Dhanush's Thiruchitrambalam is quite simply the most endearing film of the year

What is Dhanush doing in a film like The Gray Man ? The West doesn’t really need him. We need him here. His presence in our cinema has adds a sheen of adventure to the average film even if the spoken language is Tamil. So what?! For my time and money, Dhanush is doing  exemplary though inconsistent work.

I have to confess that I did not like Dhanush in his last four films, Jagame Thandhiram, Atrangi Re , Maaran and The Gray Man. The last film where he was in his element was Karnan . Thiruchitrambalam is not just the most endearing film of the year, it is probably THE most successful film of Dhanush’s career; by success, I don’t mean the box-office (which the film has taken by storm).

I am talking about the sheer flexibility of the plot and the spectrum of audience appeal that this film reaches out to. This is the kind of film that does not fail to reach out to any section of  the audience.

Where do I begin to praise Thiruchitrambalam? Its casting, which is so so so apt, it makes you wonder why more films in India don’t think of unorthodox casting. Veteran filmmaker Bharati Raja as Dhanush’s grandfather is a masterstroke. Without a doubt, Raja is excellent. But this is the kind of cinema where it is easy to mistake the character for the performance  .

How do we know if the ever-sparkling Nithya Menen is really as winsome as she appears to be? Her dialogues, her scenes with her bestie Dhanush and her relationship with Dhanush’s  grandfather and father (the ubiquitous and always dependable Prakash Raj) are so remarkably cogent and connectible, you feel like showering hosannas on the writer-director Mithran R Jawahar, who gets the cuteness of a rom-com  out of the way in time to explore a darker, more revealing side to the entire myth of perfect love.

Is it possible for a man and a woman to be close friends without sex creeping into their equation? No, said Rob Reiner famously in When Harry Met Sally (not to be confused with  Imtiaz Ali’s Jab Harry Met Sejal ). Thiruchitrambalam seems to suggest the same: a man and a woman cannot remain buddies without the relationship willy-nilly going someplace else.

Dhanush and Nithya Menen, as the girl and boy next-door, are designed to be endearing. Their bickering and her protective vibes for Dhanush’s Pazham reminded me of Kajol in Karan Johar’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, though that film had conveniently de-sexualized Kajol’s Simran. Nithya Menen’s  Shobana is far more tangled in a web of long-suppressed desires. She has hidden her true feelings for Pazham from him and from herself for so long that to get to that core of mutual love requires serious excavation.

The second-half becomes way too filmy and rom-commy, with a family wedding taking the  characters to the village where admittedly, there are some genuinely likeable moments, but nonetheless, it is an uncalled-for digression. And really, an airport climax? What next? A last-minute reconciliation? We get that also.

The cascade of clichéd situations does not take away from the film’s intrinsic freshness . Clichés, yes, but never hackneyed. For me, the life and soul of the film is the rapport among  grandfather, father and son, and how the festering tension between the father and son is resolved.

Parts of the film where Pazham and his bestie Shobana are confronted by class snobbery are  superbly tongue-in-cheek. They reminded me of Mansoor Khan’s Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar. Though Dhanush is no Aamir Khan . Dhanush is much better.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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