Thalapathy Vijay has won Best International Actor Award at the International Achievement Recognitions Awards (IARA) 2018 for his performance in Mersal. Read on to see what we thought about the film.
The first question that anyone who's watched the movie will ask is; can brothers, who are not twins, look alike?
The answer, surprisingly, is YES. So in this case, science is behind a seemingly illogical plot point.
Those looking for logic in a Tamil masala movie, it’s time to chill.
Jallikattu (for), self-immolation (against), hero-worship (cool with it), S Anitha, fidget spinners (as weapons); all of these and more latest events and trends make their way right at the beginning of Mersal. A taut story that moves relentlessly forward (and back, then forward again) makes Vijay's Mersal the essential Diwali movie.
The Women
Mersal features three Vijays; a doctor (Maran), his magician-murderer younger brother (Vetri), and their father (Vetri Maran). And they all have their women. But it is Vetrimaran's wife, played by Nithya Menen, who has more than just the lovey-dovey dialogue and a song-dance sequence. Kajal Agarwal and Samantha Ruth Prabhu carry themselves off beautifully on screen, however they are nothing but skimpy plot lines, and musical interludes in the movie.
A still from Mersal.
(Photo courtesy: Thenandal Studio Limited)
Nithya Menen plays Vetrimaran's Punjabi wife, in a part of the story set in the 70s. The sets and the characters, both in Punjab and back home are stereotypical, but easy to digest and fun to watch.
It is she who is catalyst for the issue that forms the bedrock of the movie; screw private healthcare. Provide free healthcare for all.
Also, that Punjabis are cool, but Tamils are awesome-er.
Politics
At the end of the day, Mersal is yet another Vijay formula movie, where the driving plot line is always a burning issue that needs immediate attention; water scarcity/farmers (Kaththi), terrorism/sleeper cells (Thuppaki) and now with Mersal, it is corruption in the medical 'industry' which Vijay hopes to solve through philanthropic treatment, and a little bit if murder on the side.
The last few months have been chaotic for Tamil Nadu, much like Kamal Haasan’s Dasavatharam, where ten plot-lines unfold at the same time, rather beautifully, but also in an utterly confusing manner.
Atlee, the director and writer, has deftly scripted in all of the burning issues, both persistent and current into the plot, without making it preachy.
For one, Vijay has made it cool to go to jail (for the people). There's this special 'vanakkam/hi' that he does to the crowd, where he raises both hands above his head and crosses them at the wrist, and waves one hand.
He deftly asks an enthu-cutlet who doused himself in kerosine, to drop the match. This might not look like a big deal, but Tamil Nadu has a tradition of politically motivated self-immolators, the first of who (Chinnasamy) was actually set ablaze by a bystander, in 1964, and later labeled 'the first language martyr'.
In one of her interviews, S Anitha, the girl who committed suicide because she couldn't clear NEET and get into a medical college, talks of how she would return to her village and serve the people.
Mersal tips its hat to the young woman, through a scene where a similar looking girl says she would do the same. It’s not the same dialogue, but the parallel is unmissable.
“It takes an eon to create a leader”, says Vijay in the movie. This is yet another dig at the current political flux, where the CM's post is literally up for a free-for-all.
Mersal is political at heart. Not vaguely political, but overtly so, in that Vijay is being set-up as a possible leader. This is clear from numerous instances; the MGR poster in Vijay's house, and the scene where he walks in to a theatre with an MGR film playing the background, and the hero on-screen and off-screen match paces. The references are endless.
After all, he is the one who has ‘brought justice to the mute beast’ (reference to Jallikattu).
An Invisible ARR
Rahman's tunes are earworms. Especially the song Neethane picturised over Samantha and the doctor Vijay. The background scores too add to the typically over-the-top drama. But it is only in the songs that the pace of the plot slows and occasionally grinds to a halt. And thanks to this, they fail to create the desired effect, except for the Tamilan song, which is actually the title/hero entry song in spirit, but features after the interval.
Mersal will rake in the moolah over the long weekend. It’s got three whole Vijays, with intersecting plot lines, great fight scenes and twelve murders, that will either squeeze your heart, or make you cheer along, all in the name of entertainment.
As Vijay says right at the end, “Nothing personal...just service.”
And then he goes to jail. Again....until....never mind.
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