Aadhalal Kaadhal Seiveer? Media's new lover boy!
Yet again a supposedly realistic movie in Tamil Industry that shows the apathetic insensitive society we live in and getting away with all positive reviews from every corners, but somehow I, being from a generation that is close to this century teenage love and adolescence, feel that the story and characters have been slightly (Slightly?! Trust me! I am being very diplomatic) misplaced and hitting the wrong chord.
Right from the promotion of the movie through TV sets and social media, the movie did not fail to receive the attention as it shows a young boy who seem like somebody from our neighborhood and who, with his immature arrogant adolescent kid looks falls in crazy ‘Bike love’ with another seemingly innocent female friend in the college, displaying glimpses of their fast growing lusty love in a very short span.Especially, when a song with shallow lyrics like ‘Mella sirithal Kaadhal than,’ runs in the back ground and dialogues like ‘Bike vaangitu propose pannu udane ok soliduva’ by the female lead, you almost know what the film could be about and you expect it to travel into a particular fashion to make it a hard hitting social movie. But, in an attempt to make it a refreshing unpredictable story, Director Suseendharan probably had put in efforts more than needed that nearly spoiled the thrill of watching this movie in a theatre, especially if you turn up with your parents, lucky me, I didn’t!
It seemed like the director worked on the script and rewrote dialogues so many times that every spot where you think the story might take a different turn (in a sense that would not wrongly typecast any particular generation), it just stayed still.
The story, which revolves around families in a metro like Chennai where an upper middle class boy falls in love with middle class girl and the next good thing they do after acknowledging their love, is wandering in the deserted streets and beaches of the city. Probably in the very subsequent scene you will see the girl hinting him to have sex and here comes the most bullshit dialogue from the male lead, ‘Thappu panra vayasule thappu panna thappe illa’ after which we see them making out in a resort in Mahabs! Seriously?!?! how less cliched can you make it?
The girl, who is very dumb enough to realize that having sex can lead to pregnancy, realizes quite too late and the rest that follows is a typical Indian attitude. By this, if the director meant to say that the kids of this generation only can do such senseless job, then am sorry, we have seen many similar cases in tamil cinema, even Vidhi (1984) for instance, where Poornima Bhagyaraj had something better to do than uttering dialogues like ‘Avala Vaithale irukardha kazhivitu vara sollu’ in this movie, who plays the role of male lead’s mother.
But I would surely like to appreciate Thulasi, who plays the role of Manisha’s mother, she has done an excellent job through her natural and sensible acting as a parent. Whereas Jayaprakash, father of Manisha, had very less to do in this movie, except being the receptor of abusive comments from the chauvinistic society, which urges him to get rid of the baby as soon as it’s born. The movie ends with a pathetic song showing an admirable cute little kid in a shabbily maintained orphanage home and glimpses of the kid’s parents getting into their routine of what they do best in their life.
The director might get away with an explanation by calling it reality but generalizing the issue and stereotyping adolescence and sarcastically referring ‘Aadhalal Kaadhai Seiveer’ (So you should love)? just did not convey anything to me instead raised my temper at the attitude of the director.
Just because 21st century media revolves around sensationalism and goes around breaking stories to gain attention and push a common man to a state of fear doesn't mean this problem has popped up all of a sudden.
If his intention was to raise apprehensions and suspicions in the minds of any parent, then my wishes to him, he has achieved it with no trouble. My views are not against supervision (to an extent) of youngsters but this movie did not convey the maturity a parent will posses, instead, every character has been carelessly etched. I wonder what made the director to make this as a movie when he had nothing to say.
When you give an unresolved problem to the people, especially when it involves lives of people, it raises their anxiety. It’s a known story that the mainstream media adheres to this simple formula and goes around bombarding the public with so-called facts and figures. But it’s a sorry state to see one such instance happening in movies too.