Mayakkam Enna review

The two movies of Selvaraghavan that I have seen turn after a death scene. Mayakkam Enna is no different. It turns after Richa suffers a miscarriage. Credit to the director that he dared to delve into a lot of emotions in the movie and put a full stop to each one of them

Selvaraghavan always has the protagonist as an errant individual. In this movie, there is a slight deviation. The protagonist has creativity and is mightily confident about it till a certain point in the movie. What lights up the movie is the individual sequences in the movie. I don’t recall carrying back so many sequences in my head from a movie

There are so many good scenes in the movie. If forced to pick two or three of them, my choice would be as follows

1)    The scene where Richa questions Dhanush’s profession and advices him to look for something more viable. Dhanush on the way back gets an old lady to pose for him and surprises her and her husband with the inherent beauty of the lady. The phone conversation later with Richa where he says that he derives happiness out of the daily life photography rather than the studio photography

2)    The scene where Dhanush meets Richa, after his work has been rejected is a tear-jerker. Notice Dhanush when he says that the only thing he knows is clicking. Richa gees him up in a rather cinematic manner but the setting of the entire scene is superb

3)    After marriage, the first conversation that Richa has with Dhanush is the honeymoon destination. Dhanush rebukes her for not asking this earlier, as he could have done with some money from his friend’s father. Richa says she would accompany him to a place where he can afford to take her. Cue for a song but brilliantly done

Dhanush was highly underrated by me as I felt that he tended to manipulate the portrayal of dark characters to his advantage. I felt that the national award to him was a honour too large for him. It did not help that I made all these assumptions based on his initial movies. Dhanush proves me wrong with this movie. He is a man at the top of his craft and the camera just loves him. He shines through in every sequence in the movie. He is an apt representation of the character that the director had in mind

Richa continues to improve by leaps and bounds with every character that she plays. Though the movie is a male-protagonist driven one, it is the strength of the woman in his life that drives him. She has an equally important role as Dhanush, if not more than him. She shines in the scene where she rebuts Dhanush’s friend. Her eyes do the talking for her. If at all anything then it’s the dubbing that lets her down at certain moments. Yes she might be lost to glamorous roles but we have hope

As the movie dabbles with photography, it is but natural to expect some beautiful frames and the cinematographer delivers. The pick of the lot is where he is clicking his sister under sunlight. A frame to die for

There are allegations that GV Prakash Kumar has plagiarised the music. He might have, but then provides a rousing background score for the movie. In a lot of sequences, it is the actor’s eyes and the music that convey the emotion

What to say of Selvaraghavan that has not been already said. He makes a man ( the person who appeared as Genelia’s father in BOYS) appear in not more than four scenes but makes the audience hate him. There are a lot of scenes in the movies  where he has silence as Background and lets the eyes do the talking. He is known to show his characters with certain rawness and this film is no exception. Kudos to him for showing his protagonist as a person craving for reassurance and upping Richa’s role by showing her as a person who will support her man, no matter what

The sequences after Richa’s abortion are superbly conceived. She does everything for her man but talk to him. She cuts her husbands first cover pic and then adorns the wall with his pictures but doesn’t talk to him

She will also go to the extent of conceiving a second child with him but won’t talk to him. She will silently sit and admire his work but won’t talk to him. On his biggest night, she is worried what he will bring upon himself if he doesn’t succeed but still won’t talk to him. It is only after he publicly declares that the force behind him was his wife and the applause should rightfully belong to his wife that she talks to him. Not that she craved for attention but she realises that her husband has turned a new page

The rolling titles too have a powerful scene. It is perhaps fitting that the movie ends with the words “Hello” and “Thanks”