Soodhu Kavvum - My thoughts

This is not a review. This is a passionate discussion post about the tamil movie ‘Soodhu Kavvum’ directed by Naalaya Iyakkunar fame NALAN KUMARSWAMY, starring ‘Nightingale of Tamil Indie films’, ‘Joseph Gordon-Levitt of Kollywood’, 'Darling of the Masses' VIJAY SETHUPATHI. Stop reading this right here, if you haven’t seen the film. Do step back once you've watched it.

There are plenty of articles out there in net which reviews Soodhu Kavvum and praise the cast, crew, story, script and music of the film. In this post I have tried discussing, dissecting it and expressed the instances, scenes and shots which I loved and the way I felt about it. *Story Spoiler alert*.

The genre of Soodhu Kavvum is mentioned as Dark humour & Crime comedy. But one cannot stick Soodhu Kavuum under a particular genre, I feel. It’s a mix and total troll on almost all genres and the best part is that it parodies, spoofs and makes fun on the grammar and template that was ever followed in Hollywood, Bollywood, kollywood and other foreign films. CS Amudhan’s yesteryear’s hit movie ‘Tamizh Padam’ predominantly spoofs only tamil fims but Soodhu Kavvum trolls every single cliché on all kinds of cinema. Each and every character, shot, ambience of the scene, music, crispy hilarious dialogues and cuts iterates the same.

There are hardly few directors who break the standard procedures and grammar followed during writing/ making a particular scene or shot. With my little knowledge and observation on films, I personally consider Quentin Tarantino is the master in it. One can notice the hilarious, breaking the genre attempt in almost all QT films. Take his recent ‘Django Unchained’ for example, he gives a hat and horse to a nigger and makes him a cow boy/ bounty hunter, making fun of the evil K-Klux-Klan with their own signature masks and portrays them as a bunch of lunatics. The White and Mexican owned Spaghetti western genre has been totally trolled in Django Unchained and that’s the way QT paid homage for his favorite Spaghetti western genre.

Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ was a big hit and it was mainly spoken for its authentic writing and making. The success of Reservoir Dogs is that it paid homage for heist and crime genre by portraying the aftermath of a failed heist rather than a sequential/ linear discussion about the plan, mode and success of the heist. But, QT would’ve seriously handled it with his own signature style of cold blood, violence and revenge. Even this legend has been marked with a template, for now.

If one form of paying homage &tribute to a classic by explicitly liking it and making an art form inspired from it, paying homage to the classics by breaking/ spoofing about is an all-together different style and tribute. It doesn't infer that one dislike/ condemn it. One familiarized, liked, loved and consumed it more and more that he starts to joke and mock about it. Nalan Kumaraswamy rightly fits the bill here.

Dark comedy or black comedy is a new genre to Tamil cinema. But Nalan, a new-face to the feature film industry, has broken the cliche, film-making grammar and totally revolutionized the tamil film industry with Soodhu Kavvum.

Breaking down Soodhu Kavvum:

Vijay Sethupathi as ‘Das’ & his idiotic trio team –  Parody take on perfect teams undergoing heist or Crime in movies like 'Sword fish', 'Oceans Series', 'Italian Job', 'Bank job' etc... It will seem like Guy Ritchie’s ‘Snatch’ stylish movie, where the characters would be completely unaware of their actions, but here the idiotic bunch does all the mad, insane things genuinely and with perfect sense. This is the main reason it tinkles your laughter bone with perfect desi-humour.

Hallucinated heroine character- Big troll and ‘on-your face Indian cinema’ attempt. Pacing and placing heroine just for a glamour material, fantasy object, item song in most of the Indian films has been hilariously thrashed. Vijay Sethupathi hallucinates that he lives with an invisible girlfriend and listens to whatever she says or comment to him. I felt it as big spoof attempt on various Hollywood films like the giant Bunny rabbit character in 'Donnie Dorko', Danny’s invisible friend from Stanley Kubrick’s 'The Shining', Norman Bates character from Alfred Hitchock’s 'Psycho', the character of a mysterious man in black car who professor Nash sees in ‘A Beautiful Mind’. Just like the above mentioned characters, Vijay Sethupathi acts and performs whatever his invisible GF says, to some extent. When his invisible GF dies, Nalan has used a musical, the one that would appear in an emotional, sad scene amongst lovers in Billy Wilder’s films, early black & white Hollywood film scenes where the couple bid farewell to each other and walk away or die in their arms, such effect. There is even an angel song ‘Sa Ga’ in the movie where she pampers and consoles Vijay Sethupathi. Hiralious take on all the dream sequence masala songs.

The silent ‘Psycho Police’ – Good cop, Bad cop, Serious Cop, Rowdy police, Encounter police etc.. we’ve fed-up and done watching lot of stereotypical cop characters in Tamil/ Indian cinema. These characters yell, scream and utter mediocre punch dialogues and give us grim/ cold bad-ass looks at all situations. Nalan has broken this template by making the villain police character dead silent without speaking a single dialogue. The best cliché/ laughter part is when the bad-ass cop gets his face punched by one of the trio member with a pistol yelling the dialogue ‘Kaila gun vechruken, sirikira’. There was a thunderous laugh for this scene in theatre. The last but not least, the ultimate 'Iruttu arayil murattu kuthu' sequence looked like a parody take on torture sequences from 'Zero dark thirty' & 'Body of lies' climax spoof.

Vijay Sethupathi’s elder brother ‘Dr. Film Director’– Mocking so many thukkada, petty case, low-level directors roaming in Kodambakkam and Saligramam, dying to make a tamil feature film for cheap fame with just money, no idea and zero brain.

The music and BGM is a big plus and even they don’t lack their part on breaking the template. ‘Mama douser kayanduchu’- trolling the classic Jazz and Blues song genre, ‘Kasu Panam Thutu Money Money’ – Kalaichifying the 1950s tamil period films where the King/ Emperor enjoys seeing a serious dance form performance in his castle, ‘Ellam kadandhu pogumada’ –Parodying MGRs Inspiration songs like ‘Nenjam undu nermai undu odu raja’ etc..

Pizza eating politician MR Radha rather than tamil politician’s stereotypical portrayal with alcohol and Chicken piece diet, Spoofing Rajini’s ‘Priya’ movie blind-folded scene by perfectly finding the route in a funny note, trolling Hitchock’s cameo in his own film-instead of Nalan Kumaraswamy- ‘Pizza’ director Karthik Subbaraj appears driving a Jaguar car, funny and sarcastic news headlines and news scrolls at the bottom while newsreader announces some serious news, following  5 golden rules on ‘kEdnapping’, using a toy helicopter for a heist, Arumai Prakasam trying to jump from a building like ‘Mission Impossible’ Tom crusie… There is Sarcasm, Satire, Spoof, Dark comedy, Observational comedy, Surreal comedy, Parody, Dramedy and genuine humor that oozes out in gallons in each and every frame of Soodhu Kavvum.

Thou shall miss Soodhu Kavvum thy sinner.

Tamil cinema's stereotypical Douser kayanduchu. Kayatiyavar Nalan Kumarasamy & VJ Sethupathi.

We south India Cinephile's won’t just decode Nolan’s films. We decipher, dissect and devote our Nalan’s film too. All hail and welcome Nalan!