Thread by @rajamanirajesh

On the Tamil film 'Vaazhl'.

Arun Prabu Purushothaman's film plays to the post-liberalized Indian society where there is an increased romanticized notion of how travelling could change one's life. But at its best, 'Vaazhl' looks only like a tourism video.

And at its worst, it is an incoherent mess of pop-philosophical mumbo jumbo.

If you realize, in the pre-globalized 70s or 80s, the only ones who could afford long distance travel were the very rich.

Or the middle classes working in PSUs who could avail the LTC once in two years. For the rest, travelling at best meant going to the nearest beach or hill station.

But post liberalization, the new breed of IT workers had lot more money to splurge.

But unlike the 9–5 working hours of the PSUs where people had lot more free time to spend with family and friends, the IT industry pushed its employees to work for longer and erratic hours doing mechanical coding work.

The lack of satisfaction and the emptiness in their work life coupled with the extra income pushed this generation to indulge in sensory excesses - in the hope that the consumerist culture would somehow compensate for the lack of meaning in their lives.

Which is exactly why we all fiddle with shopping apps when we feel low.

Travelling is just one other facet of this new consumerist culture that promises to help deal with our existential crises.

But at best, travelling can only be a momentary distraction like eating pizza or drinking alcohol. There is very little life affirming philosophy in it.

'Vaazhl' might have been tolerable even if Arun Prabu Purushothaman played to just this new age 'wanderlust'/'travel bug' pop-philosophy. We might have got a film like 'Dil Chahta Hai' (2001) in that case.

But in his interview to Film Companion, Purushothaman claims that his movie's philosophy is that of 'Tamil', denoting the 'Tamil Civilization'.

And this where he messes the film - by marrying the new age pop-philosophy to teachings of someone like Poet Kaniyan Poogundanar or Saint Vallalar.

So the concepts of oneness of all humans, oneness of all lives and our oneness with nature are all force-fitted into the life of an IT coder who probably just needed a holiday.

But for a film that tries to be so lofty in its ideals, 'Vaazhl's underlying politics is actually very petty.

It tries to repeatedly extract gags out of a supposed clingy girlfriend, the sister's boyfriend is mocked and beaten up for looking dark and plump (there is a strong casteist undertone to this) and more amusingly, super petite, slender and exotic looking women come one after…

…another to pull the male protagonist out of his existential crisis. First it is a Tamil woman with a supermodel like body and then it is some white women with a supermodel like body. All willing to hang out, touch, kiss and help the male protagonist.

The filmmaker seemed to have lived off some silly male teen fantasy through such a narrative.

But if you think about it, the 'Tamil Philosophy' has always been an anti-Brahminical philosophy.

That's probably the only place where Arun Prabu Purushothaman gets it right, even if it doesn't merge well with the film. In 'Aruvi', the Brahmin woman (Lakshmy Ramakrishnan) was critiqued. Here, he takes potshots at the Brahmin man, through S Ve Sekar.

However, the film is kinder to the Saiva Pillai old man who initially comes across as casteist but is shown to have a change of heart. This deliberately staged scene made me wonder about the filmmaker's own caste location.

Even if we look at 'Vaazhl' as a generic travel film, the first half seemed better. But the switch to exotic foreign locations in the second half and meeting some tribal population in South America (?) all reeked of savarna gaze mimicking white gaze.

Being one with nature does not mean going to exotic South American forests. The tourists visiting these places only disrupt the nature's balance there.

The confusion in the film's philosophy can at best only be understood as the filmmaker's own short-coming in understanding the relationship between people and nature.

But all said and done, I was very intrigued by Purushothaman's film making style.

His repeated juxtaposition of serious and trivial moments does create a satirical and surreal feel. It might not serve any great purpose in this film. But his filmmaking style could work wonders if he chooses a better premise.

The visuals were lush but again, that only made the film look like a tourism video. The jump cuts and super fast edit is what lets you watch the film even though the proceedings are incoherent. Several people seemed to be gushing about Pradeep Kumar's music.

But I felt the music was one of the weakest link among the technical aspects of the film. It made the aimless film even more aimless and I badly wished it would just stop.

The filmmaker appears everywhere with a rudraksha mala and 'thiruneer vibuthi pattai'.

The music composer is supposedly called 'guruji' by his friends and fans. I suppose when young artists take themselves too seriously and project some spiritual image of themselves, all that we can get is a pop-philosophy mess like 'Vaazhl'.

Because as 'Vaazhl' claims, if travelling could enlighten us as humans, then this Modi should be the most enlightened soul in this sub-continent.