In an industry, where even the youngsters miserably fail in their second or third attempt, here is the 62 turned ace-filmmaker, Mani Ratnam, taking us on a powerful showdown that kills the experience in a good way with its rage and hysteria.
The tonal balance, the dialogues, the character arcs, everything in the film foreshadows that the movie is Mani Ratnam-esque. What actually jumps off the track is the screenplay here. It’s damn racy and robust. It doesn’t really give a room for audience to breathe. Not a moment! This is of-course most welcoming as it’s totally an offbeat; something Mani Ratnam had never cooked in his filmography.
What else is more exciting? Almost everything in the first half is. The first half takes impressively immense time to establish the characters (being an ensemble film, it does need) and settle with the story-line. Scrubbing the hiccups (wobbling moments) and the overly used cinematic liberties (like how a lead tracks to another), even the second is nearly good enough to be decent.
The people who actually complain that the film could have used songs as a whole and not as in bits and pieces are the same people who probably might have complained if the director had used them as a whole. The point here is that using songs as a whole, might have become a speed-breaker for a brutal race where three horses combat for the one throne.
The whole cast, every one of them did what the script demanded them to do on screen. The single shot that features Arvind Swamy tearing hard is the most noteworthy scene amidst all. It’s also an appalling thing for the youths to see him romancing the beauty, Aditi Rao Hydari.
The evergreen love story between A.R.R and Mani Ratnam is still blooming like the old red wine in a new bottle that only gets to taste better than the previous project. It’s his string that lets the film flow and his percussion that beats the movie’s heart.
The trademark lighting with contrasting colors and hues plays big time here too. It adds depths and layers to the imagery even without a 3D glass. Santhosh Sivan adds sense to the images at utmost care. CCV also serves as an ode to most of Mani Ratnam’s previous projects.
The screenshot below is from Aayudha Ezhuththu. In CCV, there’s a scene that features Jyothika that’s almost a ditto of the below. The only difference is that it's flipped.
The shots below are from Okay Kanmani. We get to see a similar framing of a scene in CCV where Vijay Sethupathy and Arvind Swamy greet each other on screen for the first time. It’s also this dynamic way of framing a scene keeps the rhythm flowing and looks like they’re actually happening.
My personal favorite of all odes is where Vijay Sethupathi tells his flashback in which he reveals that he’s sent in a train when young; which indirectly serves a souvenir to Rajnikanth’s Thalapathy.
When it comes to the twists, they don’t really make the screw turn at all the moments except for a very few. From the prospect of intelligence, you’d have already seen the knots loosening even before they actually are shed on lights. But, the one that comes at the last, literally redefines the perception of one’s viewing of Chekka Chivantha Vaanam.
After all, Chekka Chivantha Vaanam finally discloses the gates for Mani Ratnam’s unexplored arena and the substance within it is stuffed.
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