In their fascination with Madurai and the nearby villages, The good Tamil filmmakers except for seemingly fake over overtures by Gautham Menon, had all but lost out on exploring and re-imagining Chennai, thereby helping Mani Ratnam remain the undefeated king of the Madras genre. In Onaayum Aattukkuttiyum, Mysskin, in the prime of his auteurist prowess, presents a riveting reply.
How do the Chennai streets, where you would otherwise see mass heroes dancing with thousand other men and women or lovers romancing over a coffee, look after midnight? They look brutal and banal. They reflect your true personality, something the daylight is just not capable of doing. And what happens when Mysskin style high drama plays out in these streets with Munnani Isai by the Maestro himself? There is magic, but of a different kind. Magic that is dark and magic that bites your soul into submission.
Once upon a time in a forest, a bear hired a wolf, the most dangerous wolf of all, to hunt down foxes. In one such hunt, the wolf killed a (goat) kid by mistake. Repenting this, the wolf visited the kid's house only to find that the kid had left behind a father goat, a mother goat and a little sister kid, all three of them blind. The wolf gave up hunting and decided to support this deserted goat family. But the bear wouldn't let the wolf be and neither would the tigers roaming around in the forest. They hunted for and haunted the wolf and the goat family till they got the better of them. The wolf was wounded but magically saved by yet another kid. The bear and the tigers however are not taking to this. The hunt continues till no one is sure who is being hunted.
In a theater-style, ultra-noir play-out of this story, we are taken through a varied set of personalities who in uniquely Mysskin fashion, walk in and out of the vantage still camera frame both literally and figuratively. Clearly Mysskin is on top of his skills here. Making use of the technical advantages that a film medium presents and seamlessly seguing it with a script that has been written like a play. Balaji Rangha though is no Mahesh Muthusamy or Sathya in Anjadhey and Yudham Sei respectively where the camera would create shots unimaginable for Tamil Cinema. Compensating the cliched camera here though is some tremendous acting by Sri and Mysskin himself - the latter restrained for most parts except the monologue that is tremendously impacting. Raaja rediscovers background music that so often reminds us of how much his music can become an integral part of the story. Ten of his tracks titled Compassion, Firefly, Growl, The Threshold Guardian, Grim reaper, I killed an Angel, A Fairy tale, Walking through life and death, Redemption and Somebody loves us all tell the story all by themselves.
We see vast, lazily paced, indulgences with Mysskin at times reminding us of the cold blooded gunshot sequences from Gus Vant Sant's Elephant. Watching this in the big screen, I felt this is exactly the kind of cinema I was waiting for all this while. Utterly unpredictable. Not necessarily real but different, different not in the oscar-lusting manner that the Ship and the Lunchbox have brought to the table, but different by the sheer manner in which a film is envisioned and executed. The amount of originality on display shakes you, at least as long as you are unaware of the inspiration (Onaayum is said to be taken from a Portuguese film)
Mysskin movies, like those of Selvaraghavan often come across as dark and serious but the mild tinge of humor in both their styles is unmistakable and is an important fulcrum for the otherwise edge of the seat narratives. In Onaayum, we don't see more than a minute of sunlight and more than five minutes of any other form of lighting. The movie is about the night, the night in all our days and deservedly shot in the night too. Thrillers work most when they have a tearing emotional base and Mysskin manages it with Mani Ratnamesque aplomb. This is Midnight's Mani Ratnam. Probably, the better one.
How do the Chennai streets, where you would otherwise see mass heroes dancing with thousand other men and women or lovers romancing over a coffee, look after midnight? They look brutal and banal. They reflect your true personality, something the daylight is just not capable of doing. And what happens when Mysskin style high drama plays out in these streets with Munnani Isai by the Maestro himself? There is magic, but of a different kind. Magic that is dark and magic that bites your soul into submission.
Once upon a time in a forest, a bear hired a wolf, the most dangerous wolf of all, to hunt down foxes. In one such hunt, the wolf killed a (goat) kid by mistake. Repenting this, the wolf visited the kid's house only to find that the kid had left behind a father goat, a mother goat and a little sister kid, all three of them blind. The wolf gave up hunting and decided to support this deserted goat family. But the bear wouldn't let the wolf be and neither would the tigers roaming around in the forest. They hunted for and haunted the wolf and the goat family till they got the better of them. The wolf was wounded but magically saved by yet another kid. The bear and the tigers however are not taking to this. The hunt continues till no one is sure who is being hunted.
In a theater-style, ultra-noir play-out of this story, we are taken through a varied set of personalities who in uniquely Mysskin fashion, walk in and out of the vantage still camera frame both literally and figuratively. Clearly Mysskin is on top of his skills here. Making use of the technical advantages that a film medium presents and seamlessly seguing it with a script that has been written like a play. Balaji Rangha though is no Mahesh Muthusamy or Sathya in Anjadhey and Yudham Sei respectively where the camera would create shots unimaginable for Tamil Cinema. Compensating the cliched camera here though is some tremendous acting by Sri and Mysskin himself - the latter restrained for most parts except the monologue that is tremendously impacting. Raaja rediscovers background music that so often reminds us of how much his music can become an integral part of the story. Ten of his tracks titled Compassion, Firefly, Growl, The Threshold Guardian, Grim reaper, I killed an Angel, A Fairy tale, Walking through life and death, Redemption and Somebody loves us all tell the story all by themselves.
We see vast, lazily paced, indulgences with Mysskin at times reminding us of the cold blooded gunshot sequences from Gus Vant Sant's Elephant. Watching this in the big screen, I felt this is exactly the kind of cinema I was waiting for all this while. Utterly unpredictable. Not necessarily real but different, different not in the oscar-lusting manner that the Ship and the Lunchbox have brought to the table, but different by the sheer manner in which a film is envisioned and executed. The amount of originality on display shakes you, at least as long as you are unaware of the inspiration (Onaayum is said to be taken from a Portuguese film)
Mysskin movies, like those of Selvaraghavan often come across as dark and serious but the mild tinge of humor in both their styles is unmistakable and is an important fulcrum for the otherwise edge of the seat narratives. In Onaayum, we don't see more than a minute of sunlight and more than five minutes of any other form of lighting. The movie is about the night, the night in all our days and deservedly shot in the night too. Thrillers work most when they have a tearing emotional base and Mysskin manages it with Mani Ratnamesque aplomb. This is Midnight's Mani Ratnam. Probably, the better one.
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