Director Vasanthabalan has a conservative yet a dare devilish streak in his knack of storytelling, which would certainly place him among the frontline filmmakers of today. One common thing in all his movies is that a character would have an underpinned suffering which is unknown to the character but would appear as a deja vu for the audience. He would allow the audience to share the grief and sufferings of that character and at the end when the audience expect a traditional way of relieving themselves in return for the time they have invested, he wouldn’t hesitate to throw a spanner by just declaring that there is just a continuum of suffering from which one cannot get liberated as long as one stays in the theater. At times he tends to draw parallels with director Bala (whose work, needless to say is reminiscent of cumulative suffering, in almost all instances). The point of deviation between the two directors is that, Vasanthabalan takes a rather conservative route of employing some intriguingly lighter moments, some genuine gags that tickles and restores balance in the narrative unlike his senior who is much more stiff and hardly cares for any of these.
Kaaviya Thalaivan also seems to follow the above mentioned narrative structure but was carried out with much poise. The story is set in a suburb of Madurai of pre-independent India where drama troupes were regarded as the messiahs of entertainment. The story is spun around Komathi (Prithviraj) and Kali (Siddharth), artistes who perform on stage for a drama company under the aegis of their guru, Sivadas (Nassar). Komathi gradually develops a rivalry with Kali as the latter is lauded for his dedication and performance by their guru and tries hard to pull him down. This battle continues throughout the movie where Kali remains the blue-eyed boy with respect to the script, which I wish could have taken some interesting twists, but sadly had none.
The narrative was engaging for a finite interval, after which we tend to predict things and what would ensue by simply putting together the proceedings. The ending also seemed to add an unnecessary element of flab as it was easily guessable. But what worked - the performances from Prithviraj, Siddharth, Vedhika; the brilliant tunes from Rehman which were made to come alive on screen with some equally vibrant cinematography by Nirav Shah; and finally the mise en scene that was put in place to pull off the period in which the story was narrated - kudos for the art department, though most of them had a ‘Chettinad’ fervor.
Off the lot, Prithviraj’s characterization, even though sketched on predictable lines, with deep shades of grey, made us empathize with him at times due to Siddharth’s shoddy character sketch of that of a ‘playboy with principles’ that was too sweet to swallow. How does Siddharth manage to lure the women on screen? Why does Prithviraj lose track in the middle? Had these uncertainties been attended with much more tangible rationales, this would have been an epic in its truest sense. For now it just aspires to be one and is almost there - so near yet so far!!
Verdict: Worth a Watch
Rating: 2.5 / 5
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