Anecdotal Evidence

Let us start by watching pAttum naanE. Why would I tell you why yet, this is enjoyable enough for me to not have to bother telling you why. Yet. Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BAVFuEqqV-k If you didn’t like that, you probably shouldn’t read further.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. …. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.   -           Oscar Wilde (Preface to ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’) This film is a hit or miss. One ought not to talk about its sequences, references, camera, sound and what not,  on even terms without addressing the elephant in the room – the complete abandonment midway of what the central character was thus far. The film’s “descent” into the absurd, the farcical shift in tone – can make or break the film. It cannot be talked of as a minor point, say a mild niggle and shift over to appreciating some nuances in the film-making. You either buy it as a deliberate choice of an artist or a facetious irresponsibility of an amateur, who is learning the ropes. And all evidence of the so-called ‘new wave’ of young filmmakers do urge one to side with the latter. However, I think there is reason enough to believe this

'Tis not to see the world   As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, And heart profoundly stirred; And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,   The years that are no more!   It is to spend long days   And not once feel that we were ever young. Growing Old - by  Matthew Arnold 30 ,  29 ,  28 ,  27 ,  26

As you have heard, the car is everyone's. The entire village loves it. Kids ride it, the postman does his beat in it, atleast one corpse is transported on its roof, infants are delivered in it and what not.  But, while the film does make the most out of a - weakened by overuse - Tamil film trope: 'the good, simple people of the village' , what makes it special is that, it engages with the touchy question of 'ownership' quite well. The film is particular about acknowledging the sense of unease in precisely what is not articulated: that the car is  not  everyone's. It IS private property after all. And that there are degrees of ownership and claims that each have over it and which they want to defend against the claim of an 'other' - an other perceived as an outsider with a lesser claim.  Or an other having a greater claim, which makes one insecure.  Or an other having without deserving, a greater claim.