Athiradee Reprise

original bgm score of sivaji

My view on Sivaji - Part 2 coming soon..

As you have read, my post is very long, so I had to cut down some points abt the movie. These will be looked at in my following post.

Sivaji - a high tech disappointment

(If you don't have time to read the whole lengthy post, skip to the last paragraph)

The most awaited movie of the year and so called 2007's highest grossing Tamil movie so far (dunno how dasavatharam is gonna be like). I went to queue for the tickets on 12 June 2007 and reached GV Yishun at about 2.30 pm. There was an unbelievably long queue for the movie. Most of them were Rajini fans but some like minded people said they came there for Shankar and the other technical aspects of the movie (they must be feeling the same as I do now)

Got my tickets at 3pm and left with tix for Friday 5.5o pm. The first show was on Thu 9pm so I wanted to avoid the rush. But yeah it was house-full when I went. Screen 9 sucks! It is like so small (all screens in Yishun are small but this one was not so nice). The movie had an unexpected start, to start with, a Sultan trailer (which was attached to the film reels of Sivaji) and the old typeface Sivaji logo, and Rajini's unusual introduction. Rajini fans screamed their way through so some dialogues could not be heard.

There were some trademark Shankar scenes in the first few scenes eg. the numerous number of junior artists in the first scene, painted surroundings in Ballelakka, Rajini saying "Ellam vanthiduchi, Ithu mattum ozhiyale" at a begging lady, the way the protagonist encounters incidents that aggravate the Anniyan in him. But this time the message got diluted. You can count the number of incidents with your fingers in one hand and still have 3 left to hold that cup of coke and a few popcorns. Another such scene is when a boy gets electric shock and Sivaji gets angry on young children being sent to work. But yeah, there are only two. And for the rest of the first half, Shankar decides to fill it with comedy. Somehow, I managed to sit through the first half and the interval began. On the way to the gents, i had my friend saying "Sema padam.. Padam nalla odum" on the phone and to me too. I sayed "Um.. aama" with some thoughts in my mind. Of course it was I who had more belief in the film and thought I would like it a lot (like anyone else except anti-rajni or anti-shankar ppl) so I kept quiet about my thoughts. In case he said the movie wasn't nice, I would have sang in unison.

The second half rolled and I hoped it made up for the crappy first half. We got Rajini threatening Suman and the tea-kada scene. This comedy was nice though and was one of the higlight scene in the movie. Rajini becomes the aappu mannan (until Sivaji, Vijay was), as he continues to give aappu to every minister (almost) who possessed black money. The way he does, though, lacks credibility and the Shankar touch to it. Keeping an office room may help for the comedy but not for a Shankar film which took 2 years to make and 60 crores (and they have yet to reveal the official budget of the movie). I wonder whether Shankar was in booze when he did the script, threatening auditors to give their owner's black money details.

Couldn't they have just given some lolai details and then complain to the police about their office room treatments? This is one of the cases where I hate to watch Tamil cinema's unbelievable stupidity, such as in Ghajini, where Asin keeps her phone ringing while the villains try to find her. Asin's character being a modern girl, is not savvy enough to know about these things called SMS or silent mode? OR the cell company owner Sanjay Ramasamy could not have told her these things are present in her phone (though yeah Asin thought he was Manohar). Yeah, you may say, if Asin is saved, then there would be no need to have this story. That's where our Tamil cinema directors lack brains.

But I really didn't expect this crap from Shankar, especially after a massive hit "Anniyan" (which itself has some loopholes and logical unbelievables, but not huge enough to mar the message he wants to convey. Shankar could be seen in every frame [no i don't mean the one in the No Brainer reflections haha] with his grandeur and the way he put his message through. After you watch the movie you are bound to reflect on the message at least for a few minutes before you sleep. But that's not the case in Sivaji, with the useless comedy ruining the first half and a totally illogical screenplay, you are just spending 3 hours every week to try to force yourself to like the story (if you are fan of either of the team involved) and find yourself giving up even after 5 tries (as in my case).)

We have motta boss telling us we cant even bring 1 rupee back to melogam. That was a brilliant scene and an excellent finish to the movie but Shankar screwed it up with that hell of a screenplay. And the following scenes (Rajini going to prison, India becoming Vallarasu country) were needless in the form of slide presentation. If he really wanted these in the story, then he should have chipped the 30 mins of aruvai comedy in the first half and shot these scenes to instil a powerful impact.

Grandeur could be seen in every scene, from the richness in colours and in those humongous sets in Vaaji Vaaji and Sahana. The white Rajini in Style in front of artistic architectures was

novel. I was quite disappointed with Sahana being trapped in a glass set as I had entirely different imagination. Same went for Athiradee as this was the song that made me buy that audio CD. I had imaginations of Rajini in his usual Basha style escaping away with Shreya from real villains (not fantasy ones like this song) and I expected this song to be the revival of Rajini after he had been badly assaulted by the villain and this scene would be forming the climax. But later I began to like the high tech involved in the song. This song was also colourful and nice.

As Rajini began to imitate popular Tamil heroes in a prelude to the song, I was looking for a name of a director who would actually do something similar to this in most of his films, and after much thinking, Eureka! It was Director Perarasu. That was the limit, from the comedy to masala, the film looks like it has been directed by Perarasu (his previous movie was also a collaboration with AVM, Thirupathy, the way the screenplay was done was quite similar (ie. comedy, hero imitating popular heroes, outright masala)

But there were some scenes that I like, namely the King Kong Car Ride, the songs visuals, motta boss entry and "MGR".

But other than that the Rajini - Perarasu - A R Rahman - AVM combination is a disappointment to me. But that woudn't stop me from buying the original Ayngaran DVD once it is out. And I have watched it 4 times in cinema. Sivaji really has a peculiar magic formula. You don't really like it but you would like it. Hmmm...