A Sensitive Message served with a Lot of Laughs | Thalaivan Thalaivi - Movie Review
- FC Team
- Jul 31
- 2 min read
Thalaivan Thalaivi, featuring Vijay Sethupathi and Nithya Menen as a husband and wife is a clear winner, in terms of casting. The pair looked fresh on screen and Nithya Menen's nimble outbursts perfectly complimented Vijay Sethupathi's loud antics.
The movie remained honest to the innocence portrayed in the film through all the characters - the couple, the in-laws, the angry brother-in-law, the bystanders, distant relatives and the trouble-makers.
A love-come-arranged-marriage plot has rarely been touched before as the lines get blurry. There are no silver-screen comparisons except for iconic love stories like Mouna Raagam and the recent, Raaja Raani. However, Thalaivan Thalaivi got the flavour on point with the right level of realism and cinematic exaggeration that put a smile on the faces of the audience. Both the characters elevate their performances with a believable childlike romance.
The iconography of the groom playing a great cook and eventually winning the heart of his bride with his culinary skills, reverse engineered the popular idiom, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
Though the movie felt like a musical with every alternate scene punctuated with a song, the sequences conveyed the plot-line - they are inseparable. Portraying them as villagers had its perks as they believed to express themselves with no filters.
The Director, Paandiraj, taking the audience on the couple's journey from being strangers to parents through an interacting narrative, set the film apart. He unstrings the garland with humour and drama, while prepping the audience for a message that was bold enough for a 21st century lifestyle.
The storm brewed by the in-laws over petty things, the ego-strikes and the eventual crack in the relationship was sequenced in an unassuming narrative. Ms Deepa and Kaali Venkat were delivered stand-out performances among the supporting characters.
Though the climax fit within the well-oiled Comedy of Errors spectrum, the undertone of divorce remains untraceable till the very end of the film. Director Paandiraaj feeds a powerful message in a bowl of jaggery that audience forget problematic dialogues where a woman is termed "vaazhavetti" for living with her parents after her separation, the traffic police addressing women as "headache" as a joke.
The futility of divorce - reducing it to a mere document that can be torn and discarded resonates with the Indian Mentality towards marriage as an institution. With filmmakers frolicking buzz words like independence, empowerment and self-sustenance, Paandiraj makes a bold move by stating marriage needs effort.
Since the crux of the plot is on a sensitive note, he worked the storyline as a path full of roses to convey it with sweetly.
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