A quietly affecting saga of an ordinary man

Maamanithan Film Evaluate: For a lot of the first half of Seenu Ramasamy’s Maamanithan, what we get is a narrative that resembles a set of feel-good episodes from an abnormal man’s life. We meet Radhakrishnan (Vijay Sethupathi), an trustworthy, middle-aged auto driver, who leads a cheerful life together with his loving spouse Savithri (Gayathrie) and two doting youngsters. In a flashback that’s offered as a bedtime story that he narrates to his little daughter, we see the opposite people who find themselves a part of his life, like his good friend Ismail (Guru Somasundaram), how he ended up with this household, and why he chooses to aspire for a life higher than his current one.

He strikes up a take care of Madhavan (Shaji), a real-estate developer, to assist him promote his plots, in order that he can afford to ship his youngsters to a personal college. However he finally ends up getting duped by Madhavan, who has now absconded, leaving him to face the wrath of the folks of his village and police motion. Can Radhakrishnan discover a solution to forestall his household from disintegrating and make sure that his youngsters get educated?

Maamanithan performs out like a genteel model of Mahanadhi. In that movie, too, we had a protagonist who’s a cheerful household man with two youngsters who solely needs to progress to the subsequent stage in his life, however will get cheated. However what if he had managed to keep away from jail and had some exterior assist to make sure the security of his household? What if the individuals who he met throughout his journey in the direction of redemption are trustworthy and humble people similar to him as an alternative of ruthless wardens? Seenu Ramasamy basically takes away the pathos of Mahanadhi and substitutes it with the feel-good fantasy of Vetri Kodi Kattu, wherein people dreaming of a greater future get swindled, however handle to stand up once more via sheer hope and a bit of little bit of innocent deceit.

What offers this movie freshness is the low-key method wherein the director lets the drama play out. Even probably the most dramatic moments are offered in a naturalistic method, which makes us really feel nearer to the characters and empathise with the conditions that they discover themselves in. When a spouse discovers that she has been left on her personal to fend for herself and her youngsters by her husband, there isn’t any extremely charged emotional outburst or wailing. As an alternative, we get the quiet resolve of a lady who tries to get by with the playing cards that life has dealt her with. It’s this similar strategy that we see even when a personality meets the individual accountable for all his troubles. Even the cops are offered as understanding people who’re sympathetic to the household of the one that they’re searching for.

That stated, the director journeys up whereas going forward with this strategy by making it too handy for his protagonist to get his redemption. When Radhakrishnan goes to Kerala, he instantly manages to discover a job, mates and even a surrogate household within the type of a widow and her teenaged daughter. And the one who he’s after results in the identical place as he goes to later. We additionally get a charged musical quantity in the direction of the climax that feels tonally off.

Fortunately, the performances make sure that we do not cease caring for the characters. Vijay Sethupathi is maybe the one star who’s daring sufficient to again such scripts today, and he effortlessly makes us purchase into Radhakrishnan and his follies. Gayathrie is stable within the position of a decided housewife complete Guru Somasundaram lends weight to a considerably underwritten character. They’re additionally backed by stable filmmaking. The primary half options among the greatest filmmaking on this director’s movies, with one scene easily flowing into the subsequent, complemented by M Sukumar’s cinematography, which stays unobtrusive (the various lengthy takes by no means take away our consideration from the story), all the time within the service of the storytelling. It’s only the music, by Ilaiyaraaja and Yuvan Shankar Raja, that considerably falls brief.

Additionally, in these instances when big-screen leisure has largely come to imply motion thrillers and fantasies, Maamanithan — a character-driven drama – does really feel just like the final of its species. And by the point that it ends, it turns into one thing extra — a saga that’s quietly affecting.

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