Sarvam

It is good to see Tamil cinema veer away from stereotypical love themed movies. There were many off the beat stories in the last few months and most of them were made with a serious intent and with real talents. Some directors like Sasi Kumar used love subtly as the central theme around which the movie progresses and others like Venkat Prabhu chose to ignore it altogether. Some were good like Subramaniyapuram and some were bad like Dasavatharam. The director of Sarvam, Vishnuvardan, apparently got inspired by these movies and wanted to direct such a movie. He must have been one of those idiots who liked Dasavatharam's fate, chaos theory blah blah blah but still couldn't totally write a script without love and instead ended up making a chaotic movie.

Sarvam feels raw. It feels like watching the unedited version straight out of the cinematographer's camera. There is no continuity between scenes. There is a serious scene followed by a mind numbing scene of supposed comedy and then a song. These drastic changes keep occuring till the end of the movie and rather jarred my nerves.

The movie starts off with some buildup by showing a phrase from the Upanishad that states 'with every death, there begins a new life' or something to that effect. Karthik, played by Arya (who is wasted in this movie and appears like a novice in acting mostly thanks to the director) is an architect who falls in love with Trisha (who is a doctor). Meanwhile, Naushad is a Software engineer who while driving a Mahindra Scorpio, accidentally loses control of his car and hits two pedestrians: a woman and her son. Ishwar, the guy who loses his wife and son is traumatized and sets out for revenge with his Rottweiler dog. He threatens Naushad that he will kill his son so that he can understand his pain. The movie progresses with generous intermixing of romance, repetitive scenes of Ishwar threatening Naushad and amateurish comedy. Naushad relocates to different places with his son to escape from the psychotic killer-to-be. Just when things seems to settle down, Trisha gets killed even before the interval. The directorial touch should be noted here. Imaan, the son of Naushad, is flying a kite with friends in the terrace of a a building. Naushad warns his son not to fly kite because it has maanja in it which could his cut his fingers. So his son looks up at the kite yearningly and suddenly collapses. It is later revealed that he has a heart condition called Cardiomyopathy which essentially means he could die soon if he doesn't have a heart transplant. As Imaan collapses his friends are shocked and let go of the kite and rush to his side. The kite flies away towards the road and falls on a lamp post and dangles down. Nearby, Karthik is racing with Sandhya on bicycles. Sandhya is leading the race when themaanja kayiru of the dangling kite slits her throat and she dies. Ofcourse, predictably the directorial touch is to have the heart from Sandhya given to Imaan who survives that terrible disease.

So Karthik who is deep in sorrow suddenly livens up on hearing his lover's heart is living inside a person. Here comes the never-before-seen moment of tamil cinema. We have seen sorrowful songs after lover dies where the guy thinks of his girl doing mundane things and relishes those moments while singing in despair. We have seen ghosts of the girl descend down to sing a mournful high pitched rendition while the lover looks dejected. But in this movie Vishnuvardan has excelled really with his imagination. Karthik, on hearing that Sandhya's heart is beating somewhere else, sings a duet with her (which is the Siragugal Vandhadhu song). Then the movie rolls on. Ishwar chases the kid to kill him. Imaan steps in, protects the kid in the process of eliminating Ishwar. But in the last scene the director shows the viewer that Ishwar is not dead but is recuperating in a hospital (Oh my God no! Please don't think of a sequel!).

Apparently, its a new kind of emotion that the director shows through Ishwar. He wants to cry out aloud in anguish but doesn't. Instead, he keeps a straight, emotionless face that is supposed to convey the pent-up feelings. But he looks more like a drug addict floating in ethereal world. Trisha should stop acting in roles where she gets killed (like Bheema). Already, her roles are getting dumber atleast we could have the pleasure of seeing her till the end (because that is why I saw the movie anyway). And Yuvan could use some imagination instead of re-recording his father's yesteryear BGMs throughout the movie.

And thank God, the dog gets killed!