Love from the Skies!!- Few thoughts about Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya

Watched Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya ( Will you cross the skies? ) movie yesterday. It left me with mixed emotions. I loved the movie and began to do pro-bono talk amidst my friends who actually didnt like the movie when they saw with me. Of course this movie meant a lot to me, having dealt with few characters in the those 16-mm reels in my real-life. I am not setting out to write the review of the movie. While the movie would work depending on how you actually related to the characters, coz, unlike most the movies, the characters in this movie are complex, three-dimensional people. What I loved the most in the movie, was the beautiful use of cinema as a metaphor for the story that sounded so typically filmy in its surface until you cared to look at the complex emotional structures which lend all the seriousness the movie pretended to hide behind the veneer of the cliched smitten boy-girl love story. 

I have always been fascinated by movies as a metaphor. Movies, by the power of their panoramic visuals and ambitious dreams, always helped create the perfect fantasy, distinct from the grimy reality mortals are acquainted with. Few years back, I had written "Love, Pyar & Celluloid ", an incomplete anthology of short stories delving deep into this movie as a metaphor. Having kept this anthology in the docks for years, this movie has provoked me to throw it to the winds. ( I shall be posting it in my blog soon. ) My mixed emotions towards this movie arises because of this blasphemous use of this metaphor. How could a movie so unapologetically desecrate this golden delusion of cinema in which all seemingly impossible circumstances in reality look so simple and achievable. This delusion has been soothing and titillating people since the advent of melodrama in Indian cinema. However, as one of my favorite philosophers used to say, this age of delusion is now over. Welcome to reality.

A reality where there exists no veil between what happens on and off the screen. Although this is an heart-warming phenomenon for the growth of sensible cinema in Indian screens, it is a disturbing phenomenon for the eternal romanticist, poet, whose rosy dreams are oxygenated by the power of cinema..

Hats off to gautham menon!!! You must be a hard-core romantic!! I loved the female protagonist's dialogues, especially when she turns so messy and self-immolates the relationship she had with her beloved, when she " I really dont know what I need in my life."

How dare could he have brought this slice of reality in the magical world of movies where women used to be so cute, so romantic and forthright.!!