Mayakkam Enna (2011)

Film #340

Mayakkam Enna (2011)

It’s a very good tamil film. Definitely one of my top 10 favorites of this year. Compared to the majority of movies that come out from kollywood, this is a different film. It’s essentially an art film…and a helluva good one it is.

I first watched this with a whole different set of expectations but after watching this film, I realized that director Selvaraghavan is quite an intelligent director. I mean his last film made me hate him a lot and I lost a lot of hope in him, but he proved to me that he’s still got the freshness that he had with his film “Pudhupettai” which is easily one of my favourite tamil films of all time. What makes this film  so good is that it actually has some social commentaries, metaphors, brilliant acting, great cinematography,etc which is rare to find in a tamil film.

The first half of this film is a light hearted romance story that deals with betrayal, friendships, emerging adults, etc. All the actors are great in this but Richa Gangopadhyay and Danush were just brilliant as both play some very complex characters. This is one of the rare tamil films where I actually felt a genuine connection with the characters. The story is quite good in the first half. It’s the second half where the film begins to lose it’s momentum. The second half is filled with some tamil cliches and get’s rather melodramatic. I would’ve enjoyed it more if the film didn’t have the main character getting into a deadly accident that destoys his life overall. The first half of the film is very centered towards the male main character while the second half is more focused on the female main character as she has to go through a lot of troubles with her mentally damaged husband. The second half of the film is quite dark and very depressing. A bit TOO depressing to the point where the film feels like it’s taking forever to end. Then it does with a rather cliched and predictable ending. None the less, the film does go very indepth in the relationships of these characters and making you feel horrible to watch them go through this pain. The music really brings up the emotions. There are a lot of small social commentaries like in one scene, the female lead tells a friend who tried to get on her while her husband is running around crazy on the road, about how we live in a world where feminists fight for woman rights and all but at the end of the day, females have to force themselves to be like men as we live in a sick and twisted world where if a woman shows a weakness she will be pounded immensely. I could go on and on with reasons of why this film is so good but I will end off with saying that if it wasn’t for the weaker second half, the film could have been another masterpiece from this director. It’s definitely not a film that many will understand straight up and demands a second viewing. 

7/10

-Alexson Philipiah