Honestly, I am not sure so many many people could have enjoyed a movie this lengthy (2h 50m). But the reviews say so. My timeline says so. So, it must be true. No?
As for me, I didn’t enjoy it in its wholesome fulsome form. I didn’t enjoy that wonderful extra marital affair ending up with a dead body culminating in a loud “what the fuck” with an impressionable little boy in the vicinity, transforming into some Maniratnam-esque drivel in a Jeep, albeit with no whispers (small mercies). I didn’t enjoy that theism-atheism-maybe theism twist of Arputham ending in a shower of diamonds. I most definitely didn’t enjoy the alien sub plot set amidst all that uncanny reality.
What I did enjoy was that another little boy and his phenomenal acting, as he waits for his father, as he parades his father around, as he hits his father who attempts to run away again from him. I enjoyed the escapades of those boys, the raw need for adolescent masturbation, the silly mistakes and the even sillier misplaced virtuosity. I enjoyed the erstwhile porn star running from pillar to post trying to save the life of her son who tried to kill her because he saw her in the porn movie he tried watching.
I enjoyed those Ilaiyaraja songs, though I had to read up the reviews post facto to understand the placement. I guess I didn’t have a childhood that could relate to the song placements. Or, I was just not concentrating enough.
V says he doesn’t like stories that are agenda driven. Fiction needs to be fiction, agenda needs to be agenda. One shouldn’t try to weave a story around an agenda to force fit messaging. I honestly don’t care. Some of those agenda driven scenes were riveting and they worked for the masala driven fan in me. The one where the father and son are caught in the toilet, the one in half light and half darkness where one person confessed to another about their sins.m, the one about the wife who gets the raw end of the deal.
But that’s the problem. It is a movie in parts. And I don’t think it was worthy enough sitting through 3 hours to enjoy parts of a movie rather than a movie as a whole.
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