குசேலன் - திரை விமர்சனம்

Another much anticipated movie of தலைவர் was released yesterday and the movie had the usual hype and marketing that you will normally associate with Rajini films. Kuselan is an attempt to blend commercial elements and real-life emotions in equal proportion and still provide a family entertainer. Did P.Vasu succeed in doing that?

The movie kick-off in a beautiful village setting trying to establish Pasupathy's approach, attitude, social status - all in one letter that he writes to the local government officer. The first few scenes of the movie revolve around Pasupathy and his family and immediately you get an idea on his whole state of affairs. Right after that, too many characters gets introduced and finally after 20 minutes or so, you get to see Rajini with a very promising intro song.

What really follows after that is pesky screenplay and a lot of loose end events. The rest of the movie revolves around Pasupathy's several attempts to reach his old friend and how other characters flip-flop their attitude towards Pasupathy and his family.

Superstar as always excel on screen but he has only a handful of scenes in the entire movie . His only scene with Vadivelu creates enough laughter and the scene where he confront R.Sundarrajan really shows his versatility.

Pasupathy plays the simpleton quite admirably. Nayanthara was "effectively" used by P Vasu. Some of the camera angles and scenes picturized on her are atrocious. Meena as Pasupathy's wife fits in her role perfectly. Vadivelu's comedy is pathetic and talented actors like Livingston and Santhanabharathy are made to look like jokers in the movie. There are a whole bunch of stars who gets an appearance in the movie either as "real" or "reel" characters.

Now to the much hyped climax of the movie. Was it emotional? - Yes. Did Rajini and Pasupathy excel? - Absolutely yes. Did it justify watching the whole movie just to understand Rajini-Pasupathy's friendship? - Heck NO. What's the big deal in keeping the width and depth of friendship as suspense till the end? I really feel that the movie would have worked if they had established deep friendship upfront and then give a gap and then re-establish the friendship in the climax.

P Vasu had let everyone down with his shoddy screenplay and not so great dialogues. This movie equals his earlier offense "Seenu" (remake of "Bharatham") when it comes to Malayalam movie remakes. If you are a Rajini fan and watch the movie either as a typical or a non-typical Rajini fan, you will be little disappointed. You will be even more disappointed if you are a regular filmgoer.

Pasupathy

I am a die-hard Rajini fan eagerly awaiting the release of Kuselan, but I cannot stop wondering why Pasupathy, supposedly playing the title role, is not featuring in a big way in any of the major promo pictures that are circulating. I remember seeing initial movie stills of Virumandi, which was so impressive, and seeing Pasupathy along side Kamal made everyone curious. Pasupathy was not so popular back then and for him to get such marketing at that stage of the career was huge. Rumor has it, Rajini has only 20-30 minutes of screen time in the entire movie. If that's true, Pasupathy probably has a very big role in the movie and his nonexistence in the movie promo is clearly unfair.

Kuselan - Music Review

Another much anticipated music album of the year was released last week. For a young music director like G V Prakash, to get to compose Superstar's movie so early in his career, this is like a golden dream opportunity to take his career to next level. Was he successful?

The first thing I thought the music director got it right for the most part is the choice of singers for songs. Hariharan-Sujata were beautiful in Sollamma, Shreya Goshal is good in the solo number Chaaral, Shankar Mahadevan is bold in Cinema Cinema (though I would have prefered SPB considering the sentiment of the song), Daler sounded differently in Om Zaarare and Kailash Kher & Prasanna blended well as a pair in Perinba. I really feel happy for Prasanna who got a chance in such a big movie. He is one of the few young singers (like Vijay Yesudas) who has got terriffic depth in voice and still maintain melody.

Sollamma is a very nice melody number and probably the best song of the movie. Cinema Cinema is nice to hear with some interesting voice-sound mix. Om Zaarare sounds different but there's nothing great about the song. Chaaral looks like 2008 remix of 80's Ilayaraaja song. Perinba is "Veyilodu Vilayaadi" revisited. The instrumentals used in the songs sounds Rahmanish and some of them are direct lifts from old songs.

In terms of lyrics, looks like we are back to நீதான் இவனே, நீதான் அவனே mode again. Too much hero worship, hopefully it is in tune with the tone of the movie.

Now back to the question, did G V Prakash grab the opportunity? May be yes, may be not. The songs are peppy enough to keep the listeners interested, but not outstanding to tag G V as "big movie" music director yet.