Raja's read only memories

With Sighappu Rojakkal (Red Roses), director Bharatiraja, who had earlier directed 16 Vayadhinile , a movie that continues to be regarded as the watershed of Tamil cinema, and Kizhakke Pogum Rayil – both of which focused on bucolic backgrounds – can be said to have attempted the cinematic equivalent of Operation Entebbe; none so telling as the manner in which its title credits roll: the discolouration of a rose in a dark background, accompanied by the harsh scream of a feminine voice in the background, conveying subtly that she may be getting raped, or even murdered, and sowing the seed of thought that its lead could be an anti-hero. A trendsetter in ways more than one, the director adopted urban Chennai - replete with women in attractive attire with little or no inhibitions, glitzy bars and restaurants, and people in odd jobs striving to make ends meet - as the canvas for Sighappu... The departure in the theme was, as many a chronicler of Tamil cinema would say, the director’s mess...

Appeared in Expresso, the daily supplement of The New Indian Express, Bangalore on 21, February 2011 The one director in Kollywood who christens his movies in chaste Tamil, and focuses on themes that few self-proclaimed champions of that language would identify themselves with - Gowthaman Menon (it is a paradox that he is a Keralite) - is back at it again: a movie with a pure Tamil title, Nadunisi Naigal (dogs of the midnight), and an unorthodox movie subject, a psycho-thriller and child sexual abuse. Nadunisi...builds suspense from the word go; the title credits open with a police inspector falling backwards in slow motion after being felled by a bullet on to a pool of rainwater in the dark. Three police personnel are shot dead and a girl goes missing from a hospital. A police inspector Vijay (Deva), starts investigating the crimes. The scene later shifts to Samar, a boy who gets sexually abused by his father regularly (shades of Bharatirajaa’s Sighappu Rojakkal are impossible to miss...