The Predicate

On Saturday, I caught a preview show of "evanO oruvan". The event was arranged by R. Madhavan (who is producing the film) and his overseas sponsors, mainly HSBC. The event was well arranged, what with Madhavan & co showing up in a Limo and autograph sessions for an audience eager to meet Madhavan. Apparently, this was not the premiere show, since the release date for the film is unknown.

Unfortunately, watching the film "evanO oruvan" itself turned out to be an underwhelming experience. Much of the hype surrounding the film seemed to revolve around the fact that it is based on a critically acclaimed Marathi film, "Dombivli Fast". As "evanO oruvan" started unfolding, it became clear that it was actually based on the Joel Schumacher movie "Falling Down", among others. Watching the movie was like entering a time warp, going back in time to watch Charles Bronson play a vigilante in "Death Wish". Need I say more?

The plot itself is a routine Man-goes-mad-and-shoots-up one. All the elements are there without moving an inch from the formula. A naive man (Sridhar Vasudevan) who wants to lead a honest life. He sees corruption and people breaking/bending the laws all around him. One day he snaps and starts doling out his own justice. Finally he is brought down, not before "the message" is hammered in time and again. "evanO oruvan" follows all this to a T, taking much of its plot from "Falling Down". Right down to the bat that Michael Douglas starts breaking a shop with (It is a cricket bat that Madhavan uses, thankfully, not a baseball one). One of the best scenes from Falling Down though is missing here, one where a young kid teaches Douglas how to launch a rocket launcher.

So just like Douglas going for a walk through the underbelly of Los Angeles, Madhavan goes berserk and roams through Chennai, fighting drug peddlars, corrupt cops, politicians and doctors. I wonder how many more times will we get to see this theme in movies. Charles Bronson made this famous with his Death Wish series, which was made into Tamil several times over (like "Naan Sigappu Manithan" for example). Even the recent "Anniyan" had a naive person taking out his anger with his own vigilantism. I would have thought that is reason enough to not go through the same rigamarole again.

The strength of the movie is in its slick presentation, good editing and no frills screenplay. Director Nishikanth Kamath sustains the momentum in the first half but lets things slow down in the second half. The second half suffers from an overdose of usage of voiceover. Again and again, we are reminded of the message of the film, as the lead character continues to rail against different atrocities, draining away any sympathy the character managed to create in the first half. The film also suffers from cliched elements that are straight out of bad tamil plays a couple of decades back (Husband reading newspaper as the wife rants on and on about her sorry state, for example).

Madhavan is a good fit for the lead character and as he turns into a man with a moral anger, he tries his best not to smirk and stay true to the character. Seemaan has the thankless job of delivering the redundant voiceovers, but his turn as a cop with a conscience is worth noting. Sangeetha plays the lead character's wife and does her best in a limited one-dimensional role.

The movie does have its positives. There are no songs that drag the movie. The suburban angst has been brought out well in the first half. The director shows good restraint in not turning this into a shoot-em-all gun fest. Even if the movie is flawed, it is good to see such efforts in Tamil Cinema, rather than long drawn out three hour movies that have something for everyone.

A final note: What's with the fake "news clips" in the movies? You know, one where the issue at hand is "reported" in a TV channel, followed by interview clips with a fifty random people and fifty random views? Rang de basanti, Sivaji, Karrathu Thamizh all had it. Right on cue, in this film as well, a "Sun TV" report started in the middle of the movie debating whether the vigilante should be prosecuted or not. Enough already!

- Balaji Srinivasan.

evanO oruvan
Starring R. Madhavan, Sangeetha, Seemaan.
Story, Screenplay, Directed by Nishikanth Kamath.
Produced by Madhavan, Abbas Mastan.
Dialogues: R. Madhavan.
Official Site: http://evanooruvan.sifymax.com/

There are some stories that leave you just shaking your head in disbelief. Like plot twists late in the movie that change everything completely. None of them are probably as shattering as the admission by the famous German novelist Gunter Grass that he was a member of Waffen SS, the elite Nazi force.

Gunter Grass is the most famous novelist from Germany, the nobel prize winning author of Tin Drum. He was a hard left-wing advocate for years. He was the heart and soul of German conscience. His writings forced people to reconcile with their past, to acknowledge the crimes committed by the Nazis. For such a man to admit now that he had served in the Waffen SS, is just nothing short of earth shattering.

The New York Times puts it this way:

In novels, plays, essays and newspaper interviews, Günter Grass has often told Germans what they did not want to hear: about their history, about their politics, even about themselves. For many on the left, since the 1960’s he has come to represent the conscience of a country with much to lament.

After winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999, he explained his obsession with Germany’s past. “There were extenuating circumstances,” he told the Swedish Academy, “mountains of rubble and cadavers, fruit of the womb of German history. The more I shoveled, the more it grew. It simply could not be ignored.”

...

The reaction in Germany to this admission has been one of disbelief and indignation: not that a teenager should have been recruited into the Waffen SS as Hitler struggled to avoid defeat, but that the country’s most prominent writer should have hidden this while hectoring others for their political and social sins from the comfort of the moral high ground. “I do not understand how someone can elevate himself constantly for 60 years as the nation’s bad conscience, precisely in Nazi questions, and only then admit that he himself was deeply involved,” Joachim Fest, a prominent historian and biographer of Hitler, told the newspaper Bild. “I don’t know how he could play this double role for so long.”

As an outsider, I can feel how big this revelation is. When I was in college, I read parts of The Danzig trilogy, his main body of work. In particular, I managed to labor through his most acclaimed work, The Tin Drum. When he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1999, there was sizeable media coverage about his life, his work as a leading critic of Germany's Nazi past. The Tin Drum was released in 1959. Now, after all these years, he has finally revealed that he too had a secret past. It is a great tragedy.

There is a great novel waiting to be written here. As a boy who grew up in the Nazi regime, was it wrong for Grass to join the Waffen SS? Once he found his conscience, why didn't Grass just admit that he erred when he was a teenager? To have carried his secret for so long must have torn him apart.

There are calls that his Nobel should be rescinded. I think he erred in judgement by not revealing this earlier, but it doesn't make his work and activism null and void. He might not have written all that he wrote, probably if not for this bit of his past. Grass' story is one of a man who probably repented all his life, a Jean valjean of our times. Let us not all be Javerts trying to prosecute him.

- Balaji.

Anoop Sarkar, whose blog I follow for his insightful book reviews, is wondering about Mondegreens in languages other than English. He writes:

The only lists of examples I have seen of Mondegreens have been in English. Surely songs in other languages can have lyrics that are commonly misheard. But a cursory web search yielded no such lists in any other language. A note of clarification: I define mondegreens in stricter sense than the definition in wikipedia, which I think is too broad. I consider it to be a mondegreen if it is in the original language itself (i.e. not because of a bad translation) and if it occurs in song lyrics (i.e. no speech recognition or closed captioning errors).

Surely, such a list can be generated in Tamil, for e.g. I will mention a couple from the top of my head.

First, a popular song, goes like this: "Thaaye Yasodha, undhan aayar kulaththudhitha" - "Mother Yashoda, in your Yadava clan (was born Krishna)". Instead, people used to sing it as "Thaaye Yasodha, undhan naayar kulaththudhiththa", making it mean "Mother Yasodha, in your Nayar clan (was born Krishna)". Suddenly, Krishna is recast from a Yadava boy somewhere in the west, to a Nayar (Nair) boy in Kerala!

The second one is more personal. This one is a carnatic song in Tamil, set in raga Abhogi that I’ve heard for ages, and didn’t realize that I was not hearing the correct lyrics, till very recently! It goes like this:
Sabapathikku vEru dheivam samaanamaagumaa
illai
Sabapathikku vEru dheivam samaanamaagumaa
This line poses a qn: Will there be another god like Sabapathy?
Then, a quick "illai" (meaning "No" ) and then the first line again.
So, I always thought the meaning was:
Will there be another god like Sabapathy? No... Will there be another god like Sabapathy? No...

Turns out, the quick word in the middle was not "illai", but "thillai" (meaning Chidambaram - the temple where God Sabapathy - Siva - is).
So, it was actually: Will there be another god like Sabapathy? Will there be another god like Sabapathy of Chidambaram?

I am sure there are more Mondegreens in other languages as well. If you know any, please post in this thread.

- Balaji Srinivasan.

Cinema Virumbi writes:

Politician/ Literary speaker Kumari Ananthan once said:

In the Southern districts, a proverb is common: 'KuruvikkEththa raamEswaram'. Most people use it similar to ' EzhaikkEththa eLLuruNdai' meaning, something (like a laddu made of sesame seeds!) a poor man buys or uses because that is the only thing within his reach! But the proverb is a time - distorted, Mondegreen version of the original: 'kuRi vaikka ERRa Raama saram' i.e. Rama's arrow which is fit to target (any enemy)! (I agree , this phrase , in itself, doesn't qualify as a proverb (unlike the Mondegreen version), as it only says Rama's arrow is great and nothing more!!!!!)

Tags: Barry Bonds, baseball, Giants.

Where were you when Barry Bonds hit Home Run No.715 yesterday against the Cardinals? I was at the Giants ball park, right field, with my son watching the first live baseball game of his life. What a way to be a part of history.

Oh, well.

We did go to the Giants game last night, but Barry Bonds remained stuck on 714. No passing the Babe in that game. He went 1-for-4 with an RBI single. Instead, we saw Albert Pujols hit yet another homer, his league-leading 23rd of the season. Thanks for not hitting that big homer, Barry. Thanks for nothing.

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Lost in the Indian media coverage of the reservations issue was a landmark ruling by the Indian Supreme Court. My views on this ruling are below.

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