi been a film with loftier ambitions, we might say it begins in medias res – but it does begin with a bang. A prison. An escape. A freeze frame. Then, a flashback, which contains one of those procedural depictions AR Murugadoss is so fond of. (If nothing else, it must be said that his films have some of the smarter masala heroes. There’s at least an attempt to think through a situation instead of just flexing a bicep.) The sequence has a cheeky finish, guaranteed to whip the hero’s (Kathiresan, played by Vijay) fans into a frenzy.
And then, all the air begins to leak out of the narrative. Murugadoss has never been an economical storyteller, but even by his standards, the early portions of Kaththi are remarkably flabby and dull. Instead of surprising us by cutting to scenes directly, he keeps laying them out for us, he keeps explaining them. Consider the stretch where Kathiresan returns to an old-age home and experiences a shock. Why have the lead-in scene where his friend (Sathish) tells him what he’s going to find? How much better if we find out what’s happened along with Kathiresan? The ideas are snappy – the reveal of the person injured in a shootout; the identity of a couple of television reporters – but the staging is shockingly flat. Worse, more time is wasted on what must surely be one of the most uninspired romantic tracks of all time. Samantha plays the heroine… No, scratch that. She plays an emoticon. Happy face. Sad face. That pretty much covers her contribution to the proceedings.
The story is the old one of a crook who grows a conscience – this happens when Kathiresan is faced with the plight of farmers whose lands (and the water in those lands) are at the point of being usurped by a multinational. (Neil Nitin Mukesh plays the villain… No scratch that. He plays another emoticon. Frown face. Angry face.) And because two heroes are always more fun than one, Kathiresan finds himself assuming the role of Jeeva (Vijay again). This avatar is even smarter – not only does he come with an MSc in Hydrology, he’s able to explain communism with the help of… an idli. Clearly, Marxist philosophies are best digested with a spoonful of sambar. It’s the old Naadodi Mannan template, shaped with a relevant, burning social angle. Along with MNCs, Kaththi indicts the mainstream media that cares more about goosing city viewers with sensation than giving villagers a voice. Jeeva, therefore, is their only voice. “En uyire ponaalum vivasaayatha vidaatheenga,” he tells the villagers, after being beaten up by corrupt cops, MNC stooges. The scene is framed so that we see him as a messiah, a deliverer addressing weeping believers – he carries their cross.
Part of the problem with Kaththi, then, is that its concerns are too heavy, too real, to accommodate Vijay’s lightweight, I’m-too-cool-to-care star persona. (That’s why Thuppakki, the earlier Murugadoss-Vijay collaboration worked as well as it did. Its defining characteristic, even as bombs threatened to obliterate cities, was its pulse-quickening coolness.) The other problem lies in the characterization. Murugadoss doesn’t opt for the path taken by Dhool – another masala movie about villagers and their water problems. There, the hero hailed from the village. He was a son of the soil and when he came to the big, bad city to fix things, the transposition carried a charge – we were never in doubt about the intensity of his feelings, the extent of his indignation. Kathiresan, on the other hand, is a creature of the city, a criminal to boot – and his transformative arc needed to be traced more convincingly. (His background, which is revealed late into the film, could have been used to shape his character more empathetically, but it’s tossed off in a line or two.) And without this anchoring, the film gets into a slightly dangerous (and queasy-making) zone where we begin to feel that it is exploiting the horrifying reality of farmers for the sake of a few masala kicks. A scene in which farmers commit suicide is chilling, but a minute later, we question the validity of our response. This is, after all, the kind of film that has its hero claiming that cell phones are an extravagance in a country whose farmers are dying without basic needs – but not before shaking a leg in a lavishly shot song that goes… Selfie pulla.
But the film gets better as it goes along, mostly because Murugadoss rediscovers, midway, the sound masala instincts that had apparently abandoned him earlier. A fight sequence where Kathiresan uses a bunch of coins is a superb bit of imagination. The impact comes not just from the action choreography, but from the emotional resonance imparted by those coins – they were donated for Jeeva’s cause by displaced farmers who are now laboring as sewage workers and employees in sleazy wine shops. So when Kathiresan uses these coins against the goons employed by the MNC, he’s really drawing from the villagers’ struggles – he’s really fighting their fight. Later, he invokes the names of Periyar, Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi and launches a civil disobedience movement. What a grand idea. And what a grand masala movie might have resulted had these concerns percolated into the story at every level, had this film been as attuned to serving its premise as its hero and his fans.
KEY:
* Kaththi = knife
* En uyire ponaalum vivasaayatha vidaatheenga = Don’t abandon farming even if I die.
* idli = see here
An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2014 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Ram Murali
October 22, 2014
I think Shankar balanced the “flab” with the serious stuff very well in movies like Indian, Muthalvan and Gentleman (in that order). I think he compartmentalized the portions well and used the comedians like Coundamani well. In that he would not have Arjun or Kamal (Senior) fool around so, we never lost sight of their intensity or sense of purpose.
Murugadoss’ best film till now is Ramana. If he could make a serious, fast paced action entertainer with minimum fuss and almost zero “flab,” despite having Vijaykanth as the protagonist, he should actually find it easier with the likes of Vijay, you would think…
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reviewpuram
October 22, 2014
Please. Please. Please change the name/signature on your reviews to “Bang-on-Brangan” B| Thengai odaikira madhiri odachirukeenga sir!
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venkatesh
October 22, 2014
“Murugadoss’ best film till now is Ramana. If he could make a serious, fast paced action entertainer with minimum fuss and almost zero “flab,” despite having Vijaykanth as the protagonist, he should actually find it easier with the likes of Vijay, you would think…”
– its the other way round really . Vijaykanth for all the fun we make of him now actually made some good masala movies and was willing to break the mould – unlike Illaya Thalavali….
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Anuja
October 23, 2014
The film is aptly titled, it makes you wanna grab a kathi and kill yourself before one of the most insufferably boring movies ever made does. I can’t believe the guy who made Ramana has sunk to these depths.. Perhaps he wanted to punish those like myself who hated Ezham Arivu by proving that he can do so much worse. Blech!
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oneWithTheH
October 23, 2014
“This is, after all, the kind of film that has its hero claiming that cell phones are an extravagance in a country whose farmers are dying without basic needs – but not before shaking a leg in a lavishly shot
song that goes… Selfie pulla”
This reminded me of your 7am arivu review where you similarly allude to ARM’s hypocrisy.
“Why are these movies about the glories of Tamil culture always made by directors who hop, skip and jump to exotic foreign destinations for their songs, which feature whites and where the hero is dressed like a hip-hop artist, mouthing words like “ragamuffin?””
But all said and done, Kaththi looks like a good watch. 🙂
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ram
October 23, 2014
“explain communism with the help of… an idli. Clearly, Marxist philosophies are best digested with a spoonful of sambar”.
Indeed 😀
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Kumar
October 23, 2014
Did Mr. Sainath from hindu see this movie, I am curious to know his reaction…….this is an issue that he has been covering for so many years.
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DongLee
October 23, 2014
I think, a review of this review would be something like ““Kaththi Review”… Beneath the flab, a review of some solid masala moments” 😛
The comparison to emoticons was phenomenal. I thought that Samantha was just a bystander looking at the shooting of kaththi and she happened to be in every shot.!
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oneWithTheH
October 23, 2014
“I thought that Samantha was just a bystander looking at the shooting of kaththi and she happened to be in every shot.!”
Wow. Plagiarism by content-creators is discussed so much on Rangan’s blog here, now we need to identify “original” content-reviewers too, I guess. But to be honest, I don’t know in whose mind these words came first 🙂
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oneWithTheH
October 23, 2014
Watch the above video from 07:19
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Rajesh
October 23, 2014
@Kumar – something seems to have happened with Sainath and The Hindu. it has been long since Hindu has published his article. Or just another proof of the change in attitude of The Hindu which now has as many articles supporting the issues on contrary to what Sri. Sainath would write about. I miss his articles.
I wish, this movie was directed by Sankar, it would have turned a better entertainer with a social theme. For all the goodness of its theme, the first half is a pain. The second half does make it up, but still.
I am surprised, Mr. Rangan who made a real bashing on an excellent movie because he thought it was showing city people in bad light, doesnt worry about it now in Kaththi, inspite of the city against village theme being announced vehemently. Is it beacuse there is a prominent actor and director and other masala ingredients in this one, and the other one didnt had any such ingredients and looked more of a serious movie.
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Srinivas R
October 23, 2014
I haven’t watched this, but ARM’s tendency tp preach is almost always a deal breaker ( most notably in 7Am Arivu). Reading about the subject that’s dealt with in the movie , I am sure it’s quite preachy about how we all should get off our laptops and do some vivasayam.
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Suresh Rajendran
October 23, 2014
I felt kaththi demands the need for a mass-masala entertainer to showcase social issues just like what kathiresan did in this movie to stop water supply (not a convincing way though)
Does kaththi reached the mass? Yes well and truly.. Does it reached convincingly.. Not to me personally.. But it doesn’t matter because the reach is already evident through social media as the timeline is raining with communism and farmer themes
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kainattu
October 23, 2014
A little bit of editing would have helped ..still definetely not a bad movie ….I pity Samantha. ..did someone notice her expression during the selfie pulla song…she appeared scared ‘dancing’ next to the hero who is a very good dancer..or is it just me?
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udhaysankar
October 23, 2014
Is it an strict necessity to have a heroine in a masala movie?? Is there any masala movie which didn’t have a heroine, but still did well at the box(not just in the metros, but everywhere)??
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Srikanth Mantravadi (@msrikantt)
October 23, 2014
Completely unrelated but since it has come up twice so far, a clarification may be helpful – Sainath quit The Hindu a few months back. See http://www.firstpost.com/living/p-sainath-praveen-swami-quit-the-hindu-citing-unpleasant-working-conditions-1620013.html
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Pranesh
October 24, 2014
oneWithTheH: not sure if it was plagiarism. This was the EXACT thought that came into my mind when I watched the movie (Thursday 10 pm in San Jose, so no way I could have seen the bosskey video first). Masala movie heroines usually disappear in heavy-duty scenes, but here (and in Madras, esp. the Anbu funeral scene), the heroine just wanders around looking lost.
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DongLee
October 24, 2014
@onewiththeh: wow.! That is awesome.!
I hold bosskey in high regard with respect to one liners. I believe it is just a mere coincidence.
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onenishanth
October 24, 2014
midway through #kaththi, a friend on a trip got a thought… Given the irrelevance of the Heroine in our Cinema (except for the fact that “her” name is always the second to appear on the title screen, ahead of key support roles and villains), what if a mass movie decides to change the heroine’s name every time she appears on screen? Not that it matters right? In fact, what if for each of the six standard duets, a different heroine was used? How would one know the difference anyway…Or Care…
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Sutheesh Kumar. P. S.
October 24, 2014
The plot premise looks like a spin off on Chiruthai’s. Pulse quickening coolness, really? I felt it was rib ticklingly comical.
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Valavan
October 24, 2014
“Consider the stretch where Kathiresan returns to an old-age home and experiences a shock. Why have the lead-in scene where his friend (Sathish) tells him what he’s going to find? How much better if we find out what’s happened along with Kathiresan?”
I agree, showing is better than telling. But the revelation is not something that we haven’t seen before. It’s one of the most important beats of your ‘Nadodi Mannan’ stereotype. If I consider this part of the film alone to have a beginning, middle and end, it has a fantastic beginning which quickly fast forwards us to a meaty Vijay type of an action sequence and a heroic ending which is a vital part of a typical Indian action film. This is where ARM betters the ‘showing is better than telling’ aphorism. If he had shown it, it would just been a melodramatic scene leading onto an action sequence. What ARM has done here is very similar to how Editor Antony cut the fight sequences in ‘Vettai’. You know you are watching a Tamil film, you know you are watching a dumb action sequence but still, Antony quickened the ordeal by not showing the hitter or the hitting but only the fallen and the falling. We know everything too well in this set piece in Kaththi, but ARM quickens it and takes us to the action sequence which the groundlings wait for.
“Kathiresan, on the other hand, is a creature of the city, a criminal to boot – and his transformative arc needed to be traced more convincingly. (His background, which is revealed late into the film, could have been used to shape his character more empathetically, but it’s tossed off in a line or two.)”
Come on, Mr. Baradwaj, we dont’ want to see another Bhagyaraj style ‘how he became this’ flashback. I know I’m not reading ‘Power and Glory’ and Kathiresan is not ‘Whiskey Priest’. I don’t know why you depend too much on the western screen writing aesthetics to analyse a Tamil film which is based on your ‘Nadodi Mannan’ stereotype. The rogue’s character arc is innate or a given in the stereotype and the audience knows very well Kathiresan is going to shoulder Jeevanandam’s fight after he learns about Jeevanandam in the docu-drama sequence. If what you ask for had been done, it would’ve been another boring trace of the character arc.
Also, I liked the way how ARM has presented the working of Kathiresan’s criminal mind when he sees the blue prints. For me this is a film about an escape artist using his skills to help some sincere farmers in their fight against multinationals.
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Sutheesh Kumar. P. S.
October 24, 2014
The plot premise looks like a spinoff on Chiruthai’s.
Pulse-quickening coolness, really? Thupakki was rib-ticklingly comical.
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Srinivas R
October 24, 2014
Praveen Swami has quit The Hindu?. That is big news , I must have been livingunder the rock to have missed that.
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Ravi K
October 24, 2014
The heroines are only there to provide a flimsy pretense for the use of songs in these films.
I always wonder what motivates Indian women to become actresses, particularly in Tamil and Telugu cinema. Is it money and fame? Because what else could it be? Surely it’s not the quality of the roles that’s drawing them.
It’s not that these women are all incapable of good performances. It’s that filmmakers write limited, mediocre roles for them. At least in Hindi cinema there are some decent roles for women now and then.
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Pranesh
October 24, 2014
onenishanth: so you want six times the number of alabaster automatons?
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brangan
October 24, 2014
Ram Murali: I think Shankar balanced the “flab” with the serious stuff very well…
By “flab,” I don’t mean the masala elements. I mean the writing is loose and flabby.
Also, I’m surprised to see the “Ramana” love here. I just saw it as a Shankar-film clone. For my money, ARM’s best work came in parts of “Ghajini.”
venkatesh: Completely agree about Vijayakanth. Till he ballooned in size and lost his market and became “Gabtun,” he made some pretty decent action films. Plus, he was in dramas like “Vaidehi Kaathirundhaal” too.
Valavan: This isn’t about Hollywood screenwriting. It’s basic writing and it applies to commercial films everywhere.
Take another instance. (SPOILERS AHEAD) We are shown early on — as soon as Kathiresan enters the old age home — that six old men died to save Jeeva. So when the actual scene comes in the flashback, we are already primed for it. I feel the scene would have been far more effective if their deaths had happened without prompting or warning.
Murgadoss has always been a very flabby writer. He has to explain everything. Maybe he had his reasons, but it just dulls the impact.
As for your reason, it’s like saying he’s doing the best to redeem a cliche. But why have this cliche in the first place? Why not think up something differe, especially for a filmmaker who claims that surprise is the most important element of a film? See interview here… https://baradwajrangan.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/a-director-is-never-off-duty/
Ravi K: At least in Hindi cinema there are some decent roles for women now and then.
Also, the women there know the language and so there’s a basic level of proficiency in their performance. I mean, they don’t look like spaced-out idiots, gesturing wildly and without any lip-sync.
I was shocked to see Taapsee in “Chashme Buddoor.” I’d only seen her in Tamil and had written her off as a bad actress, but she was surprisingly non-bad here. I’m not saying she was great, but at least, she didn’t come off like a loosu ponnu.
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Madan
October 24, 2014
The heroines are only there to provide a flimsy pretense for the use of songs in these films. – I think this sentence itself answers the question re meatier roles for women in Bolly vis a vis Kolly. In Tamil cinema, the decades-old superstar-centric film model still works. And for more than one star. In Hindi, it only works for Salman Khan and even then, the films depend heavily on carpet bombing of multiplexes as well as all out promotion to recover costs in the first weekend itself. In spite of the continued presence and success of cookie cutter films in Bolly, there is still a push overall towards films with a strong narrative as the USP rather than star presence alone as a guarantor of entertainment. Tamil has yet to embrace that model to anywhere near the same extent, hence the need for heroines as eye candy rather than for acting.
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onenishanth
October 24, 2014
Pranesh – I can’t associate with that Branganism – “Alabaster Automaton” on Heroines. I believe he won’t be complaining about six of them in one movey if the songs are shot by PC Sreeram or Rajiv Menon to some Kadalesque music and Ratnamesque handling of the situation, Something our Shankar Clones can surely come up with.,
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Shankar
October 24, 2014
I went in with low expectations and came out not minding the movie’s faults that much. It helps when you go into these movies with the bar set low. You know they used to say…leave your thinking hat home when you go see a Rajini film…same principle! 🙂
Agreeing with everything you had to say, I have couple of things to add. I thought, for a change, Neil Nitin Mukesh’s lip sync was quite good. Seems like he had put in effort to mouth the actual lines which is a rarity from an import. Secondly, I’ve never been a huge fan of Anirudh’s cacophony, but I thought the songs came off much better on screen than they did as pure audio. Of course, did all the songs need to stay in the film, especially the one that begins as a baraat, is a good question. That song especially broke the pacing quite a bit, in my opinion.
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Ashutosh
October 24, 2014
I have a question. Have other cinemas (Hollywood, European etc.) gone through this phase (or are going through it) where filmmakers try to grapple with social issues and more often than not provide rather simplistic solutions for it? I have seen only Tamil films… and there have been several films (I guess right from the time the Dravidian movement began using films as propaganda–not sure if this statement is entirely true) that provide quite lame solutions for corruption, female infanticide, black money, caste system etc.; they even typically have a scene near the end where an automan, for example, is telling a teashopman: ‘ippo ellam endha policeum kaasu vaanga maattengaraan…ellam bayandhirukkaanga’ or women discussing when buying vegetables: ippo ellam enga purushanga kudikkavey maattengaranga… ellam Surya thambi potta podu , etc.
As I was walking out of Kathi I was wondering if there is a precedent outside of Tamil films for thrashing out and solving complicated problems within the span of one film… sort of as collective guided meditation.
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Ram Murali
October 24, 2014
Re: Vijaykanth, my surprise with Ramana came from the fact that it was in his ballooned up, “gaptun” phase that had movies like “Vallarasu” and “Vaanchinaathan” where he was quite intolerable (even though the villains salvaged those movies somewhat) and danced around in all sorts of colored clothing…
He was dignified in Ramana, which, for sure, was a Shankar type movie. But I think overall, the racy screenplay and minimal distractions made it better than Ghajini whose romance was GREAT but the thriller portions sucked big time.
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Ravi K
October 25, 2014
Brangan wrote: “Also, the women there know the language and so there’s a basic level of proficiency in their performance. I mean, they don’t look like spaced-out idiots, gesturing wildly and without any lip-sync.”
This is what happens when actresses are not only chosen just for looks, but also don’t even know the language. It’s the human equivalent of the American TV show “Mr. Ed,” in which they put peanut butter on the titular horse’s gums to get him to flap his mouth so it looked like he was talking.
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Ravi K
October 25, 2014
PS: Apparently they used a nylon wire on “Mr. Ed,” not peanut butter. Eventually they got him to move his mouth on command. But the point still stands 🙂
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Pranesh
October 25, 2014
Shankar: The baraat song was good. I was really hungry at the interval, and went out of the crowded theater to a nearby coffee shop to get some food. I came back late but the stupid baraat song was still going on. Now I can’t help but feel that was the point of the song 🙂
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Ashutosh
October 25, 2014
Shankar, Pranesh: Baraat song? I was a couple of minutes late after the interval and walked into Selfie Pulla… No baraat song when I saw the film at Luxe in Chennai.
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Madan
October 25, 2014
Just finished watching the film. Pretty much an old school masala film almost entirely in the angry AB films mould and seemingly a political vehicle for Murugadoss (or Vijay too?) to articulate his Marxist beliefs quite clearly. Unfortunately, for this cynical viewer, it feels like a send up in the end because to apply the same Marxist values to the film: (a) do you really need to burn so much money to make a film? and (b) yes, because without the vehicle of superstar Vijay, films made on such subjects will not get an audience. I agree with your observations about its flabbiness in parts. Notably, the love track and the music (which was just terrible) were both eminently dispensable and added next to no value to the film. Without stupid songs like Selfie Pulla, the staging would have been more credible, as you said. Then again, that is what these masala films were like (remember Aamir and Sonali Bendre singing a duet in Essel World even as the upright fiery police cop is hot on the chase? :D) and still are in the time warp of Kollywood. I have to say, though, that Vijay actually carried it far better than the Bollywood stars of today would be able to. Bollywood has become a bit too self conscious to make such films without at least hinting that it’s just a send up and not to be taken seriously. Katthi laid out all the amma sentiment, vyavasi sentiment and other sentiments in full glory such that I could scarcely believe we are in 2014.
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Madan
October 25, 2014
Sorry, not a duet er Aamir and Sonali Bendre (film is Sarfarosh). Just female solo but still in Essel World. 😀 The duet does have the typical megam karrukudhu portion complete with Sonali in a very mod sari and all that while we wonder how that will help nab the evil ghazal singer.
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Jeevan Krishna
October 25, 2014
# After all, the kind of film that has its hero claiming that cell phones are an extravagance in a country whose farmers are dying without basic needs – but not before shaking a leg in a lavishly shot song that goes… Selfie pulla. #
But the dialog from katthi is written in a way that
If people can loot so much of money in 2G business (Where cellphone is considered as extravagance), then think how much they can loot from basic necessities like water which is lifeline for our country.
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Rajeev Hari Kumar
October 25, 2014
A dud of a film imo. This had none of the spice that “Thuppakki” had. What it did have in abundance, however, was boredom and irony.
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Strickland
October 25, 2014
It is one travesty that a social evil like ARM gets to make a (plagiarized) movie. Another that it is about a real burning problem. Which ends up giving him some kind of credible ‘socially conscious’ status. Yet another, that he now thinks he has done a great thing, by making a blockbuster version of Nero’s guests.
But the worst is that, while all the movie truly deserved was to be summarily ignored by the valid voices, brangan has a job to do, deadlines to meet, and so, the thing gets a full damn review.
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Pranesh
October 25, 2014
ashutosh: This song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scQWxUe3Z_U.
It was a pain watching Samantha dance next to Vijay. Dancing is the one thing he does well, and she wasn’t really a match.
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oneWithTheH
October 26, 2014
Pranesh, onenishanth:
Ohh. I totally understand what you meant. Just saw the movie yesterday. Poor Samantha! She looked clueless for the most part. Atleast Kajal got a handful of scenes in Thuppaki where she infact did quite well.. This one was beyond any redemption! And I was sad seeing her here after having enjoyed her role in NEPV.
Btw, was there no hero intro song in this one? Is this a first in recent times for a Vijay movie? I did not see Jilla/Thalaiva but Thuppaki had one – Kutti puli kootam.
The film overall did not leave an impact for me. Some portions were interesting – like that coin fight that Rangan pointed out, the water pipe blocking, the flashback but the protracted melodrama was a bit too much to take. That made Thuppaki look like a masterpiece to me; it was sharp and kept you riveted for the most part.
What was the deal with that Baarat song, btw? Who was getting married there? I had no clue what was going on!
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brangan
October 26, 2014
OMG, either the baraat song wasn’t there in the screening I was in or I must have blocked it out completely. I just can’t recall the picturisation at all 🙂 Can someone tell me what the lead-in to the song was and what was happening in the song? Thanks.
Ashutosh: Not really. The action-cum-message movie is a uniquely Indian beast. In foreign films, the message movie is almost always a drama, or if an action film, the message isn’t overt.
Madan: I disagree with you slightly about your “Sarfarosh” example. I can take songs in films that somehow abstract the issue. In a film like “Sarfarosh,” the “threat to the nation” issue is rendered as a personal conflict for the hero/protagonist. It’s made somewhat “generic,” and in this generic mode, it’s easier to take song/dance sequences. Same thing with “Dhool,” which was also about water issues but rendered as a personal struggle for the hero/protagonist (rather than something about the whole village). That’s why none of the songs in “Dhool,” even though lavishly picturised, felt out of place.
Here, that’s not the case. By zooming in too much on the farmers, ARM makes the “generic” very “specific” — and in this mode, masala songs become very hard to take. If you want to do this kind of “specific” storytelling, then I think the mode to adopt is the one Ashustosh Gowariker adopted in “Swades” (or as you mentioned, the “angry AB” films mode), where the songs are more low-key videos. In other words, this sort of film shouldn’t be made as “a Vijay movie.” Or if you want to make “a Vijay movie,” then you have to pull back and make it more “generic.”
Strickland: Why “plagiarised”?
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Ashutosh
October 26, 2014
Pranesh: Ah… that song definitely wasn’t there when I saw the film 2nd day at Luxe in Velacherry.
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brangan
October 26, 2014
He speaks well. The Ramayana bit is both sad and funny 🙂
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Rahini David
October 26, 2014
The interview video is terrific.
It is shocking how much more impact is there in the edited version in the beginning of the full video. It is almost a textbook case of quote mining.
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Madan
October 26, 2014
BR: The song placement was certainly a lot more jarring in the case of Katthi. That’s because ARM, like Shankar, is wont to be terribly preachy in the latter portions of his film and also, unlike Shankar, gets political. Then again, if there’s any plan being hatched to make Vijay a political force, he’ll need Selfie Pulla to counter the social media-adept Narendra Modi. 😛
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ThouShaltNot
October 26, 2014
@BR: “He speaks well. The Ramayana bit is both sad and funny”
A couple of years back, there was only one political muckraker (an articulate, but very emotional fellow) who would use Tamil identity to make noise (Yes, we’re tamils..). Even he sounded like an eminent voice of reason on the “Kaththi” issue. Now, there are mutants that have sprung up like mushrooms making a lot of noise over nothing. It is one thing to protest over a movie’s content (afterall, in India, freedom of speech is a vastly curtailed right and is subservient to the right of groups to rabblerouse), but it is a whole another matter when you use “six degrees of separation” as a pretext for derailing movies. Touchpoints in Indian society are aplenty to essentially muzzle Indian citzenry.
So, Kudos to ARM for speaking out!
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Shankar
October 27, 2014
*Spoilers* Baddy, so when everyone is sitting in the pipes and protesting, Samantha asks Vijay to wear a ring to indicate they are engaged….and the next moment, you have this song where both are dancing in a baraat, then in a sudukaadu procession….it was bizarre! It completely ruined the pacing for me…
http://www.moviesgala.com/2014/10/23/paalam-song-in-kaththi-screened-in-overseas/
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Srinivas R
October 27, 2014
“The action-cum-message movie is a uniquely Indian beast”
I actually think its a uniquely tamil cinema beast. After MGR , everyone in tamil cinema wants to play the messiah of the masses and so we end up with numerous repetitions of the man reforming the system movies. In late 80’s and early 90s this was reduced to revenge action movies where the hero avenges the sins of one evil man. Shankar changed it to one man cleaning the entire system. ARM is a Shankar clone with a tamil chauvanist/communist voice and that’s seen in his movies.
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Pranesh
October 27, 2014
“However, due to the lengthy duration that might not impress the Indian audiences, Murugadoss decided to cut the song here”.
Apparently the song was about love, marriage, birth, death and God. Totally went over my head 🙂
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Carl Marks
October 27, 2014
“explain communism with the help of… an idli. Clearly, Marxist philosophies are best digested with a spoonful of sambar”.
Any philosophy, no matter how complex, often has at its a core, a very simple idea which is what really resonates with the masses. I thought that the analogy used in the film did reasonable justice to that idea.
That it seemed shamelessly forced and completely out-of-place is another thing..
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Ram Murali
October 27, 2014
AR Murugadoss’ really good speech reminds me of Kamal’s line to Maddy in AS – “Naan evlo pakkuvama nidhanamaa kova patten!”
Measured Steps, ARM…Kalakkiteenge…if you want to see something at the other end of the decency, “measured” spectrum search for Sakthi Chidambaram’s crazy rant against Suhasini for the latter’s negative review of “Rajadhi Raja.”
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Strickland
October 28, 2014
@BR – ARM has been accused of copying the core story of the village water crisis, pipeline hijack etc from Gopi Nainar. While there have been a few such accusations earlier with other movies, this one is being supported by respected Thamizh journalists who have known Gopi Nainar and his story (“Mootha Kudi”) for 5 years.
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Sriram
October 31, 2014
coin fight sans coins:
blueprint:
Minjur Gopi’s video:
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Prakash Srinivasan
November 13, 2014
This movie is like a king who has fallen from grace, it got good reviews and finally people found it was not totally original and most of the good parts were stolen/copied. Many light years to go when Indian movies will reach Hollywood standards.
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Chander Blasta.RD
January 5, 2015
Kaththi one line review = “Enna kolrangale” (with apologies to midnight “MK”)
By the end of the movie my stomach was churning, and as some villain pointed out, that is not a good signal.
“The BAS>>>>” that was the word that came to my mind as I sat through this insufferable preach fest, and when it ended I was angry with myself for not being daring enough to add the BL>>>> to the BAS…..
BR gets many things right in many of his reviews, but then he seems to have reviewed this.. with care (backlash fear???)
Kaththi is Murugadoss at his worst, just below his earlier similarly ill conceived Chinese outing. And to think that he has made only ten odd films or less, it makes not for a proud statistic.
If Surya appeared juvenile in Arivu, Vijay, despite all the intelligence the script credits him with, appears to be a little loose ponnu, face ticks, cutie pie expressions and all.
He still seemed not to have learnt that it is precisely this loosu ponnu bit that has given him a long string of failures post and pre-Thupakki. Charm is charm, not when overdone. Trying to be Vijay Agarwal?
As to the script writing, there is a good word to describe it. Faltu….
Murugadoss was always prone to nenja nakking, those kids before the bomb in Thuppakki making a almost good script almost unbearable, to watch. In Kaththi he makes the nakking so oral, that you want to grab him by his ear and point out better places….
I heard Murugadoss say elsewhere that the best way to write a compelling script was to keep the audience not just guessing, but guessing wrong. If that was what he wanted to achieve with that killers posing as reporters stuff, I demand more….
Fine there are surprises, but if this is the kind of surprises that make for good cinema, then count me out.
I guess that Murugadoss should go back to Raja or wherever he watches cinema, and go back and watch the classics, where the surprise is so melded into the story that even when you guess it, it is good when it plays out.
Kaththi displays an intelligence that sounds posed, and therefore sounds explicitly false. This is big screen stupidity… Give me Dhool anyday, at least its makers had no such pretenses.
Just as in Thupakki where Murugadoss clubs all sleeper cells into one monolith, and imagines us to be fools, here it is the corporate. The Indian viewer, as per Murugadas are still illiterate vermin, who will dish the crap that he doles out.
The shit that hits the fan in the form of dialogue is to be listened to, to be appreciated. If this were one of India’s best scriptwriters, well, Indian cinema be damned.
The only thing that saves the movie is Anirudh’s BGM.
He is at his usual loud, he even tries to be unusual, but it helps drown out the inanities that India’s most famous ARM dishes out, and helps digest this movie.
As usual he displays his sense of the bare minimal that is required to make an instant hit, but it is a truth that he never manages to rise above that bare minimum. At this rate he can be predicted to go down the GV way.
Samantha need not have cause for complaint, her character was designed to look lost, and she successfully does.
As to the old men, the some-oothu, and the Chennai corporation bits, the funny coin fight bit (the Jilla makers tried something similar) and the mass suicide bid, all look like collages stuck on to the wrong surface, however individually good they may sound out to be, on paper, in discussions, and when reviewed.
One thing is clear, unlike Shankar, Murugadoss has lost his best assistant directors, and plot writers en route his mega director status, and seems to be pretty out on his own. A situation that does not make for a pretty picture.
If I were the script writer who claimed this to be his story/script, I would have waited a bit…
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Chander Blasta.RD
January 14, 2015
Ken Ford-Powell writing in Paste Magazine, delivers this put down of BR’s writing style.
( http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2013/01/conversations-with-mani-ratnam-by-baradwaj-rangan.html )
“I do have qualms about Rangan’s style. He tries just a little too hard with the English language. Like many Asian writers who become fluent in the colonial tongue, he seems hell-bent on proving his mastery. In his introduction, Rangan refers to girls in Indian movies who “threatened to burst out of salwar kameezes glued to their zaftig frames.”
I had to look up the word zaftig, which didn’t please me. If you’re interested, it means “full-figured body.” Fair enough, having watched many of these early Bollywood movies, but less pretentiousness would go a long way”
In seeking the pulse point of readers, much as women do in attracting men, sometimes it is artifice that succeeds, at others it is naturalness. Salman Rushdie, otherwise a good teller of tales when in prime form, does suffer from attacks of exoticisis, so BR is in exalted company.
In BR’s case, and as a long time if not devoted reader, the fact that there is something exotic about the writing is its first point of entry into the English inoculated Indian reader’s consciousness. (Powell can go to hell)
For English inoculated Indian readers that there is always this feeling of being poor relatives; that writers writing in so called Indian English (including MKN and others) deny us the complete menu, the beauty that the language is inherently capable of.
To us it appears that Indian writers in English seem to have banded together in a dirty conspiracy, to deliver us the common low. And for those who love language for itself, not merely for its ideas, the common low is rarely satisfying.
I think that this hunger for well expressed language, for language that can leap and dance and delight, is common to all languages and all its speakers, native and foreign. Therefore it is a relief to find well expressed language, even if some of it is artifice.
BR’s primary reading audience consists of those thus hungry, that which is impressed by copycat Rushdie, but seeks a platter more mundane, and closer. It is here that BR delivers, his biggest positive being that he seeks to write high, despite the mostly tacky material he has had to deal with, and this includes Mani Ratnam in his prime.
Despite his glossy status and the godawful hero worship he is frequently subjected to, even by BR, MR remains a nominal film maker, one too much wedded to the ordinary, witness his choice of themes, his making of them, and the lack of later success.
The Mani Ratnam halo over Indian cinema was for a short time, and unlike many others, one easily eclipsed. No wonder then that his entire oeuvre, including the more recent ones smack of middling and even tiresome artifice.
To that generation to whom the villages and its lifestyles were mere pinpricks on the daily consciousness, to the ones who were city born and bred, to those to whom Bharati Raja’s tropes were irrelevant and seemingly historical, MR was the first of the magicians…
But as time tells us, not one extra ordinary.
That MR has become tiresome today (his recent outing Kadal, for instance) is the best indicator that his time was up, and long back. Having been raised to the status of God, it is not right that he seeks to dwell among men.
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