Aayirathil Oruvan and other agonies. Review on Aayirathil Oruvan Movie

Even after two+ years of hard work poured in to a movie, which can be witnessed in each and every frame, I still cannot help mentioning that watching Aayrathil Oruvan was more than a agony. I cannot blame Selva Raghavan for the disaster of Aayirathil oruvan. It was me, the culprit.

It was I, who googled and found out that the movie is a adventure thriller, a journey to an unexplored forgotten lands of Chola dynasty to find their hidden past. It was I, who after fallen in deep love with Cholas ever since I read Ponniyin selvan, harped about the movie too much and wanted to watch it in a big screen immediately at once it was screened. It was I, who ordered that, this most awaited film should be watched with the whole family. But, my love for Cholas, failed me to see the other aspects of Selvaraghavan’s work, Of course, he is a great director. But, a family entertainer? No!

So the problem is not with Selvaraghavan, but me choosing his film.

In fact, the movie has got pretty impressive story. The movie begins with a team of archeologists set forth for adventurous journey to track down a scientist/archeologist who had gone missing while he was on the mission to find the lands of long lost Cholas. Anitha Pandiyan(Reema sen), leads this team.

Lavanya(Andrea), the daughter of missing archeologist and Muthu(Karthi), a local laborer, assist them in their quest. On their exhaustive expedition, quite unbelievably, they happen to discover the most poverty stricken Chola empire with its king(Parthiban), still dwelling in the lands which was cut down from civilization long ago. How this unsophisticated legends confronts their superior present generation is what the rest of story is all about, of course with few twists and turns.

The first half was engaging. The trio(Reema, Andrea and Karthi) has notable chemistry and made me laugh out loud at some places. Karthi, has done his finest performance. If there is anything that I am happy about this movie, It was his acting. So captivating. I seriously wish, he get good dresses at least from the next films. Even Reema has done a better job, though her lip doesn’t sync with the dialogue. Thus, we managed well with the first half with action, humor, songs and other Selvaraghavan items thrown randomly.

At interval, my amma and few other ammas of other fellows, who sat next to us, pointed out their distaste towards certain scenes, especially the injection scene between Andrea and Karthi. The old generation are like that, they cannot take even this meager gulp of profanity. After all it is a selvaraghavan movie. So I asked amma, with no clue of impending agony, to let it go free and watch the rest of the movie.

We were back to movie again. By that time, the long last cholas were found and was standing behind the screen. I cannot quite fathom, how others felt on seeing that scene, but I felt I was betrayed. May be because, I didn’t expect that uncultured Cholas would look so terrible. The whole set up was so dark and depressing which made me all sick soon. I mean, there I was sitting and expecting the mightiest king with his face glowing with power, however all I could see was bunch of barbarians. To agonize more, the second half was not dialogue driven. Even the meager dialogues were on purest Tamil. So I have to follow the visuals carefully if I don’t want to loose the story. But I cannot watch the visuals, because there was too much of exaggerated violence, vulgarity and all the other rots. And then there were series of popular scenes from Hollywood movies. The only appreciable thing about the second half was BGM.

For a couple of scene, when I shifted my face on the fear of what other barbarism I was about to witness, I sensed that my amma was staring devilishly at me. I got all angry. I mean, I was also on the same boat of agony right? how can she blame me when I was on the verge of frustration. Anyway, I smiled at her politely and said ‘ Don’t worry, it will over soon’, except that it was not over. There were serial killing, fighting, raping and other things to make every nerve of mine to undergo severe stress. Then the movie ended. No one cared to watch the end. We were only happy that it ended.

This movie, is not for my type. But, others may like it.

PS - This review is also posted in my blog https://vaniquest.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/aayirathil-oruvan-and-other-agonies/