Release: April 17, 2015 (India)
Language: Tamil
Director: Mani Ratnam
Actors: Dulquer Salmaan, Nithya Menen, Leela Samson, Prakash Raj
Music composer: A. R. Rahman
Cinematography: P. C. Sreeram

After Mani Ratnam’s last movie Kadal which Che didn’t like and I didn’t land up watching, I was looking forward to this one. With O Kadhal Kanmani it would be decided which way Mani Ratnam’s career was going. Was he going to make a comeback into movie greats or fade away into the world of wannabes.

OK Kanmani is at the surface a simple love story. Boy meet girl in dramatic circumstances. He then next sees her at his best friends wedding and love blossoms, only it’s still in budding stage. A few dates follow and next thing you know they are living-in.

Yep, living-in is the new normal and we now talk about it openly in our movies. All is well until the boys brother and sister-in-law visit. Then girl gets told off for living in sin and boy is living in denial or the belief that his brother and S-I-L know nothing.

Girl turns out to be a heiress and her mother puts boy behind bars in Arthur Road Jail to see if he is good enough for her daughter. Suddenly in the midst of all this both girl and boys dreams materialise. Girl gets opportunity to study in Paris and boy gets job posting U.S.

They have to choose, either dreams or love. But there is also so called mid path. Boy tells girl he wants her to chase her dreams, to do all she wants, go where she wants, and all that spiel but only after she marries him.

So, they get married, go their separate ways, and then come back together and make babies. The perfect love story if you leave every iota of your intelligence at home. Hey, I’m not being insulting, I’m serious. I enjoyed the movie, but then again, I didn’t have high expectations, I wanted a random entertainer and most importantly I don’t speak Tamil. 😀

Me Likey:

(Those few things I liked.)

I enjoyed the music, and some songs like Kaara Aattakkaara and Mental Manadhil I’m still humming. I also enjoyed Malargal Kaettaen and Parandhu Sella Vaa was a very interesting mix of music.

Dulquer Salmaan was a sight for sore eyes. A cutie who constantly oozed sexiness. Nithya Menen was the female equivalent of that. The character that I liked the most though was Prakash Raj. With each movie of his I watch lately I’m falling in love with the man a little more.

Irky Things:

(That which irked me a lot.)

1. This funda of getting married before you can doing anything, especially anything fun. After the live-in scenes, I was starting to think that finally here was a movie that wouldn’t culminate in wedding bells. But no, no such thing happened. Instead they reinforced that societal requirement of signing a sheet of paper.

2. One of the supporting characters has Alzheimers and the movie was doing a good job of showing that it was about and the love and care an Alzheimers patient needs, until suddenly you realise that’s just a part of the story to allow the hero and heroine to have more time for cliched yucky dialoguebaazi where they exchange sappy dialogues.

3. There were others too but I’ll round off this list with sappy cliched dialogues. The ‘Will you take care of me when I’m old’ type dialogues have been done to death and should be put to death soon. Especially in a movie where initially the girl and boy come across are strong characters that do not believe in marriage.

Summary:

(The short and sweet of it.)

All said and done, the movie had it’s moments and I enjoyed it. There were a lot of scenes that made me smile and even laugh. I also so wanted to pinch Dulquer Salmaan’s cheeks and say ‘choo sweet’ many a time. 😀

Mani Ratham it seems has not lost his touch completely, but he definitely needs to find more of it before he can make Roja or Bombay again.

Did you watch it? What did you think of it?

It’s been a while since a Tamil movie’s songs have struck and stuck with me. Not since Roja and Alai Payude have I hummed a song without understanding a word of what was being sung. But over the last couple of weeks I’ve repeatedly found myself humming Chithirai Nela from the movie Kadal. The song’s just stuck in my head, so I decided today to look up the meaning of the words and my choice couldn’t have been more perfect.

Music by AR Rahman, Lyrics by Vairamuthu and Sung by Vijay Yesudas, Chithirai Nela is a beautiful lullaby about the first moon of the New Year, about rising from the ashes and reaching to the sky. A father sings to his child to try walking, to stand tall and walk to the sky. He sings about the good in everything that happens, the silver-lining; from affliction come deep poems and from losses knowledge. He sings to his child to be strong and face tomorrow with self-confidence. There is only one New Year’s Moon, just as there is only one of everything else, everyone is standing alone but he exhorts his child to walk, to walk towards the sky.

I love the song even more now that I know what it means, it just resonates with my soul and so reminds me of the poem ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling. I remember reading ‘If…’ for the first time years ago; I could so see Rudyard Kipling swinging in a hammock with his son and giving him life advice. ‘If…’ has been a poem I had tried to live by and I love going back to it over the years for a bit of motivation. Chithirai Nela touches that spot. It’s ‘If…’ set to music. 🙂

Kadal is a Mani Rathman movie with Arvind Swamy set to release on 1st of February 2013 and I’m looking forward to it. A romantic thriller the movie is about the life of Christian fisherman and the role faith plays in their lives. This should be an interesting watch, definitely worth first-day-first-show 😀

BTW Chithirai Nela isn’t the only stand out song. Almost all the songs in this movie are awesome. A.R. Rahman spinning his magic again finally. His work hasn’t shaken me up so much lately but this one has that thing that Rahman is known for. Don’t miss ‘Adiye’ in the list, it has this absolutely surprising jazz influence that will make you sit up and listen. A fisherman song set to jazz; you rock Rahman!

Have you heard any stunning sit-up-straight music lately?