Madarasapattinam | 2010
Genre: Drama/ Romance
Author : Srivathsa
Synopsis: Vijay concentrates only on the details and loses an opportunity to create
an epic .
“Chennai” as it is called now was only a few years before called “Madras” , which
in turn was derived from the name “Madarasapatinam”. Now, Vijay, the director of
the new Tamil feature with the same name, has lofty ambitions and notice to minute
particulars, but not the imagination for a change from the good old stories of inter
racial love.
The movie’s storyline revolves around the granny Amy, who along with her grand daughter
travels back to Chennai (Madarasapatinam) ,to find her lover (of course, when she
was young (Amy Jackson)), Parithi (Arya) to return him back something that she has
with her. The movie interlaces both the present and the past synchronously to make
us comprehend the whole span of the century. It works out.
The detailing is pretty fabulous. You can see all those Narasus’ Coffee banners
on trams , the old fashioned Amruthanjans on the bed and so on. Also looks good.
Nirav shah’s job is well done, especially on the chase sequences. Vijay’s screenplay
works out well in the first part of the movie, where we tend to look out for humor
and our attention is more on details. But later, this becomes a draggy progression
of chases after the lovers, interrupted by the songs.
It was quite inevitable to compare the first song sequence with the first in the
acclaimed Hindi feature “Lagaan”. So similar was the fashion. As far as songs and
the background music, G V Prakash’s has done his part pretty upright.
Here, Vijay’s eye has a finicky strength in the details and dialogues, wherein he
incorporates his point of view of the political arena. But then he should have had
a wide angle to have performed well with the storyline and the nearly predictable
screenwriting.
Certainly I do appreciate Vijay for his superb shot, only that if the plot was further
different, it would’ve been a great movie.