Sunday, April 1, 2012

3 - Excellent experimentation !

The story revolves around 2 people and only two people. A wonderfully crafted Psychological Drama/Thriller which might have some impact on everyone who watches it. I still couldn't understand why they named the movie 3, was it for portraying 3 stages of the lead actors life or for something else?

Film starts with people mourning at the death of Ram (Dhanush). Seen here are , Ram's wife Janani ( Shruthi Hassan), Dhanush's folks ( Prabhu and Bhanupriya) and Shruthi's folks (Rohini and someone). The story goes back and forth into past and present pointing out how Dhanush and Shruthi love each other and how they make decisions about themselves. The first half of the movie concentrates on only the courtship of the 2 protagonists of the movie. It seemed very stereotypical but very elegant on how two people can fall in love and how things can be easy if the right chords are struck at the right time. Midst this come couple of scenes where the police officer conveys a Autopsy report ( which is silenced by the BGM ) but is very shocking and painful to Shruthi. Then she also discovers a letter written to Shruthi from Dhanush before he died which is not clear but is apologetic. The next half of the movie deals with who or what killed Dhanush and what troubled Dhanush's marriage and how the intimacy shared between the couple is wrecked. Since the story has some suspenseful plot I am not going further into the story.

Before you get bored by the review, I would like to mention the feel of the movie would have been completely different ( Extremely Boring ) had the Background Score been any less powerful. I'd say, the score carried the entire movie though the screenplay was powerful. The score had a very heavy inspiration of Roman folk music and some Country Waltz. There were scenes where the music was a bit over powering the dialogues ( poor sound engineering ).

The acting department was flawless but for Shruthi Hassan. She has done her part but she still needs to experiment on many of her expressions, especially CRYING. She looks too ugly and unnatural when she cries. 

People should start comparing her with Kamal Hassan, Shivaji's son did not become like Sivaji, Amitabh's son couldn't become like Amitabh. Sathyaraj's son - don't even think about it. So lets not expect something from Shruthi in the scale of Kamal Hassan

It was a good feeling to see veteran actors like Bhanupriya , Rohini and Prabhu in one screen though they have very less influence. Dhanush doesn't need any critic for his acting, its sad to see that he's raising his "Bench-Mark" in each movie the expectations are wild. Sivakarthikeyan has single won Hands-down with his slapstick comedy along with Dhanush. He has indeed propelled the first half through his snippets  from falling under the usual Hero-Heroine love category. 

Screenplay was good but flawed and lost continuity at many instances, 

  • For how many months will Shruthi wear the "Thaali" in yellow thread?
  • For how many months will Dhanush's friend Senthil be in a cast and have a plaster in his forehead. 
    • In one scene, he's seen without one but then has one in the next.  
  • Dhanush places a letter in his right pocket but Shruthi takes it out from the left one.
  • Dhanush says Shruthi is sad after marriage, and invites her parents home. But they celebrate their "First Night" after how many days???
  • Shruthi says she's known Dhanush for 10 years, but they've been married for how long?
Even though hard to notice, quite a number of flaws and discontinuity in the screenplay. I hope Aishwarya will correct herself in her next movie. Switching between present, past and talking about the possibilities captivated the audience and a good way of story telling. 

Overall its a feel good movie with a subtle message. Please don't go to the movie with "Why this KolaVeri" expectation, its a very different Genre that was not previously handled Indian/Tamil Cinema which not many can easily pull with only 2 Characters.

My rating for this would be a 6.5!