Two films and a director



Many hailed Chennai – 600 028 as a landmark film. It did extremely well in the box office and created a huge hype for the director Venkat Prabhu’s next outing Saroja. When Saroja hit the theatres a few weeks back, the response was unprecedented and Sify hailed it as 'a new millennium cinema.’

Both the films have many things in common that showcase the director’s inclination and perhaps style. Heavily edited and colour corrected, they would give the MTV videos run for their money in terms of ASL (Average Shot Length.) The colours change at whim, frames dissolve, fade in and out in a tearing hurry, frames interlace, cut back and front and even layer out so rapidly that it appears to be quite a novel form of storytelling but soon tires out the eyes. The ASL is so short that it often disorients rather than lead your focus.

Well known film critic Roger Ebert has a phrase that goes like this, ‘the characters are acutely aware that they are in a movie.’ The operative word is ‘characters’ and not ‘actors.’ The phrase can be aptly used for two films in discussion. The characters know when to appear naturally like your neighbour and when to walk in stylistic slow motion to a geared up electric guitar lead. Both the films contain motifs and well known phrases from well known films that will retain your familiarity to the idea of characters. Here it’s about the ‘idea’ of the characters and not exactly the characters themselves because the viewer is still distanced from the performance. The characters walk in and out of their two garb of ‘appearing natural’ to ‘enacting something for the viewer’ that the viewer will again be disoriented. This causes enough surprises because you’ll never know which garb the particular character is wearing, and keeps you guessing and interested as the movie progresses. Again remember that it’s not the story or the plot twists that keep you hooked but this constant character swapping.

Apart from this, Venkat Prabhu plays around with the tonality of the film, ASL, and increased intensity through upbeat music to narrate simple stories. And then there is the obsession with the editing software. It is difficult to tell whether Venkat Prabhu spent more time at shooting spots or at the editing desk fiddling around with the latest version of Final Cut Pro. As a result, what you get is Brazilian City of God meeting quasi-realism of Bharathiraaja presented in the package of Memento and Requiem For a Dream.

The result is not extremely satisfying. Disoriented and rendered colour blind, the viewer is unable to decide conclusively whether he has really enjoyed the film. It may be enjoyable for an audience unfamiliar with Latin American and independent cinema of Hollywood. But to others the effort becomes tiring after certain point. Chennai - 600 028 does not warrant so much complaint because of its novelty but Saroja clearly does. When Venkat Prabhu – this is really exasperating – plagiarises an early nineties flick Judgement Night for his Saroja, then all the other criticisms becomes pointless. It’s absolutely intriguing why such a celebrated and emerging creator like him would choose to tread the beaten path of countless other mediocre filmmakers. On second thoughts, if other plagiarists in the industry can be called icons and walk around so brazenly, Venkat Prabhu can't be singled out unfairly. After all, he is in an august company.

Image sourced from: Sify