All of us have faced a conundrum or two in our professional lives. We have at our disposal today a number of tools to dissect and diagnose these problems. The problem of course is that the tools, in and of themselves tend to be distractingly attractive. So seduced are we that some of us tend to utilise these tools to collect way more information than is actually required. And as a consequence we are so mired in data that we lose sight of the problem in all the clutter. Unwittingly we've all contributed to turning the age of information into the age of misinformation. Few directors in the Thamizh film industry have embodied this ethos as well as Mysskin has in his four film old career. His images - through attention to detail, focus on the oddities and unusual framing - leave us with a glut of information that we must expend effort processing what is presented to us. Not for this man, the overexposition of every minor detail through dialog or visuals. His filmmaking is characterized by a stubborn refusal to share information with his audience in a structured manner. This was underlined by a nice moment of irony as I watched Yudhdham Sei this past Saturday. A rather boisterous couple of girls in the adjacent seat were complaining (quite loudly I must add) that they were unable to understand the proceedings. In the scene that followed almost immediately a response appeared, on a postit on JK's wall. "F--k Off" it read. It was impossible for me not to see that note as Mysskin's derision for those who do not have enough patience to see a film through.
While the discerning viewer processes all the information that Mysskin throws at him, there is enough finesse in the scenes and the music to draw him in to proceedings as they were. Consider, for instance, how he chooses to introduce to us the dismembered parts. The first set makes its appearance during a particularly raucous celebration bringing in the new year. Mankind is often at its most selfish when it is happy. When you laugh often the world will laugh with you just to be polite - not because it shares your joy. That no one in that large crowd of revelers chooses to see how a cardboard box of severed body parts reached the roof of a car underlines how unempathetic joy makes us. If the introduction of the first set of body parts is indiction of happiness, the second indicts the viewers themselves. As the ominous background music (Some lovely work with the strings by K here) floats around the walkers and flickering tubelights of a city park we already know that the contents of another cardboard box are waiting to be found. And we are transformed immediately into those perverse voyeurs who rubberneck traffic around a particularly gruesome accident. We want to see one of the walkers discover it and be horrified. Having stolen this from us the first time around Mysskin gives it to us this time, but still holds back the theatrics as if to say "you will get what you want but on my terms".
This is the defining trait of Yudhdham Sei - that the audience must accept the film on Mysskin's terms. At its core it is a police procedural set in a rather dark reality. There are no incentives to be good in this world. In fact one is unsure about what constitutes 'good' in this world. It is a world where a perpetually drunk mortician lies nearly indistinguishable from the cadavers he examines, a borther must serve tea to find his sister and a police officer must bribe his own kind to get information that he should be privy to. To get into any of the plot dynamics would be to alter the terms on which Mysskin wants his viewers entering the cinema hall. And so I shall leave you with a small observation I made during my viewing. Two of my fellow viewers, the same ones who exhibited a disturbing lack of patience during the initial portions of the film, were cheering loudly during some portions in the psychosis fueled violence of the second half. With this portion of the film Mysskin seems to have found that frayed last nerve on which a lot of women are when it comes to the daily inequities they face. I am unsure what was more disturbing, the single minded violence or the cheer it received from some quarters of the aaudience. Are we that pissed off? And if we are what are we doing about it?
While the discerning viewer processes all the information that Mysskin throws at him, there is enough finesse in the scenes and the music to draw him in to proceedings as they were. Consider, for instance, how he chooses to introduce to us the dismembered parts. The first set makes its appearance during a particularly raucous celebration bringing in the new year. Mankind is often at its most selfish when it is happy. When you laugh often the world will laugh with you just to be polite - not because it shares your joy. That no one in that large crowd of revelers chooses to see how a cardboard box of severed body parts reached the roof of a car underlines how unempathetic joy makes us. If the introduction of the first set of body parts is indiction of happiness, the second indicts the viewers themselves. As the ominous background music (Some lovely work with the strings by K here) floats around the walkers and flickering tubelights of a city park we already know that the contents of another cardboard box are waiting to be found. And we are transformed immediately into those perverse voyeurs who rubberneck traffic around a particularly gruesome accident. We want to see one of the walkers discover it and be horrified. Having stolen this from us the first time around Mysskin gives it to us this time, but still holds back the theatrics as if to say "you will get what you want but on my terms".
This is the defining trait of Yudhdham Sei - that the audience must accept the film on Mysskin's terms. At its core it is a police procedural set in a rather dark reality. There are no incentives to be good in this world. In fact one is unsure about what constitutes 'good' in this world. It is a world where a perpetually drunk mortician lies nearly indistinguishable from the cadavers he examines, a borther must serve tea to find his sister and a police officer must bribe his own kind to get information that he should be privy to. To get into any of the plot dynamics would be to alter the terms on which Mysskin wants his viewers entering the cinema hall. And so I shall leave you with a small observation I made during my viewing. Two of my fellow viewers, the same ones who exhibited a disturbing lack of patience during the initial portions of the film, were cheering loudly during some portions in the psychosis fueled violence of the second half. With this portion of the film Mysskin seems to have found that frayed last nerve on which a lot of women are when it comes to the daily inequities they face. I am unsure what was more disturbing, the single minded violence or the cheer it received from some quarters of the aaudience. Are we that pissed off? And if we are what are we doing about it?
