Change Your Image
arunsethuraman
Reviews
Uzhavan (1993)
A good movie; possibly the only good one that Kathir has made in a good time now.
Depicts the life of a young farmer who has lived life to his fullest and made others live it too. He faces the facts; he is fat and obnoxiously so. They know him as the fat one; that many a pink girl in half saris laugh at and wouldn't even dream of having to live with as a wife. His mother; an old and dying woman wishes for but to see her son happily wedded before she breathes her last. Finally, things seem to be falling into place, with a beautiful country girl that agrees to marriage but later, tells him of her love for another man. Heartbroken, he agrees to wreck the marriage, post which his mother hates him and dies in pain. He is ridiculed as the one that killed his own mother with his foolish acts. They cuss him and tell him that he would burn on a pyre of wet twigs. He cries to a local school teacher, who takes pity on him. She tells him of how one ought to look at the heart and not what forms outside it. Flesh. Blood. It's all but physical entities. But it's the heart that beats truly. She wipes his tears and teaches him life. Awesome rendition of songs by SPB, Shahul Hameed and Chitra. The music lives on in the thoughts of people who know that it isn't true that A.R.Rahman only made Roja before he Dil Se.
Vairamuthu outshines in his wonderful lyrics. "Kangalil Enna Eeramo?(Why're there tears in your eyes?) Nenjinil Enna Baaramo?(Why's thy heart down with a burden?) Kaigalil Adhai Vaangava,(Shall I take it in the palm of my hands,) Oru Thaayai Pola Unai Thaangava?"(Shall I carry you like a mother?) -- "Pennalla Pennalla Oodha Poo(She's no girl! She's the violet!) Sivandha Kannangal Rosa Poo(Her pink cheeks, the roses!) Kannalla Kannalla Alli Poo(They're not eyes! They're lilies!) Sirippu Malligai Poo"(Her smile, jasmines in bloom!) -- Good movie!
Vaaname Ellai (1992)
Awesome!
The movie, the story of how five young people are fed up with what the world has to give them and how they decide to take the possibly easier way out; suicide, is one of many realisations. Surely a brave effort on part of the director in casting some not-so-famous actors of the period into etching some very impressive roles. Ramya Krishnan and Anand Babu outshine the rest in playing their roles. The climax, with Shri.Ramakrishnan, a popular news reader from the South, is extremely touching and certainly proved an inspiring model for youngsters and old alike who think that the world is too cruel. Ramakrishnan talks of how the world couldn't be crueler to anyone. He talks of how he looked at but the brighter side of it all; that someone somewhere, had wished them to live; a life that had so many good things about it, that one ought not to spend time crying for what it didn't give and instead; learn to live life as it was given to one and try to shine in one's own way. Inspiring. A must-watch for everyone.
Pyaasa (1957)
A wonderful movie!
Am new to Hindi; the language that I have been admiring of late; merely due to the effect that some of these yesteryear masterpieces have had on me and my thoughts. Pyaasa is one such piece of pure art that I would dote as a melange of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead", Sharath Chandra Chattopadhyaya's "Devdas" and Eugene O Neill's "Beyond the Horizon". Guru Dutt has yet again proved his mettle as an actor and as a director, playing the role of a contemporary poet that aims to make it big some day. He leaves home, is mocked by peers and brothers, turned down by his lover(who leaves him for a richer and better life), thrown out by publishers, titled ham...With no one to love him or understand him, he leaves the run-down society to the dogs that have already eaten it, and vanishes from humanity, only to be turned into an asylum and called mad. He knows not whether to cry or guffaw at such a society that can't tell the good from bad, happiness from tears and dreams from reality. He escapes with the aid of a sole friend, a character essayed with beautiful slapstick comedy by Johnny Walker. He finds that his book of poems has already been published posthumously. The world thinks that he is dead. It is then that he realises the pointlessness of the whole exercise. He decides to die from the face of clockwork men that are merely toys in the hands of bureaucrats and the rich. He takes the mike, only to announce that he is not the poet that the world worships. He steps down and walks the lonely road with his only love, the woman that sold herself to publish his works, another role that deserves special mention, the one played by Waheeda Rehman. Poetry! Sheer poetry on screen. A must watch for everyone who thinks that Hindi movies are fit to be canned. An even more must watch for people who appreciate them.