Vaaranam Aayiram is about the relationship between a father and a son, the whole movie is shown from the son's perspective. All the other relationships blend well into the whole theme and lend their own color to the story. The father is Krishnan and the son is Surya, both characters are played by Surya. Simran is Malini, Surya's mother and Krishnan's wife and Shreya is Surya's sister. The movie opens on a rather sombre note with the death of Krishnan and the news is broken to Surya who is on his way with a team of commandos for some sort of a rescue operation. Surya recollects some incidents in his father's life and his which moulded their respective personalities.
Krishnan's college romance with Simran is shown in a beautiful song, the production work at this time is perfect and one get's to see Datsun, Standard, Herald, Plymouth cars from an era bygone. We then move into Surya's life and see him grow up, as a school kid, as a college student who is not good at studies, as a guitarist, as an entrepreneur, his first love and the loss he faces, as an addicct to alcohol and drugs, as a fighter who regains his life, various shades of a person's life which unfold in a rather nice way on screen. Sameera Reddy plays Meghna, Surya's first love. Although I didn't find her very pretty in the introduction scene in the train, Meghna in the US was stunning and outright beautiful. Divya Spandana plays Ramya, Surya's sister Shreya's best friend who becomes Surya's wife later on in the movie. There's hardly any suspense and hence I don't mind revealing the complete plot in this blog.
The story is very warm and melodramatic, a little too nice for a father and son relationship I should say. Nevertheless the effort is laudable and this is by no means an inferior movie, it's actually a good movie and with a little more effort during writing and editing this could have been an excellent movie. The second half of the movie was rather tedious and gave a bum ache (borrowed this phrase from Ridley Scott who says you know the audience is feeling the pain when you see them shifting in their seat). Gautam Vasudev Menon needs commendation for attempting a movie of this scale and getting it right with the casting and production. Simran always was an underutilized actress and very rarely does she get a role to play, this is one such role where she performs like the one she got in Kannathil Muththamittal.
Surya who plays both the father and son is perfect in the father's role and apt in the son's role. Watching Surya as Krishnan is a revelation on screen, I consciously had to remind myself that was Surya indeed. He has given the father's character a lot of subtle movements and a slightly different body language which gels well. Surya plays the son's character pretty much like he's done before sans the theatrics. Nothing ground breaking in this, mind you Surya is still one of the better actors in the newer lot. Sameera will remain in the minds of the audience longer because of the nature of her screen character. She's pretty, aptly cast and has some acting to do which she tries. Divya's role is short, not too much is written for her and she's always been someone who can emote reasonably.
Harris Jayaraj delivers melodic tunes for this movie some of which linger on in the mind even after you've left the movie hall. The background score was comsi comsa. It was apt in some situations but absolutely out of bounds in some, case in point - the rescue done by Surya in Delhi had shoddy background music. Action scenes are jerky which seems to be a problem with the use of steadicam. Rathavelu's camera is majorly superb, I particularly liked the clever use of the camera in double act scenes, the camera becomes one character in those. Anthony who usually is a deft editor seems to have allowed Gautam to dictate terms to him with the final print which probably is why the movie is a little over 3 hrs long. Thankfully since I saw the movie outside Tamilnadu I was able to see the full version, the one running in Tamilnadu is only 2hrs30mins long.
On the whole this is a good movie and definitely worth a watch, I'm sure many father's and son's will be able to similarities in their life and this movie. I'm looking forward to watching this movie this weekend with my Dad, should be worth the while.
Trivia
# I'm reasonably sure the college shown in the 'Munthinam' song with Krishnan (father's role) is Tamilnadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore as I remember seeing this film crew in 2007 there.
# Gautam's attention to detail in a shot is always top notch, I've written about this in a previous review too. When Krishnan is shown as living in Calicut (Kozhikode) there's is a Mathrubhumi calendar (most read newspaper in Kerala) hung on the wall. A song showing Surya (son's role) in Chennai also has a billboard showing Solidaire TV and Arnold's Commando. A cut out of Kamal Hasan's Sathya (directed by Suresh Krishna) is shown outside a cinema hall in a song sequence.
# Recreating the Madras Central railway station and the buckingham canal bridge was a a little sloppy, as was Spencers (not Spencer Plaza Mall).
# Binny mills, Chennai which was featured in previous Gautam movies is present in this one too.
# All Gautam movies have had a strong anti-eve-teasing stance, Surya beats up an eve-teaser which seems to occurs at the same location where Kakha kakha had a similar scene, both movies had the heroine in the frame too.
# Meghna (Sameera's character) is shown as getting injured and subsequently killed in Oklahoma, this incident happened in April 1995 and there are original file shots of the gutted building.
# I just couldn't see calling 'kiddo' as normal for the time this movie is set in, this is a very american phrase. There's a higher amount of English in the script which could turn off non English speaking audiences because there are no subtitles, this is not a mass movie either!
