Review: Mayakkam Enna

Posted by hemanth on Nov 25, 2011 in Reviews | 0 comments

Selvaragha­van is back in his ele­ments with ‘Mayakkam Enna’, after the dis­mal out­ing with ‘Aayi­rathil Oru­van’, doing what he does best; strap­ping us on to an emo­tional roller-coaster, where human rela­tion­ships are tested at every twist and turn.

Mayyakka Enna has two parts. A strug­gling “genius” who has to con­stantly scream back at the world that he’d rather be a loser at what he loves (Pho­tog­ra­phy) than sell his pas­sion to be a “suc­cess” in life. Then, there is the tra­vails of a Woman who is tested by the very Man she is try­ing to pro­tect, when PTSD(after a near-fatal fall) makes a devil out of him.

They are not alone here. Four other friends make the jour­ney with them. Friends you’d kill for. A friend­ship so sweet, it is almost a dis­trac­tion to the main story, in a very nice way.

Some­where between these two worlds Selva man­ages to weave human strengths and weak­nesses at friend­ship, love, betrayal, sac­ri­fice, per­sis­tence and redemp­tion. Selva does all this with such ease and fresh­ness, you just can’t help but gasp at the guy’s tal­ent, both as a writer (shades of ‘A Beau­ti­ful Mind’ & ‘7/G’, yes) and a director.

Dhanush is by now a vet­eran at play­ing roles that call for chan­nel­ing inner tur­moil with­out going over the top, in the name of “act­ing”. Tel­ugu glam-doll Richa Gan­gopad­hyay is rev­e­la­tion here. She pulls off a com­mend­able per­for­mance with a char­ac­ter that starts out with heavy shades gray, but turns up being some­thing else.

G V Prakash’s back­ground score ele­vates the mood of the film. No song is mis-placed or unwel­come. Ramji’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy is the back­bone of the movie ’cause “pho­tog­ra­phy” is the theme run­ning all through Mayakkam Enna.

Many in the The­atre seemed upset about the later part of the movie, but I dis­agreed with them. Don’t go in expect­ing a buildup to the “cli­max”, you’d see ‘Mayakkam Enna’ for what it truly is.