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Posted in: Cinema: Tamil, Interview
Interview: V Vignarajan (director, Andhaghaaram)
Posted on December 2, 2020
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Aditya
December 3, 2020
Nice . I have always loved his movies and his dedication to make them perfect . His movie maanaadu is my favourite.
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brangan
December 3, 2020
The interview is up.
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brangan
December 3, 2020
Irate comment on YouTube:
Prabha Parthan
Day 1 after watching the movie #Andhaghaaram and just once, your review was – “You know what’s a surer sign of smartness? A well-written script. Vignarajan has made his show-reel. I’m going to be very interested when he makes his film.”.
This movie was independently taken, out of great effort by the director with no financial or any solid operational support from any big production house. Without knowing any such background details you just wanted to show off as if you know it all about movie reviewing and you gave sort of bad review.
Where as for #Sooraraipottru, your review was – “Sudha Kongara (She’s a friend. I had a look at an early draft of the script.) In terms of sheer professionalism, the film is by far the best thing that’s come on the southern OTT space.”
SERIOUSLY?? Is this even a professional way of reviewing movies?? A well financed movie by big stars and someone from your manirathnam team and a friend would obviously get a decent review.
Now just because all over in social media #Andhaghaaram is trending with good reviews, with no shame you have taken this interview just for your YouTube channel views.
May be it’s time you retire baldie. Vivekananda English Training Institutela essay writing coaching kodunga. You are much suitable for that job than this sort of unprofessional way of movies reviewing.
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Rames
December 3, 2020
What’s the purpose of bringing that YOUTUBE comment here? Just so your friends in your blogspace say things like “Ignore and move on / we know you better / Tamil nazis be nazis” and you will feel better playing victim?
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brangan
December 4, 2020
Rames: Um, well, I have always been interested in how people perceive reviews. I thought “In terms of sheer professionalism, the film is by far the best thing that’s come on the southern OTT space” was not exactly a glowing compliment, given the terrible Tamil/Telugu stuff we have mostly endured on OTT, but maybe I should have been clearer.
I also wish I hadn’t used the word “underwhelming” in the ANDHAGHAARAM headline, because my review sounded more positive than what this word made my headline seem like.
Plus, this comment also made me think about whether I should have taken this into account,,,
“This movie was independently taken, out of great effort by the director with no financial or any solid operational support from any big production house. Without knowing any such background details…”
I knew nothing about the film going in, and that has been my traditional mode of reviewing. (Go in with a blank slate!) But given how content creation has been democratised, should one be “kinder” to such a film, made with these constraints?
I don’t know…
PS: Even if I am indeed playing victim, it’s only in my personal blog space, no? 😀 And that’s a problem because… ?
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Madan
December 4, 2020
Well, now that the commenter brought it up, I did think the line about Sudha being your friend could have been left out. And I know where you’re coming from in putting that in. When I reviewed my cousin’s novel for amazon and gave it a glowing review, I mentioned the fact that I was her cousin. I did it for the sake of better transparency. But she quickly got back to me requesting me to remove that line.
Regarding the narrative about Andhagaaram and Soorarai Pottru, lots of people liked Soorarai though I didn’t. So I don’t get that part of the objection. Not like you praised Kadal and dissed Kumki and box office results were total opposite. In this case, audience liked both films.
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Yajiv
December 4, 2020
@Rames:
Your somewhat strange & unnecessary (IMO) usage of the word “nazi” in this context reminded me of Godwin’s Rule:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
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abishekspeare
December 4, 2020
I think people expect film critics to be superhuman in the sense that they always have to be 100% consistent and perfect. They’re humans too and they make occasional errors too. Not every single sentence of BR needs to be correct. He’s merely saying what he felt at that point of time in the words that came to his mind at that instance. The way you perceive a movie changes from time to time and this is applicable to critics as well.
That being said, I do feel BR can be a little softer on the small films that aren’t upto the mark but is still better than the bullshit out there ( KAALIDAS was another such review which had a similar issue). After all, these movies are more review-dependent for their performance. And the line about Sudha being his friend was an absolute mistake, it was something that would have definitely invited frowns. None of this is BR’s ‘fault’ of course…
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Cholan Raje
December 5, 2020
Plus, this comment also made me think about whether I should have taken this into account,,,
“This movie was independently taken, out of great effort by the director with no financial or any solid operational support from any big production house. Without knowing any such background details…”
I knew nothing about the film going in, and that has been my traditional mode of reviewing. (Go in with a blank slate!) But given how content creation has been democratised, should one be “kinder” to such a film, made with these constraints?
BR sir, are you a movie reviewer or a motivational speaker? To my knowledge, your job is to tell me whether a movie’s enjoyable or not. Does anyone watching a movie go “wow, this is such a great movie because the director missed his child’s birth to make it?”
A film is a product, and we are its consumers. You don’t eat bad biryani just because a culinarily uneducated chef spent 5 hours making it. And you definitely don’t respect the sympathetic reviewer who gave him 5 stars, and indirectly robbed you of your 5 dollars. Rupees. Whatever. You get my drift.
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Madan
December 5, 2020
Cholan Raje: wanted to say the same thing. Not BR’s JOB to advocate for small films, especially by making allowances for their flaws. Bonus if he did but unless he styles himself an indie buff, he has no obligation to. As you put it, it’s more like he helps us curate our cine collection by sharing his impressions about movies. Not because we will necessarily like every movie he did but because he articulates a point of view about it.
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H. Prasanna
December 6, 2020
Really liked the interview. I thought stringing the conversation around the director’s favorite scenes worked very well. For example, “Why is technique important?” would have been generic had it been a standalone interview question. It organically arises here with the director’s discussion of a particular technique for a particular scene. Thinking back, maybe it was placed there during the edit, but even if it was, it fell in place snugly with the conversation.
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