Irandam Ulagam Movie Online – Review

Irandam Ulagam is selvaraghavan’s dream project. It appears that Selvaraghavan must have really scripted the story in his dream. Selva’s courage to bring to life an out of the world experience for the audience should be applauded; But, the execution could not match up to his vision. As a result, Irandam Ulagam falters throughout its laborious running time of 2 hours 40 minute.

Plot – Selvaraghavan’s Complex Vision

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Selvaraghavan wanted to portray the concept of how women would be treated in a second world where men have not experienced the feeling of love. The story is all about a man(Arya) from Earth who gets transported to the second world due to mysterious circumstances and ends up infusing love in the air and makes the flowers bloom. It is odd that a movie about “pure love” doesn’t have a single scene that conveys the feeling of love effectively for the viewers.

Script, Screenplay and Direction

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Selva’s script is unconvincing, characterizations are weak and screenplay is not taut enough. Right when you begin to invest in the characters residing in one world, the director switches to the other world. This is repeated back and forth until the end of first half. The second half is entirely set in the second world where white men speak fluently in Tamil. There is a healing “amma” character in the second world who has some magical powers. Selvaraghavan’s cult followers will come up with hundreds, if not thousands of explanations for every scene. For the common man, the subtext of a lot of things that happen on the screen is as clear as mud.

Cast and Acting

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Almost all of the actors on the screen have acted amateurishly and do not lend any sort of credibility to the story. Arya could not do much to salvage the movie. Arya’s dialogue delivery brings laughs among audience during inopportune moments. Selvaraghavan went gaga about Anushka’s acting skills and how he had extracted the best out of her while other film-makers have used her only as a glam-doll. It is not sure whether some of the scenes that Selva is referring to made it to the final edit. The expressions and voice dubbing for many of the white men don’t match in any of the scenes. The same dubbing artists were used for many of the characters intentionally (e.g., Arya’s father character in both the worlds).

Technicalities

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The computer graphics and post production work looks mostly unimpressive. The scene when Arya fights the wild animal is well done. But, the overall output is still a far cry from what our audience may have already experienced in scores of Hollywood movies. By now, it is important that our Tamil movie-makers should know that audience will not give credits or appreciate sub-standard graphics just because it is in a lower-budget Tamil movie. The expectation bar is set high no matter where the movie is made. Ramji’s camerawork is mostly good whenever the scenes are devoid of obtrusive post production works. A number of daylight scenes were converted to night effect scenes to accommodate post production graphics.

Songs and Background Music

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This is not an easy movie to do background score due to complex emotions. Anirudh’s background score is a let-down and sounding dissonant with the flow. It was clear that Anirudh struggled to understand Selva’s cryptic vision of what he was trying to accomplish. Harris Jayaraj’s decision to not score the background music may not be the most ethical decision. In the hindsight, this is a great escape for Harris who would have been severely criticized badly if he had done the background score. Some of the songs (Kanimozhiye) were not picturized well and did not do justice to Vairamuthu’s lyrics.

Conclusion

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Creative people have courage and conviction. It is no doubt that Selvaraghavan has got it in loads. Let’s hope that he gets his execution right in his future movies, it will be a treat for the audience. For now, Irandam Ulagam is just an expensive experiment with unintended consequences.