Read the full article on Film Companion, here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/ngk-ccv-kaatru-veliyidai-and-the-why-question-in-mainstream-cinema-baradwaj-rangan/
Emotional (and logical) connect is an important factor in screenwriting for cinema consumed by large audiences. And yes, spoilers ahead.
I saw Selvaraghavan’s NGK yesterday. It was not an easy film to review. It’s never easy to review a problematic film made by a filmmaker you respect and like and have great hopes from. I wrote my review and have since been watching the arguments build around it. Some say the film is outright bad. (It’s most definitely not.) Others say it’s a good film, and that it’s all about reading between the lines. I’d say the film lies somewhere in between. But first, a word about reading between the lines, or “reading” a film in general. It’s okay if one scene or one twist or one characterisation or one character’s motivation is not satisfactorily explained. We can extrapolate and say, “Okay, maybe this is WHY this happened.” We can fill in that one blank. We can make up our own reason, so that the rest of the film holds up, even with this one issue.
Continued at the link above.
Copyright ©2019 Film Companion.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Sri Prabhuram
June 1, 2019
Great article BR! Kaatru Veliyidai surprisingly grew on me with subsequent viewings after the first (I initially didn’t like it that much, but didn’t completely hate it either). Simply because I understood why she likes him so much that she’s in denial about knowing who he truly is to him.
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harish ram
June 1, 2019
Agree with NGK. But, I disagree with the CCV example. I think the film didn’t suffer because of the WHY. It’s more of a what-happened-after-the-infighting-started story. The movie should have been a documentation of a tragic fall of an empire due to greed and patriarchy. But it ended up favouring a police mole story at the sake of the former. So the angle and the consistency in the angle was the issue. That’s why KV, even though it still needs us to work things out, is a better watch because it is consistent in its angle.
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Voldemort
June 1, 2019
BR, a few weeks ago, I had posted here asking if there was any platform where non Twitter users could ask questions for #AskBR. You had told to follow the Film Companion South Insta handle. I replied saying that they do not post any posts/statuses regarding the #AskBR on the page. Today, they have put up a post for the #AskBR on NGK. Thanks a lot, BR. People who don’t use Twitter can now ask questions on the Instagram handle. 🙂
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Sai Ashwin
June 2, 2019
Amazing article!
I felt these things many times but could not articulate as well as you did especially regarding how “art” films can afford not to answer these WHYs because of their more elliptical nature.
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rsylviana
June 2, 2019
Funny you should compare KV and NGK about the “why questions” being the problem of the films. Both of these films had a scene where I was internally screaming at the screen saying “Turn the effing camera around! I want to know what the other one is feeling!” In the first “smell scene” of NGK and in the infamous “beg your girlfriend-brag to your friends in front of your girlfriend about she being somewhat of a slave to you-immediately propose to the said girlfriend” scene in KV , the camera was focused on one person when all I wanted to know was what the other person was feeling all through this time. It would have helped matters immensely for me. For KV(IMO) this becomes the WHY that failed the movie ,however for NGK this WHY is one of the many that led to its downfall.
Also I know that I would be a minority in this blog , but I’m Team CCV all the way!
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e221
June 2, 2019
@BR Neenga kalakunge Sir…This is not an FC article or a Blog post. But a Scholarly timeless article. You should tag these gems separately so they are not lost in this big sea of articles of yours. You should tag them like Critical Analysis, How to Read a Flim…I don’t know but great work BR.
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e221
June 2, 2019
To be honest, When you do these similar analyses with world cinemas, I cannot get the reading experience fully as in most cases I have not watched those films. But when you do these with mainstream films, it gives more pleasurable reading experience insights…Again great analysis.
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Odiyan Hater
June 2, 2019
I feel they whys were clear in CCV…just that the reasons were revealed much later in the movie…but there were hints at the beginning itself – like the initial scene with mirrors (the one where everyone’s keen on knowing what Prakashraj has to say), throwaway allusions to Aravind Samy being uneducated, Thadam hero being the ideal son (with a dark past) and Simbu being the black sheep… And when it is revealed finally who plotted to kill the father, who plotted to kill Simbu’s gf etc. things became much clearer… (Especially that chase scene in the brothel which I thought was stupid until one of these revelations)… The problem with CCV for me personally was not the plot but that the individual scenes were written in such an amateurish manner… That motivational speech by Arun Vijay (okay now I can finally recall his name) talking abt Dubai, Aravind Saamy’s final fight scene and the scenes leading upto them etc are just plain stupid… Also, in one of the scenes with the three brothers Aravind Saamy was scene rash driving – now I admit I have a ‘Why’ issue here but another ‘why’ issue for me was why was it so badly done? Like it is so obvious that it is not Aravind Samy who’s not driving the car when you cut to the shots showing the exterior of the car… That movie could’ve been better if they’d written a better script… The ‘why’ questions arise cause of the stupid scenes and the tonal shifts… Had they rewritten the script a few times these questions wouldn’t have occured…
I hate Tamil cinema audience cause a man who wants to make a ‘Kadal’ is being forced to go commercial and it’s neither here nor there with CCV (though I don’t agree that the movie had ‘why’ issues I am sure the script became stupid cause they decided to pander to the masses – which worked at the box office anyway)… Kadal is the kinda movie I wanna see more of…
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mrinalnarayan
June 3, 2019
@brangan – Will it not be a good idea to have those film companion interviews with the makers after the movie has released, instead of having one before the release (wouldn’t mind both 😛 ). At least with interesting film makers like Selvaraghavan and Maniratnam where there are 100 things to discuss about the movie. That Sriram Raghavan interview after Andhadhun was a good one.
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madhu sudan
June 3, 2019
Sir , I’m afraid that i’ll have to disagree on your point on CCV. Sub concisely , we all have Oedipus hidden within us …which is why we rebel against father or father figures as we start to deal with adulthood. Varadan’s attempt to kill his father is manifestation of this psychological complex. This layer in his character is exposed in relationship with parvathy.
And in india , we have enough examples on siblings turning into enemies once head of the family is passed away.
Because the film dealt with such primitive yet prevalent aspects of humanity , it got wider acceptance despite being not his best output in terms of finesse.
And after GURU , CCV comes close to mainstream narrative from Mr.Mani Ratnam.
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madhu sudan
June 3, 2019
And yes , kaatru veliyidai has finesse and flow issues.This is where i feel, how badly Mr. ManiRatnam would be missing his screenwriting collaborator Sujatha.
Also , It needed deeper actor to carry the role of VC, despite Karhi’s best effort we dont detest VC as mush as we should which is critical for story to work. Imagine movie Arjun Reddy with out strong performances , our experience would have been diluted.
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கோ
June 3, 2019
“But answering the WHY question when it comes to unconventional characters or arcs is not the same as spoon-feeding. It just means we are on the same page as the protagonist.”
Well articulated article and perfect summary line 👏
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Sai Ashwin
June 3, 2019
@mrinal
Many Filmmakers usually are not very comfortable talking about their work(especially recently). They talk about before the release to sell the film.
Now Sriram Raghavan’s case is different cuz his film was a massive critical and box office success. Of Course he will be comfortable talking about it. Now Imagine if its a flop, lets say you interview Anurag Kashyap after Bombay Velvet. You are gonna just rub salt on their wounds.
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mrinalnarayan
June 4, 2019
@sai
Yes, I get your point. But my focus is not pointing it to the director and telling him “Hey! This film did not work”. The way Rangan and guess only him asking those questions to the maker, in a subtle way. It is sort of trying to get what the director intended.
And about Kashyap, Ha ha.. I think he is one of those directors who would be happy to talk about the movies of his that did not work.
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vijay
June 5, 2019
“Now, take CCV. In this film, I had a major issue with the WHYs — because suddenly, you’re showing me brothers who want to kill each other.
…………………Art cinema can afford to be distant and speak to the intellect, but mainstream cinema should speak to the heart as well as the head—if you don’t say WHY, most people will just switch off.”
yet CCV was the bigger hit, not Kaatru veliyidai
Our makkal’s preferences aren’t that easy to decode
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Sai Ashwin
June 7, 2019
@vijay
CCV actually had a great plot.It has the shakespearian quality to it which people inherently can understand but KV isn’t like that, its plot isn’t something we see often at least in India and when something like that is not executed 100% on point then there is a lot of room for disconnect while CCV while the execution could have been better(its really begging to be a mini-series than a film) the overall structure and plot is very familiar to us and we more or less understand what’s going even if we dont like how its done.
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