Maryan

I am back at writing about a cinema, after a long gap. Cinema - back then we used that word to refer to the motion pictures. Now it is "movie". Cool! In fact, long long years ago, especially from the state where I come from, "Going to a theatre" meant "Going for a movie". Maryan, takes me to those years. Those years when life was simpler; early 90s. Specifically 15/08/1992 - the day when Roja was let loose from a unknown corner of the country to rapidly conquer the whole nation. Smartest hero of the day and a young, new music composer combined by the master director Maniratnam to bring to the audience a never-seen-before hostage drama, with a strong female character, kindling fierce national sentiments. Director Bharat Bala has decided to keep the music director and the hostage drama plot. But instead of directly having a central heroine character to reclaim the hero from his captors, the director uses love. Love - only that makes the hero leave his dear sea and sea food and travel all the way to the African deserts; also only that keeps the hero alive through his journey back home across the deserts. The highlight of the return trip is a dry song in which the heroine's figure flashes amidst the sand-dunes and hand-holds the hero to the great escape back home. In this process a great movie (cinema) is lost. So towards the end, after his return to the beautiful coastal hamlet, when Maryan (hero) tells Panimalar (heroine) that he had been held captive for 21 days and he had wandered the deserts for nine days at a stretch, you tend to react, "Oh! We never knew!". ("Sollavee illa!" in Vadivel style)

Dhanush has excelled as Maryan. My safe bet is that he will surpass the ultimate creator and performer of our times - Kamal Hassan. Of course, given his physique, Dhanush might not be able to play the lead roles as diverse as in Kuruthu Punal or Devar Magan or Avvai Shanmugi, but somehow this chap is going to catch up - at least in all other areas of film-making like lyrics, playback, music, direction and script. Dhanush is simply extraordinary. Just two scenes - Maryan's reaction to his best friend's death at the hands of the Sri Lankan army and the way he reacts when one of the other hostages is shot in the brain in front of Maryan - speak a lot about his potential. Incidentally, there are no dialogues in both these scenes. Waiting for the actor's Naiyandi.

The director has got his team and execution right. But, after the intermission he miserably fails with the script. With only a few characters, the hero-heroine away from each other and the hero not able to communicate with any of his African tormentors - the director does not have many options, but to throw up a dream song in the desert or place the hero in the middle of some imaginary cheetahs in the middle of the desert, to move the story. If Roja was a mega hit, due credit goes to the terrorist leader character played by Pankaj Kapoor. The terrorist has a story; he has a family; he has some ideals; he has emotions and is unable to even pray well after his kin gets killed; he talks with the hero; he develops a strong bond with the hero that ultimately paves way for the hero's escape across the bridge. But our terrorist leader here in Maryan knows only one word "Mo-ney". Incidentally Maryan's English vocabulary is confined to only that word. They don't have anything else to share. But the story has to be moved and Maryan has to be back with Panimalar. So, throw in some dunes, guns, fire song, duet song, cheetahs, villain back at home, dying friends, phone calls etc - and Maryan is happily back with Panimalar on the same old huge cliff-rock. 

The director has failed even to capitalise on the popular under-water trailer sequence where Dhanush dives deep with some kind of spear clinched in his hand. Rather than meaninglessly placing this bit in the "introduction" song, the director could have easily - and powerfully - used this in the climax. Or some more strong characters, say someone in the oil company that had taken Maryan on contract or say someone among the terrorists, might have been used to save the second half. But then it would have been another Roja. So Maryan could have moved only this way - limping in the desert. And Dhanush and Parvathi have given their best to make our journey easy.

A R Rahman is brilliant in songs as well as the background score. But as the sea-theme of Maryan over-laps with his recently released Kadal (again a Maniratnam movie), the composer still shows some hangover. But nothing much to complain as long he too does not take us back to the good old days of "cinema".

Overall, this is a good movie that has failed to leap to greatness.