Nandhalala - Movie Review

Am brimming with the energy to type down all of my observations...rarely has a movie done this to me except for the compulsive blogging disorder that I was going through until 2007!

Nandhalala - the Myshkin movie has met 100 % of my expectations and as a matter of fact is exactly like what Myshkin quoted in an interview. Here's the quote - " A director can probably make 2 or 3 good movies in his career, Nandhalala is definitely one of mine". IT IS EXACTLY the best movie he could have made and I wouldn't shy away from quoting this to be one of the best movies made on Indian-wood land...! Some people might feel this is a tad taller order for a tamil movie, but I would strongly urge them to watch this movie without prejudice, and they would come out beaming with atleast a couple of tears welling up their eyeballs, I could see a few when I came out of the theater!

Nandhalala as a movie is a genuine answer to India's search for that elusive best foreign feature film award at The Oscars. Now dont catch me on the mis-interpreted foot, I aint behind that craze, but this is a wish that I have had for long to say that India on its own, without any English or Western collaboration can still make movies that make short work of movies of Hollywood land...This is genuinely one such attempt and wish the jury board of this year's oscar nomination committee in India make note of this!!

Exceptionally crafted as a emotional roller coaster, this oozes Myshkin's passion for cinema in every frame, every dialogue, every shot, every character, every bit of sound on screen. Man, can I stop..?! As far as I can remember, this evoked so much of an overwhelming emotion in my heart as much as The Matrix did for its sheer concept novelty! I think Myshkin is justified in casting himself or rather an unknown face to this character. Any other actor known as a hero would have ruined the genuinety of this sketch!

Myshkin,as far as I can see has bridged that elusive gap of an Art film that can gross commercially! This is the true divide that other creators can try and emulate and still make commercially viable projects! The deft sequencing of scenes, the crisp and getting-ever-crisper dialogues vieing for the top dialogue title if there was one for a movie are ample testimony to the hard work Myshkin has tasked himself to - to make this movie a commercially interesting one. It is easy to get lost in the passion of such a story and make it look like an art film, which it would have probably been if not for the genuine comedy and near-to-life characterisation of the lead roles.

As far as I know this is the ideal road movie that could have happened to Tamil Cinema and makes *Paiyyaa* a supposedly road-ish movie look like a comedy-piece according to Vadivelu!! Each character team that the boy and the larger-boy (myshkin) meet enroute to *annavel* and *thaivasal* are as genuine that you would meet in any road journey out of madras! Kudos to the director to have sketched a never ending set of vehicles to make them reach the destination and all the while making all of them look completely plausible!!

There is this set of directors that I am loving in Tamil Cinema from Parthiban to Cheran to Vasantha Balan to Myshkin who make lovely movies out of an ordinary strand of life and make it look larger than the *Red-giant*, *Cloud-nine*, *Mohana Movies*, *Sun Pictures - kalanidhi maran* backed movies. Unfortunately, Tamil Cinema is led to experience only these power-houses powered movies as *real cinema*...:(

The movie starts of with a school-boy who badly misses his mother and another boy-ish man in an asylum who badly wants to slap his mom for having left in the asylum. The definetly takes its time to settle into the groove and the first 10-15 look like an art movie and thats the only trace of this aspect in the movie. Once Myshkin and Agi hit the road, the story narration actually picks top-gear and each acquaintance en-route is a Story-in-Story, be it the Auto Driver, the lady with the kid, the limp guy, the old man selling tender-coconuts, the jumbo twins and most importantly the Lorry driver with the horn and the call-girl who definetely make a serious impact to the entire movie.

I loved the sequences where the Lorry driver ends up with a tussle with Myshkin and then they get-together and then that *Das-anna* song, wow what a moment in the movie. Infact, I would rate that as the best sequence in the movie. So much for the feel, because it was coming from the roughie-like-lorry driver akin to the *Irumbile oru irudhayam mulaithathe*. to me, this sequence scores better than the call-girl story though this had ZERO dialogues!!!

I can visualize the maker in Myshkin to have put in *umpteen* versions of the script before it passed *re-recording* and reached the silver screen, because every scene looks complete and poised and has the finesse of story on its own. Trust me, Very very rarely do we get to see scripts like this and it would be a pity if the audiences dont acknowledge it!

Apart from the script and the story which are absolutely fab!, there are so many more elements that make the movie look so competent such it puts to shame so many movies which touted themselves as *realistic cinemas* and one way or the other has masala items.

Some of the other key aspects of the movie demand a group of accolades, and here goes the credit list,

* absolute brilliance in titling all of the behind-the-scenes technicians before the actors, goes a long way to let us peek into the director's deep thought process!!
* The fact that Myshkin did not include his name in the cast titles and left it only to *Ezhuthu - Iyakam* slide is a great gesture!
* the *12 nodikalukku Nasser* title card, I consider a great respect showered on Nasser!
* the *Thaiyai Thedi* interval card was placed at such a beautiful moment that for a split second, i expected the movie to have ended (!! - trust me - I did go and ask the food counter if the movie was still on post the break!!) the reason I mention this is the fact that the movie was not made for the audience perspective but from the perspective of a story. If it were an english docu movie, it could have well ended with the Interval card!!!
* the music of the movie. Myshkin is completely justified in crediting *Ilayaraja* with the first title in the movie and rightly so! the background score definetely tells a story on its own and trust me, if one just listens to the movie as a *oli-chititram* (audio-version that was once famous in All-India Radio), 90 % of the movie's effectiveness would be perceivable in the air
* the Das-anna song was superb, if i was to use a solitary word!!
* the reason I mentioned 90 % effectiveness in an audio is because of the amazing action both of the kid (agi) and myshkin show on-screen. I should say, there was not scene where their acting looked amateur-ish!! hatz-off to myshkin to have made every single actor be as natural as you would expect on a highway in souther india
* Rohini though having a very little space in the movie, didnt look out of place at all!

It was definetely refreshing to see the progression of the characters once they face the reality of the situation! be it the boy accepting the girl-on-the-highway as his mother after noticing that his real mother is elsewhere; be it myshkin maturing in his composure once he realizes his mother's state and admitting her into the asylum.
Much better when their lifes turn for the better and the mental-boy-turning-into Bhaskar Mani mama and the kid taking the lady as his mom to home!!

Lovely and positive ending as opposed to cliched remorse ending that we are used to in such genres in India and elsewhere.

To sum-up, this must have been the most non-coherent post of my blogging career since 2004 and i really dont care if it did not follow a structure, because I am as dead-passionate to record my thoughts of this movie as Myshkin has been to make this movie caring like hell when it came to conventions / stereotypes wrt characters, actors, story telling flow, yada yada yada

If I were to leave a parting note,

Nandhalala is a glowing example of technical finesse, directorial brilliance, to-the-story acting, lilting background score and what a story!!! I doubt if Myshkin himself can match this effort in the future, leave alone others.

Lets all watch this magnum-opus on-screen and feel Nandhalala touching our senses in the movie hall!!

C Ya,
Rajesh