There's a famous saying in Tamil.
"Oru paanai sottrukku oru soru patham," which roughly translates to the fact that you can use a single grain of rice to test whether the pot of rice is cooked.
The same though, unfortunately, can't be said about Bala Ganapathi William's Neeyum Naanum, his directorial debut with Jasmin Michael, Kavita Thiagarajan, Sathya, K. Khanna amongst others. The movie shows huge promise of what it could have been with a couple of interestingly written scenes, but fails to entertain as a whole movie.
The entire first half feels like a pitch deck to please the film's sponsors (Pushpa Curry Powder??) with cringe worthy product placements. The film, truly, only momentarilly attempts to tell a story in the second half.
The movie, takes its inspiration from several Hollywood romance/drama movies (not named in order to not spoil the movie) and puts an Indianised twist to it by bringing in humor, additional subplots about a woman and her first marriage, flirty boss, out of place ex-boyfriend and most importantly... a DISEASE.
Now, Tamil cinema has seen a countless number of movies centering itself around an i to the lead actor. From Ghajini, Anniyan, Naan Siggapu Manithan to even the recent Eeeti, we have seen how stories can be weaved into a person's life who is suffering from these conditions and the drama surrounding it.
Unfortunately Neeyum Naanum, for starters, refuses to acknowledge itself as a movie of such genre.
Instead, BGW takes the long winded route by establishing the movie as a love drama and goes to show the relationship between him and Jasmin Michael, which drags the movie into a concussion before finally attempting to tell the core story, late in the second half. This resurrects the movie, though very briefly in the end.
Take this for an example.
Oviya's (Jasmin Michael) introduction is shown to be sitting under a bus stop and it's raining, eating an ICE CREAM (Guys, did we not already see this in that old Vijay movie?). Is that all we need to know? Don't we need to know why on earth was she sitting alone in the middle of the night? She is never shown to take a bus throughout the entire movie after that.
Karthik's (BGW) introduction on the other hand also happens in the same scene. He stops his bike at the side of the bus stop to take shelter and falls in love with Oviya in a single scene. When Kollywood itself has moved away from such cliches, why do we still hog on to such simple tricks to establish a relationship? Couldn't they have started off any differently? Why such lazy writing?
The character development also takes a huge beating due to the lacklasture writing. Oviya is shown to be someone who is still struglling to move on from her previous relationship, but confesses to having fallen for Karthik, ONE DAY after they met at a coffee shop. All these comes separately as good single scenes, but just doesnt cohesively fall into place as a story.
Surprisingly, the film handled the film technique of Foreshadowing very well. The writing was smart in where the main plot about the disease was subtly highlighted in the beginning scenes of the movie. But when the foreshadowing had no benefit to the character developments, it falls flat.
It tells a lot about a film when a secondary subplot seems much more interesting than the primary plot. Kavitha and K Khanna's angle felt like it had far more legs to run as a story that you want to know more. The story about a divorcee's hesistation on remarrying felt more meaningful, than the beaten to death love angle between Karthik and Oviya. Unfortunately, their scenes were cut short to make way for the main story.
The film also had a character called Anantha, which for all the character build up it had, his introduction shot was possibly one of the laziest piece of writing we have seen this year for a Malaysian Tamil movie. For a character that had (supposedly) so much significance on the plot, the character lacked any meaningful scene or acting to begin with. Did the person who acted as Anantha helped fund the movie? We have so many questions.
The cinematography, by Soma Kanthan is difficult to comprehend. On one side, you emphatise with the fact that the film looks quite poor in quality due to the fact that it was shot using a camera that was not meant to be blown up to a cinema quality. But on the other side, you can not use that as an excuse - the frames looks completely distorted (at certain points). You do wonder whether Soma Kanthan could have shown his quality better if given a bigger budget (or a better camera). To Soma and the editor/colourist Ramses Rao's credit, the colouring in this movie is simply beautiful. For what seems to be one of the very first times, a Malaysian Tamil movie looks extremely pleasing to the eye. Soma Kanthan's colour choices and knowledge of the cinematic colour palette is obvious to see. Kudos, and more of this please.
Finally, the movie also suffers from a typical Malaysian Tamil movie problem - uncertainty of the plot.
Why do we tell a story? Is it because it's interesting or is it because it sounds interesting?
Neeyum Naanum probably falls into the second category. On paper, the idea of showcasing the struggle of a person who suffers from a rare disease does sound interesting enough to be made into a feature film. But it needs an arc, a gateway that allows the story to flow from start to end without it looking like a stretched out short film.
That all being said, Neeyum Naanum does shine in some places.
BGW and Jasmin Michael do look like a pair that is comfortable with each other. Malaysian filmmakers often find the challenge of showing two people in love as the actors often feel uncomfortable with the idea of being shown intimate on screen. Fortunately, BGW and Jasmin played their role well, which enhances the drama value of the story towards the end.
One of the movie's biggest strength also has to be Sathya, our yesteryear comedian often known for his roles in Pi Mai Pi Mai Tang Tu. This man was born to be a comedian and his scenes are clap worthy. His reactions add a whole new dimension to the humor quotient. His scenes, unfortunately, doesn't come enough throughout the movie.
The music by Vaarman Elangovan is noteworthy and does help set the tone for the love sequences. But we still can't understand why he appeared in a cameo for a song in the middle of the movie.
In terms of direction, Bala Ganapathi Williams shows promise as a filmmaker. He is able to write moving scenes, which surprises you.
The most noteworthy scene happens to be during a very important part of the story towards the end, in where Oviya accidentally calls Karthik with another name. The significance of that scene, especially with the context in which it was said shows Bala's maturity to write scenes that makes you connect to the core plot of the story. That's a glimpse of a writer with a potential.
But that type of scenes is far too little compared to the generic scenes that are scattered throughout the movie. We do wonder whether the budget of the movie has limited his writing ability, or the lack of time in story development.
In summary, Neeyum Naanum is easily one of the better Malaysian Tamil movies to come out this year. The problem we have is, that shouldn't be a big deal considering the fact that the bar is set so low with the previous films that have been released this year. Anyhow, unlike the rest, Neeyum Naanum didn't leave us cursing everything in sight upon leaving the cinema hall, so hey, that's a plus! Here's hoping for bigger & better from BGW & crew.
The review is based on the movie's premiere screening to a selected group of audience. The theatrical release is set to be on 20th September 2018.
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