VTV-General Notes

1. This, and all future posts are primarily inspired primarily inspired by the second half of the film. This is the portion that elevates the film from borderline tiresome to passing flash of brilliance.
2. In this film, as in all his other personal films, Gautham’s decision to use voiceovers refuses to give his actors responsibility or his viewers any credit. If I had to pick a side to err on I would pick ambiguity over belaboring the point.
3. The background score largely meant to me what the smell of camphor would mean to an ass. Once, in a moment of music-induced weakness, I forced my American cousin to listen to Mad Mod Mood Fugue. Under duress he stated that it sounded like the score for a whacky chase sequence in an Indian movie. Once I recovered from the setback, I realized his listening experience had predominantly focused on the percussion while I had focused on the melodic component. Meat and Poison. Which is exactly the case with this background score. While I was in large part enamored by the score, I was underwhelmed by its usage.
4. The dialog’s ranged from stunning to less than mediocre. Gautham continues to prove that the thamizh idiom is not his natural choice. It isn’t so much the content as the form.
5. All the performances were par for the course in a Gautham film. The cameraman/ mentor character was written better than it was performed I think. It was quite refreshing to see a friend who valued self-preservation over his friend’s undefined relationship with a girl on film. It’s all well to tell the young turk to follow his beating heart, but when it’s your ass in the joint you have a slightly different take on the situation. Of course at this point it almost seems like a foregone conclusion that he had to be older and wiser. I’ve always known that Silambarasan was capable of such a performance. Not a superior performance by any stretch, just controlled. It is the slower delivery and holds no relevance without his other loud performances. Trisha is adequate in all scenes except the defining sequence of the film. The one where Karthik rushes back from Goa to meet Jesse. Everyone and everything had to hit the perfect pitch for that scene to work and they did. And it is that scene that really prompts the future posts on the film.