Avinash Ramachandran

Money. In a world that is all about division, money holds the ultimate power to make you breach such hierarchies. Of course, it also results in the decimation of a few age-old structures, but that’s par for the course in a world that doesn’t wait for people to catch up. But is money really the ultimate thing? Does the presence or lack of it really determine your worth in the world? As a character in the debutant filmmaker Sivakumar Murugesan’s film says, “Has any parent refused to take care of their child because they didn’t have the financial resources?” One might think it is a poignant tale of parents and children, and how the world treats the geriatric. In a way, Thaai Kizhavi is definitely that kind of a film, but it is also a film that makes you unabashedly laugh out loud with a consistency that has been missing in Tamil cinema for quite a while.

Freedom. It is quite an interesting beast because everyone wants it, but somehow they are tuned to keep it caged and away from others who might not have it. This dichotomy is very telling of the human mind and its vagaries. There is always someone who has more freedom than you, and someone who doesn’t have as much. It is supposed to be an absolute unit, but there are enough caveats in freedom to allow oppression of some kind to be perpetuated through avenues like patriarchy, misogyny, and simple conditioning. Director Vipin Radhakrishnan’s Angammal is one such film that shows how exercising freedom always comes at a cost in a society that values conformity.

Theeyavar Kulai Nadunga opens with the gruesome murder of writer Jebanesan (Logu NPKS) on a lonely road, in the middle of the night, by someone wearing a black suit, black shades, and a black helmet. Is it a serial killer? Why was the writer in tears when talking to his daughter? Why was he killed so brutally? Even as these questions crop up, we are introduced to Inspector Magudapathy (Arjun), a no-nonsense cop, who casually reads the book, “Hidden Evidence”. The film wastes no time in plonking Magudapathy right in the middle of this murder, and he is assigned the case since it happened in his jurisdiction. So far, so good, and I hoped this feeling would stay longer… Alas!

Mask opens with a heist done by a masked gang, and a quirky voiceover by director Nelson. He introduces the players in a rather whimsical way. We have a gang of robbers. We have the philanthropist Bhoomi (Andrea Jeremiah), who needs to find the robbers. We have politician Manivannan (Pawan Krishna), who also needs to find the robbers. And then… we have Velu (Kavin), who… You guessed it right… has to find the robbers. And what do the robbers have to do? Exist in plain sight and wait for the various players to find their way to them. But Mask doesn’t build up to a crescendo as most of the films in this genre do. Instead, it is happier giving brief bursts of energy that might not stay for long, but it is entertaining while it lasts.