Saturday, April 16th was just another day, till I received a call from a friend. He wanted me to come to a movie with him. That didn’t amuse me much. It was a 10:15 p.m. night show. That didn’t help either. It was a Tamil movie. That was it! Had to say a big NO now. But somehow, I was not able to say that bluntly; the person on the other side had genuine friendly feelings. After all, it was just my company that was demanded. Still, I managed to show some reluctance. “It’s a Rajni movie man” came the reply, as if it was some kind of sin to say no to a Rajni movie invitation. His voice was proposing and insisting at the same time. Somehow, I found it extremely difficult to refuse. And guess what, I agreed. The lucky movie was ‘Chandramukhi’.
Going for a tamil flick was on my agenda since a couple of years, right from the time when ‘Boys’ was released. After putting down the receiver, I felt a sense of relief, the same relief which a child gets after finishing its homework. I actually started looking forward to it. Rest of the day passed peacefully in the office and I was there at the auditorium at 10 o clock.
The movie starts. The first thing that flashes on the top left of screen is ‘S’ and the crowd goes berserk. Whistles and screams and slogans and what not. Not that it was not expected, even from the elite tamil speaking Bangaloreans, it was just that I was not getting the context. But, what the hell, let’s have the fun, I too joined the party. The atmosphere was electrifying. Only Rajni can bring out that kind of exuberance. Still wondering, I continued to look at the screen. The ‘S’ was written in golden colour, which was glittering so brightly, that every single lady sitting the audience would have died to have that as a pendant in her chain. Then followed the letters ‘U’, ‘P’, ‘E’, ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘T’, ‘A’, ‘R’, all in power point presentation style, one after another. And then flashed the word ‘Rajnikant’. All my queries were put to rest.
Five minutes into movie, we have a scene whereby some 10-15 goons stop a van and are harassing people over some matter. All of sudden, a kick appears from somewhere and we are shown a white sports shoe spanning across the screen. For 10 second we have only the shoe on the screen and some background music. Slowly the camera moves back and we see a leg attached to the shoe and then a body attached to the leg and when the smiling face attached to the body comes on screen, we hear a huge roar and feel as if our ear drums are going to blast any moment. Then some regular Rajni stunts follow, the sunglasses wobbling and all. Then something new; it seems that our hero just quit smoking. But how can the cigarette throwing and catching by lips stunt be missed? This time it is chewing gum for a change. He throws the chewing gum in the air, it travels some arbit trajectory and falls right in his mouth.
So far so good. In fact all of it was expected, even more, with all the Rajni mails doing rounds and his much admired abilities to defy the laws of physics. But believe me, reading mails is different, you just can’t digest a fight scene if u look at one. The guy does not need any reason for showing superhuman powers. Nothing new to Indian cinema, but this stuff was out of the world. Also the gundas had a strange respect for our hero. They would stop just short of hitting him and wait for him to hit back. Imagine a guy trying to punch Rajni and stops mid air, apparently because our hero is old enough to respond back in time. Or maybe our hero is such a majestic figure that people do not dare to hit him even on screen.
Also, this guy has some kind of contract with windscreen makers. He would throw every person, rather touch every person and that person would jump on to a windscreen and shatter it to pieces. At least 20 cars were deprived of their windscreens in the process. Our master also commands control over natural powers. He can jump and wave his legs in air in such a way that he is able to generate a sandstorm. But why the sandstorm is generated at first place, is a big question. Now comes the swoosh effect. Every arm movement of our hero is supposed to be so quick that it cuts through the air and generates a swoosh sound. Although our hero has slowed a bit over the years, so elongated swoosh was used. i.e. our hero was given almost one second to move his arms. But the synchro of swoosh with actual movement was absolutely missing. Then there were so many special effects used in the fight sequence, adding to its crudeness. The effects were so poorly executed that every body could feel the artificiality. I think they were deliberately kept that way so that viewers should go back saying that the movie was full of special effects.
Rajni plays a psychiatrist in the movie. He is a mind reader. Not the one who would work out and guess what is there in your mind, but the one who could simply listen to what you are thinking with all the punctuation and phonetics. Incredible, no? Our superhero also has got the power to influence the celestial activity. By merely waving through the air, he changes half moon to a full moon progressively. Jim Carrey (Bruce Almighty) surely has got a lot to learn from him about the art of lunar modification. Then he simply lays down a trajectory in the sky and a comet follows the same. Wow! What the hell were people doing in Deep Impact or Armageddon? They should have come straight to Rajni.
Now one more hilarious thing was there. There is a song in the movie in which people are flying some kites. So, we see all sorts of kites in the sky, lots of them and in all colours. But we see very few people flying them. So where do these kites come from? Special effects rock my dear. And to add to the height of it, when the song gets over, the kites rearrange themselves in the sky, to take the shape of a word which everyone loves to see. Yes, you guessed it right, ‘SUPERSTAR’.
Well yes, there are a few things to talk about apart from Rajni. Direction of movie is good in general. Story is gripping with some good thrill sequences. Only thing which kept me wondering was that in order to treat a split personality patient, why did they need a team of a psychiatrist and a tantrik. Jyotika, who plays the role of a split personality, has given a great performance. Vadivelu has given a wonderful comic performance and let me assure you that you need not know the language to giggle over his acting. His facial expressions and his body language will do the job. The cameraman, it seems was deprived of playing merry go round in his childhood and we have to bear the consequences of that. Choreography is something that has disappointed me. I have always been a fan of dance sequences in tamil movies. Although, they have only few dance steps, which they follow repeatedly, it is the agility in those steps that appeals me the most. I love to see Prabhu Deva melting in his pants or Vijay performing the kite flying action. But here, agility was totally missing. Apparently, our hero is a bit mature to perform these steps and no one else would be allowed to dance in a better way. It would be a blunder if we don’t appreciate the hard work of the make up team, specially the hair dresser. With our hero loosing hair over the years, he is still able to retain his hair style and his age looks hardly over 45. There is also one small episode of good carnatic music and a classical duet dance. Use of colours in the movie is commendable.
All in all, the movie is poised to be a hit. Most of the things I mentioned here might exist in other movies as well, it is just that I was not concentrating on dialogues that I was able to notice these things. Well, maybe I’ll able to find that out when I see my next tamil movie. Overall, it was a lovely experience, which will always have a special place in my memory.
