Had planned to watch this multiple times, but finally was able to do so, along with 5 other audience members this morning in the sole multiplex this one's playing at, in the city of Bengaluru. 2 of them walked out a little after the interval. One of the people I met last night, on coming to know I planned to watch this, said it was too boring and confusing, and had to be re-watched 2-3 times in order to understand. He also mentioned that the entire movie was shot using a mobile phone camera.
The reviews have been focusing on 2 aspects, 1 more than the other, which is the crowd funded nature of this endeavor. The other being the fact that this is very similar to various other movies in the mind&*^) genre, including Memento, Inception, Machinist, Donnie Darko et al.
I had not seen this director's earlier work. All I had were the above intros. I was also worried that I'd have a problem understanding the movie, considering 2 things - 1, being I don't speak the language, and 2, I had a similar problem with a Malayalam movie last week, which did not have subtitles, but which I understood better, and which also had a significant portion of its narrative in other languages I understood like English, Hindi and Tamil.
At various points while watching this one, esp. the spectacularly mind-bending and spell-binding climax, I was totally bowled over, and thought that everything that has been spoken of this magnificent piece of work has been cruelly unfair to the screenplay, and the finished product. Forget the fact that it was crowd-funded, forget the fact that there are @$$4013$ in the audience that walk out/find this boring (let them lap up the drudgery of Bollywood/Sandalwood/Tollywood/Mollywood. Let them dream of those lives. This is Not art-house cinema for the pretentious. This is pure commercial cinema (sample the 5 songs, that Do NOT clutter/interrupt the smooth narrative) with all the bells/whistles in place (the right place, that is). But, it is intelligent commercial cinema, that demands nothing but attention from the viewer. Most movies have made me cynical/jaded from appreciating the assembly- line output, but movies like this, and Shahid-Lunchbox-xxxx re-affirm my faith in making that trek to the multiplex, and doling out hard-earned money to watch masterpieces such as this. I'm absolutely gonna watch it again (it Has subtitles too, btw), purchase the Blu/DVD when that releases, and purchase the music CD of its songs (though I enjoyed the 1st one only).
And oh, lest I forget, everything's just about perfect - the score, the casting and the performances (all), the cinematography, locations yada yada yada..... Pawan Kumar's voice has Got to be heard, and I'm all ears for keeps. Do Not Miss it on the big screen.
The reviews have been focusing on 2 aspects, 1 more than the other, which is the crowd funded nature of this endeavor. The other being the fact that this is very similar to various other movies in the mind&*^) genre, including Memento, Inception, Machinist, Donnie Darko et al.
I had not seen this director's earlier work. All I had were the above intros. I was also worried that I'd have a problem understanding the movie, considering 2 things - 1, being I don't speak the language, and 2, I had a similar problem with a Malayalam movie last week, which did not have subtitles, but which I understood better, and which also had a significant portion of its narrative in other languages I understood like English, Hindi and Tamil.
At various points while watching this one, esp. the spectacularly mind-bending and spell-binding climax, I was totally bowled over, and thought that everything that has been spoken of this magnificent piece of work has been cruelly unfair to the screenplay, and the finished product. Forget the fact that it was crowd-funded, forget the fact that there are @$$4013$ in the audience that walk out/find this boring (let them lap up the drudgery of Bollywood/Sandalwood/Tollywood/Mollywood. Let them dream of those lives. This is Not art-house cinema for the pretentious. This is pure commercial cinema (sample the 5 songs, that Do NOT clutter/interrupt the smooth narrative) with all the bells/whistles in place (the right place, that is). But, it is intelligent commercial cinema, that demands nothing but attention from the viewer. Most movies have made me cynical/jaded from appreciating the assembly- line output, but movies like this, and Shahid-Lunchbox-xxxx re-affirm my faith in making that trek to the multiplex, and doling out hard-earned money to watch masterpieces such as this. I'm absolutely gonna watch it again (it Has subtitles too, btw), purchase the Blu/DVD when that releases, and purchase the music CD of its songs (though I enjoyed the 1st one only).
And oh, lest I forget, everything's just about perfect - the score, the casting and the performances (all), the cinematography, locations yada yada yada..... Pawan Kumar's voice has Got to be heard, and I'm all ears for keeps. Do Not Miss it on the big screen.