Vaaranam Aayiram – Movie Review

Varanam Aayiram- Paradise lost and regained!

Gautham Menon’s Magnum Opus Varanam Aayiram has come out with a million flying colors. Being a biography, Vaaranam Aayiram blooms in the lines of Aarilirunthu arupathu varai, Autograph and Thavamai Thavamirunthu. As the trailer says, ‘This is not an action film’ but instead a commercially salted Father-son flick. Though Gautham Menon has borrowed a few western colors to deck his epic, Vaaranam Aayiram compels us to say ‘where he picks up doesn’t matter but where he places’.

The plot is worked out by a first person triple layered narrative. Before the narrative starts, we see Krishnan{Surya}, the old man dying out of a throat cancer. The news is passed on to Major Surya{Surya}, who is currently on a rescue operation a few thousand miles and metres away in a military helicopter. Surya meditates on his own experience and what his mother Malini{Simran} and father Krishnan had told him since his childhood. And so it goes… till Surya comes back to perform funeral rites for his father.

To begin with, Vaaranam Aayiram is truly an incensed classic, filled with cross culture references and trends. Gautham has unleashed his full potential in his dream project. May God bless him for his pains in handling the narrative. The first half swims down our throat in full mettled ease while the latter half is the fruit of tree of knowledge. As a complete whole the film is but life, life and nothing but life. For Surya and Simran this innings breaks their own previous records. And about Shamira, she’s the Poet’s ‘Lady Love’, on celluloid. The dialogues are better than any other Gautham Menon film and Romance, flows like ’sweet Thames’. The second half which contains the more serious side of life,goes on in its own pace and may tire the audience, but the defect lies not with the screen-writer but on the eye and mind of the beholder. The positive energy of this movie is another facet which our society requires to go ahead. In this regard, Vaaranam Aayiram becomes, Gauthams’Autograph’. The Production design and the picturisation of the songs make Varanam Aayiram into ‘thousand hues’. Right from the amorous Backdrops to the intertwining ‘Ilayarajaism’, Vaaranam Aayiram, ‘its a rock song daddy!’

At times we are made to think if its a correct decision to put Surya on the father role, since its too heavy for him in selected areas. In the next place, the movie’s Tamil sensibility is pulled down by the use of English in many important scenes. A few minutes before the ‘Annal mele’ song in Divya Spandana’s episode are hackneyed and test our patience. Surya’s visit to California may not be justifiable from a few view points. The ‘Aditya’ stratagem seem to spoil the tonality of the movie but the story-telling talents of Gautham saves it at the end.

The Art Director of the movie has sculpturesquely given life to Gautham’s imagination. Rajeevan and Anthony have once again done enthralling work. Harris Jeyaraj’s hypnotising soundtrack has provided us with a quality musical. Working on a project like vaaranam Aayiram is tough as nails and two thumbs up to Gautham Menon and his crew. Vaaranam Aayiram says “Life is not a bed of roses”