While the nation is going bonkers over “Pawri Ho rahi hai”, the citizens of Tamil Nadu are bending their left shoulder down and dancing with their left hand while holding the right steady to some furious drum-beats and the chant of “Vaathi coming!!”. Vaathi or Vaathiyar is teacher in Tamil. With a box office collection of over 100 crores in the first three days, this one film has cocked a snook at the coronavirus!
ASHOK’s FIVE will attempt with great trepidation to review Thalapathy Vijay’s #Master now playing on #AmazonPrime. #Director #LokeshKanakaraj has managed to deliver a truly classy mass entertainer that is tailor made for the Tamil Star #JosephVijay. The film also stars #VijaySethupathi, #MalavaikaMohanan, #AnreahJeremiah, #ShantanuBhagyaraj and #ArjunDass.
JD is a college professor who is always drunk after 6 PM but is loved by his students. He is sent off to a juvenile criminal facility to teach and mentor the young boys there. As he faces still resistance from the inmates, he is also forced to take on a rowdy who is exploiting the children to further his criminal empire. One incident reforms him and he then reforms himself to take on the baddies, aided by a female colleague.
Plots or storylines do not do the delirium of celebrating a Vijay movie. “You have to line up and watch the 4 am show on the big screen to experience the madness”says a delirious colleague of mine. His first name is also Vijay! The Paal Abhishekam (ritual offering of milk on huge cutouts), drum beats and the crowd frenzy around the theatre screening the “First Day First Show” of the Sankranti release of the Superstars cannot be described in words.
#Master is one of those classily written mass films that will have you whistling and hooting on the sidelines of the theatre. The script has everything in it - an ingredient from each of the counters of the masala box in the kitchen. There is fervent dancing, emotion, flashbacks of anguish, action, daredevilry (including an ace archer who shoots down an oncoming truck like in MadMax Fury Road), a villain who can measure up to the hero, comedy, revenge and eminently hummable songs. You have all the ingredients for your Sunday pawri !!
#Vijay is in his elements in #Master. The casual clothes and dance steps are true to his signature style. #AniruddhRavichaner sets the tone with the #MastertheBlaster signature track introducing JD as he jumps out of an auto and sets the streets ablaze. By the time you get to the scene where the students assemble to wake him up and summon him for the college meeting, the twitch of his left hand as he responds to the beats of Vaathi coming has you on your feet! You also notice the intricacies of the costumes - a clear set of blues to contrast the stark red of Bhavani (#Sethupathy’s costumes and signature colours in the movie)
Then, there are the steps and scenes that are guaranteed to make you holler your lungs out. The elan with which JD throws the hip flask and keeps the doors of the metro open in order to beat the living daylights out of the thugs is brilliant. The “Kutty Story” number is the go to DJ number for the party in the house. Do not miss the customary moral scene class as the lyrics pay tribute to the need for hard work and smart work in the modern day world. How can I forget the now customary ode to Kabaddi and the well-choreographed fight sequence on the court!
The conflict between the two big names in #Master reminds you in many ways of how #Madhavan and #Sethupathy take on each other in #VikramVedha. Bhawani has a back story that sets up the villain. The younger Bhawani is played by #Mahendran who watches his parents burnt alive by the truck association rivals. This sets him on the path of villainy and the backdrop of the meat processing facility which also forms the location for the climax fight make his character memorable. In the last fight scene, each punch of the fist takes down cement plaster, stone chips and chunks of meat off the carcass even as the protagonists trade body bows at each other!
#Master belongs to the set of films where its all masculine values from the word go. The women are there but in blink-and-you-miss roles. #AndreaJeremiah plates Vanitha, an archery champ. #Mohanan is Charulatha, a rookie professor who helps JD see things for what they are. And of course there is Savitha (#GowriKrishna) who plays the college student.
The myth of the Tamil superstar turned god is a mystery to most. Only in Tamil Nadu do you have a classification where Superstar Rajni, Thalapathy Vijay and perhaps Ajith form category A and the producer-distributor eco-system is willing to accept a differential rate for all other stars. The #Rajinikanth story is altogether different and needs a full chapter to be told. For now, lets just say that the father of the Dravidian movement, our own #Voltaire of South India, #PeriyarEVRamaswamy decreed that there are no gods. However, he was acutely aware of the need for human beings to have heroes to rally around and turned to the silver screen for this. MGR started this trend in the 1960s with his film #NadodiMannan where he took on issues like corruption, nepotism and other social ills. His protege #Jayalaltha followed it up with #AdimaipPenn in 1969 with similar themes. While these films and the roles they played made them endearing to the masses, the advent of Rajni and his super-duper hit #Padayappa in 1999 changed things again. The hero now did not need to be light skinned or handsome, On the contrary, we have seen flawed heroes with Rajni, #Kamaahasan and #Vijay all play disfigured, dwarfed or buck-toothed leading men. The plots are often outlandish, the dialogues cater to the dark alleyways of the theatre and the stories are often divorced from reality. The heroes delver moral and inspirational lessons in their films.
This makes the masses feel empowered; their hero is doing what they cannot or could not achieve and this makes them happy. The proclivity for Tamil audiences to hero-worship their heroes cuts across generations and now even disciplines. Didnt you know that #Dhoni is from Madurai and is a Tamil god?
#ThalapathyVijay carries off #Master on his shoulders. The plot and the storyline are not fantastic but this is wholesome entertainment and one cannot complain. If you cut through the clutter you realize that this ordinary looking hero brings five qualities to the screen - livewire body language and dialogue delivery, dancing abilities, off-screen simplicity, championing of social causes and a superb comic timing. At the last count he has 20,000 fan clubs across the state and over 2 million members. In Taml cinema, the more things change, the more they remain the same!
