a tale of two movies
After taking a dig at tamil movies last week, I felt a little bad :) though 99% of tamil movies fall under the serious comedy genre (e.g: captain/vijay/ajith movies), there are some adorable ones too. One such movie is Anbe Sivam.
Anbe Sivam - thats what the movie conveys in the end (meaning Love is God). how true. the transformation of a self-centered person to a more caring individual is delightfully presented in this movie. It just takes us on the same path as well. on the way, it depicts the economic disparities in the society, and reminds our responsibilities, in a very realistic manner.
the most touching part was the ending and it really made me cry.
last weekend I watched Swades (atlast). A good movie, and more or less conveys the same message as Anbe Sivam. A non-resident Indian returns to India for good, after seeing the plights of his own countrymen in the remote villages of India. good message..... but to me, it wasn't conveyed in a moving way at all. it was all melodramatic instead. it never really had the conviction.
when I think of Anbe Sivam, I can only remember the characters, not the cast. and when I think of Swades, Gayathri Joshi comes to my mind first :-)
and if you still haven't guessed, Anbe Sivam was a big flop at the box-office while Swades turned out to be a big grosser.
21 Comments:
jagan, I think those romantic scenes were justified. they even gave a poetic effect.
kamal performance kekkava venum. atha pathi naan pesarathey illa, its a given man :)
i thot swades was a disastrous flop. my fav of all movies wud be kurudi punal! Gow rocks!!!
I definitely agree with Harish on the fact that Kurudhi Punal is one of the best movies in the recent times. Of course MMKR is his all time best. Anbe Sivam i thought at times i swayed from the theme of the movie to propaganda for communism and glorifying kamal. Esp the therukoothu was too much 8.5 mins, cmom give me a break.
All said and done Padaiyappa and Basha are the best movies of all times and Thalaivar is the greatest man. All Rajni movies are gr8 movies. Thalaivar vazhga.
Naattamayin Theerpu: " Form is temperorary, Class is permenant."
Harish, Kurudhi Punal was a good one too. I liked it.
Nattamai, un rowsukku oru alave illaya :-)
who doesn't like thalaivar, avar vimarisanathukkum appar paatavar :)
B to the A to the B to the A!
saranyan, like harish said, swades was a flop...did not make it big even amongst the nri crowd...i keep repeating the following comments everywhere...swades was not half as gud as anbe sivam like u said and also unnal mudiyyum thambi..man, that was one hell of a movie...inspires u to do sth everytime u see it...atleast plant a tree or something...andha inspiration was missing in swades...but the intentions were honorable...so, needs to be appreciated...:)
Except the music, no aspect of Swades can even compare with Anbe Sivam. Swades lacked depth and was further mired by very slow screenplay. More was expected from Ashutosh Gowarikar, but yes, the intentions must be lauded. This reminds me of another recent movie - Black. In my opinion, it is the best movie (in almost every aspect) ever made and ever will be made, in India. Check it out!
my bad, swades isn't a big hit. But still the US box office collections have crossed the mega buck. thats what I was pointing to.
manoj, swades ikku bathila namma pesama vaseegara pappom :-) u still have that DVD right?
CM, thats right.... unnal mudiyum thambi was an inspiring movie and had some great songs too.
anonymous, thanks for the suggestion. may I know who you are?
Anbe Sivam is a class one.. but i felt Kurudhipunal was a notch better.
Couldn't agree more with Naataamai.. :)
Anbe Sivam is a beautiful venture..one of my personal favourites after Mouna raagam..
It is really true, that when u think of Anbe Sivam, u think of the characters..
I love Madhavan's especially...he is a typical representation of a guy who believes his master card would help him anywhere, even in a remote restaurant in India..the attitude, his insecurity and inability to see people suffering, his sharp comments..brilliant character sketch!
Nice post:)
I loved both Anbe Sivam and Swades. While Anbe Sivam reached new heights of cinematic brilliance and a screenplay thats alone worth millions, Swades played a different tune. The problem was that people dont like preaching and Swades appeared to be preaching. Fact was Swades never preached. It just showed you things as is. Note: Swades doesnt tell you that US is bad and India is good. Swades doesnt show the usual Punjab fields and ask you to think about your mitti and such Yash Chopra bullshit. It just tells you that you can always do more for your country than you think!
Anbe Sivam on the other hand is more of a personal story and touches you in more ways than one. Kamal for once underplays the emotions and ends up being just brilliant.
The last scene in Anbe Sivam is alone worth a visit to the theaters.
If only we had more of Anbe Sivams and Swades..
Reflex,
Padaiyappa padam patheengala, intha Naattamai azhika thuppaki ethuvum kidayathu.
Ivan anbku kattu paduvan, thozhankaga uyiruyum kudupan.
Anupama,
Madhavan's character was based exactly on steve martin character from the original movie from which this script was adopted. " Planes, Trains and Automobiles". May be since i happen to see that movie first i probably couldnt appreciate this movie as much you all did. That movie was a classic case of odd couple thrown together by circumstances, most of the scenes were absolutely ripped. I felt that movie had too much kamal in it.
Where as kurudhi punal was movie of Adi DC, and from the start to the end it had only ADI Narayanan. Thats what made the movie close to my heart. (also i havent seen droh kaal yet).
One reason swades didnt do commercially that well was probably because the hype that was surrounding that movie, but it was a movie which really associate with. Going back to the India is something most of the Indians wish for and dream aboout. But most of the indians dont for various other reasons.
On the lighter vein, "may be most of us will consider more seriously if we knew Gayathri joshi would be waiting for us".
nattamai, kurudhipunal is a remake of drohkaal :)
Reflex, nattamai unmayana peyar solla mattengaraar :-) sonna thaane suda mudiyum :)
thanks for the comments guys.
Saranyan,
I knew that Kurudhi Punal is a remake of Droh Kahl, since i havent seen Droh Kahl i attributed all the best things to Kp. But since i saw Airplans, trains and Automobiles before i saw Anbe Sivam, i couldnt appreciate the much as much as you guys are doing.
Perula enna irruku saranyan, anyways peru than mukiyumna enn friends ellam Shiv koopudivanga, but i prefer Naattamai. :)
Jagan,
Neenga Padaiyappa partheengala. Antha mathiri than. Neenga ennai kolla ninaichalum naan ungalai kapatha ninaipen:).
i like Kamal's Mahanadhi more than Anbe sivam. I watched anbe sivam with too much expectations. personally felt that kamal wanted to showcase what all he knew, like
1)that he can do street play and is no stranger to it
2)that he has an undying interest in communism
3)that he is much smarter than a yuppie
4)that he is not a person with a distorted figure but actually used to be handsome hunk who once dated the yuppies fiancee. And so on and on. And what’s with the street dog accompanying the hero as he walks into the sun in the climax.
Street dog accompanying the hero made me think of devadas and hero walking away from the scene resembled the cowboy movies where the hero after saving the frontier village rides into the sun(a combo of chivalry and pathos).
neverthless, a great movie but i wouldn't list anbe sivam as kamal's greatest movie, let alone as the greatest movie in Tamil ever.
I liked Mahanadhi much better and its my all time Kamal favorite. He delivered such a great performance in that movie. There is no kamal in Mahanadhi but only the hapless and vulnerable Krishnaswamy that we see in our daily lives.
The scenes where he rescues his daughter from the Calcutta brothels and where he reunites with his long separated son (a son who changed so much that he no longer resembles the one that kamal knew) were gut wrenching. In both the scenes kamal lets his co-actors( the sex worker and thalaivasal vijay) take control of the scene and completely down plays his performance. To me that is great acting.
naattamai, enakkum naattamai thaan pudichirukku :-)
anon, thanks for the suggestion friend.
Ranga, thats right, atleast there was no Yash Chopra bull-crap in Swades and it wasn't preachy too. Just that I didn't find it motivating at all :-)
hellboy, rombha yosikkara innu nenaikkaren :-) thats why I said, Anbe Sivam reminds me of only the characters. ofcourse Kamal had better movies. as you said, Mahanadhi had a better Kamal. thats not the point, its the message and script that I found truly moving.
My instant reaction after i read this post: i took a longer time to read the comments than i took to read the actual post!! anyway...at times its the coming together that matters rather than the writing itself!!! i have neither watched swades nor anbe sivam - so nothin much to say.
saran
i think i lost your post somewhere and started replying to the comments.
Renuka, what to say, I'm honoured to see so many people commenting :)
do watch Anbe Sivam sometime.
Hellboy, I could sense that :)
A note on KP. I had seen DrohKaal before seeing KP. KP is a very pale imitation of the original. Kamal in his true narcissistic way hijacks a truly gripping story and makes it a one man thing. The key of the movie being that "Every man has a breaking point" was lost in the tamil remake whereas that was what really held the hindi version aloft.
Mouna Ragam, Anbe Sivam, Kirudhi punal are all classic movies.
Swades was just an alright movie. I didnt like it too much. If you compare it with Black, black is 1000 times better than Swades - Black is also another classic movie.
Nayagan is another good one.
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