Arjunan Saakshi

2nd movie by the Passenger fame Ranjith Sankar is a Prithiviraj starrer - Arjunan Saakshi.

I believe Passenger was a 'Cricket's Solomon's Throw' for the director, but Arjunan Saakshi doesn't fare far behind. But for one or two compromises for a star like Prithiviraj, the director has done full justice to the script and the central theme. The most catchy part was the Courtroom climax, where the protagonist sums up his promised statement in private to the Judicial bench.

.... loosely translated to english

Given are the documents indicating the consent to withdrawal of all the legal blockades against the Metro-Rail Project made out by these four accused. This Project must see light, Your Honour; Not just for they were the dreams of Late Feroze Muppan, it must be accomplished for each of us individuals.

Not by my personal genius that I have been able to bring the guilty to light. Not out of incapacity, the Police and the enforcemenet system were unable to establish the truth, their hands are rather tied! I am not Arjunan; I am a poor victim of a mistaken identity who got entangled into this; but Arjunan is somewhere amongst us, yet he is unable to find courage to come out and expose the truth in day light. His fear is your failure, since you are the creators of Arjunan and his likes. When people like Freoze Muppan are eliminated from among us, when an average citizen is denied justice, people like Arjunan keep propping up.

Where is Aabaavanan ?

There was one ambitious filmmaker who came up with a brilliant Oomai Vizhigal, a very good Inaindha Kaigal and a good Karuppu Roja over a span of 10 years. Aabaavanan! Looks like he scripted and produced the first two while also directing the third. All three were off-beat in genre for the respective eras in tamil cinema. Now, he seems to have met with his creative end after the television disaster 'Sambaa', while there still are some unspoken links with Ayngran Intl. in the lines of film-making.

Looking back in time, in 1986, when Tamil cinema had entered the trap of compromising production values and planning movies with the star value as the only marketing front, Oomai Vizhigal should have come as a big surprise. One must admit that these kind of dark-thrillers were almost run in the mill in Malayalam cinema after K.G. Geroge's Yavanika(1982), and Aabaavanan's handling of the screenplay was very unprofessional, clearly reflecting the lack of experience of the team. Nevertheless, credit must be given towards production of such a plotline with limited star value and an upcoming actor like Vijayakanth choosing to play a grey-haired veteran cop while still seeing an upward path in his film career.

One big blotch to be marked is the visible lack of details, while losing the plot to very unimportant romantic fronts, that too three of them. Despite this, one can never fail to appreciate how the film is carried on by three veteran artists, who had very less connection with mainstream cinema at that time, if at all any, a less known Karthik and a practically unknown Arun Pandiyan, and how they managed to see some commercial success out of it. Had this been handled by a creative director of that time like Pratap Pothan or Balu Mahendra, it could have seen light with a tight screenplay while at the same time save a thought for it could have turned disastrous in the hands of Perarasu's of 80's.

While one may argue that Inaindha Kaigal came at the same time as Vetri Vizha and Soorasamharam and was very much with the trend, the plot line was far too ambitious when compared against any action flick of that era. The plot line involved espionage, organised crime, Military corruption, court-martial, prison break, border tension, and above all, the only cinema which dared to explore Indo-Chinese border tension after 1964. Ofcourse, quite a few action sequences were plain lift-off from many Bond movies, but the interval block of "Inaindha Kaigal" and the prison break scene with a flying trapeze were defining moments in Tamil Cinema history. Again, it was a victim of vintage unprofessionalism in screenplay and dialogues, but I would pin hopes on reviving such a plot-line in the form of a remake, for it has too good a scope and deserves a slick production, more so as a trilingual (Tamil-Telugu-Malayalam) high-budget attempt.

Passenger - THE Story and then THE Movie (Malayalam, 2009)

I am not drawn into any kind of sibling bug*, but, this indeed is a movie review.

Passenger is a kind of story that gets overshadowed by a larger-than-life flick like A Wednesday. We all will certainly agree that A Wednesday cannot come, is not going to come and will never come. But we can be a Passenger every day, or atleast a day every week - say every Wednesday.

I remember when Director Shankar was asked the question, soon after the release of Anniyan (##), if he was playing it safe with his usual "Cleansing of the Society" story after the Boys debacle?. He replied saying Anniyan was his biggest risk, for all his previous films had a Macro issue to counter coupled with personal vengence, while Anniyan targeted seemingly trivial issues that reflected lack of personal integrity** and responsibility in the individuals, which has eventually lead the society they form, into an irresponsible society with practically lost integrity.

Our story has two heros. One, hero of the story - Advocate Nanthan Menon, who actually is a Hero. Such Heros do exist even today, but we can't get close to them. Let them better stay where they belong. His wife is a TV journalist who is covering a special story that was rocking the state politics at that time, while Nanthan was fighting a related litigation in Court.

The second one is our Passenger Mr. Sathyanathan, who is the running character of the plot. Sathyanathan is a guy-next-seat salaried-middle-class person who is among million daily commuters by train, whose biological clock is rooted to his daily routine. He is a person with integrity and social responsibility, but not by any means an-activist kind, but with a motivation to do his might to do something about a problem that irks his eyes.

One day, he decides to break his routine to work over-time at office for having applied to take leave on the next day, manages to catch a later train home. His bio-clock fails him as he misses his station and happens to meet Advocate Menon, his fellow passenger. They part close to midnight, when Sathyanathan witnesses something Big. What our Passenger does for the next 16 hours, from what he thinks is the best for the situation, forms the story.

All of us, who are grateful to have had good parenting and been braught up with values, are expected in the society to be like Sathyanathan. But we all need a push to become one at some point of time. We do face situations, situations that brings out an urge to do something, but more often that not we try to supress the rush-of-blood with the word 'fear', like the Station Master in this story. In most cases, like the Taxi Driver, it is the lack of self-belief and a feeling that we are trivial entities to contribute anything significant to this large society, that stops one from doing what is right. We all are caught between this Station Master and the Taxi driver. It is when one manages to cross these two barriers, a Sathyanathan comes out.

The story is about evolution of character of a person in a matter of hours. Sathyanathan who still hasn't conquered fear, dares risking his life, when he gets a stimulus upon understanding the gravity of the situation after meeting Anuradha Menon, and the Taxi driver steps out of his shackles on seeing his Passenger's motivation.

The movie, runs for about 115 mins, is well scripted and filmed with a gripping pace in narration. The director has done his work in including subtleties in a middle-class household and camarderie between cummuter friends to keep the script tight and natural. The parting words from the Taxi Driver took me back to Rashomon's Monk. And, for one negative point in the film - The courtroom scene was too shallow and was not essential. The director could have done with a corridor conversation after the hearing.

Sreenivasan and Dileep, as the lead artists, are brilliant, Sreenivasan in particular, after having witnessed his annoying performance in Bhargava Charitram, was relieved to watch him in this one and Oru naaL Varum. His latest flick Traffic is supposedly good; equally good. Dileep, I fear is on the verge of becoming another Suresh Gopi when it comes to playing stereotypical roles, but this was very well underplayed. If you need a frowning worried old-man, you have Nedumudi Venu, as the Taxi Driver. In my opinion, only Prakash Raj has a wider variety and ease in acting than Venu. It was heartening to see Mamta Mohandas cast in a worthy role, but disheartening that she had King and Kedi releasing after this :P. Jagathy was adequate and I am happy that Tilakan was not slotted in his place.

* The Author's kid-brother is a guest reviewer at Claps&Boos ;-)

** Integrity may find many meanings in different readings, but my personal definition would be the inwardly-honesty in a person. Every person will have his own framework for rights & wrongs. It is when a person commits something he conciously believes is wrong, and has a twinge in his heart in doing so, he is still a person with integrity, but not brazen to stand by his values.

## I am not a big fan of Anniyan. To me, it was a Painting made on the canvas called Vidathu Karuppu, by brushing Primal Fear paint over SE7EN sketch.