Mark Antony (2023)

I went to watch this film only for one reason – SJ Surya. This director turned actor has carved himself a nice name as scene stealer on screen. Though he started off directing the likes of Ajith and Vijay, he stepped in front of the camera to direct himself as a leading man. After few films, he started doing supporting roles which turned out to be a boon – birth of a great character actor.

In this film, he plays the second fiddle to the lead, Vishal, and ended up owning the entire film. The Entire Film. Here, we see overacting at its best, thanks to S.J. Surya's manic energy that brought back the glory days of not only Sivaji Ganesan, but also M.R. Radha, Asogan, Manoharan and so many colourful villains and supporting actors of the early era. S.J. Surya is a force to be reckoned with, there has never been anyone like him for a long time - the last time I saw a character so colorfully negative, and hillariously astounding was Rajini in Netrikann (1981). 

Using time travel as the premise, director Adhik Ravichandran crafted an engaging story that also deals with multi-verse (past and present) where one character can talk to the character from the past using a specially invented telephone (you float when making the call).

Skillfully moving to and fro so as to not to confuse the audience, Adhik brought a gripping and hilarious script live that never had a dull moment, chiefly thanks to S.J. Surya's scorching funny performance.

It was a huge relief for me, having still not recovered from the bitterness of watching another film that zipped to and fro past and present, Chandramukhi 2. P. Vasu should learn from the youngsters instead of making out-of-date presentation.

The film also makes no bones about showing everyone in dark light, there is no hero here. Everyone is after something or pissed of with somebody, or, in Surya's case, double crossing someone. I dread to think anyone else doing his role in this story – perhaps there were other contenders, but S.J. Surya owned this one – or two, as he plays father and son (the last time we had two characters with their own twins/triples was Bale Pandiya, a classic with which I personally like to compare this film, it's that good).

After a long time, I am extremely delighted to see a thoroughly entertaining fare to come out of the Tamil film industry. And in one scene, involving both dad and son S.J. Surya, I had never laughed that hard watching a Tamil film for a long time. It was thigh slapping-ly funny. I really dig this film. In fact, this might even be the first time I could tolerate Vishal, who was totally in S.J Surya's frequency, loud, dumb and self-deprecating. The rest of the cast all were in on the fun romp, and the only turn off was the exceedingly loud music - possibly trying to mimic the heydays of full orchestration, but G.V Prakash's ain't no M.S. Viswanathan. But its a forgivable offence. 

But it's S.J. Surya's show all the way. And I wrote in my What's App status, that S.J Surya is a national treasure and he must be protected at all cost. 

Jawaan (2023)

This is probably the only film of Shah Rukh Khan in leading role I am watching. I don't watch Hindi films, and I am not sure what's the parameters like over there when it comes to onscreen performances. But I suppose SRK has done some heavy lifting here playing dual roles, which you can't tell apart except with what looks like a bit of de-aging involved for the younger character. Heroes of the industry here have, for ages, played older and younger dual roles and I can only think of Sivaji and Kamal pulling it off, performance wise. Rajinikanth is just too much of a bundle of energy to be contained in make-up, though he can keep the characters apart with the amount of kinetic power unleashed.

This is where I gotta do the "speaking of Rajini" bit. SRK does two of the former's gimmicks involving cigar stub - homage? Tribute? Trying to attract the south Indian audience? It also helps that whoever is voicing him in Tamizh sound bit like the late, great Raghuvaran. 

But the two factors that got my bum in the theatre seat are Nayanthara and Vijay Sethupathi. Both didn't disappoint. One, Nayanthara, smitten as I was once, I have also accepted her as a versatile actress, not an award material talent, but certainly way ahead of her peers. Then, there's Vijay Sethupathi who could just be reading of the dictionary and have you entertained. Again, he's not going to headline any nominations awarding performance, but he has more presence than most of the southern Indian actors of his generation combined. He's the type who, like Rajini himself and Sathyaraj, brings something additional to the table.

Director Atlee who used to be Shankar's assistant, is the apple that has not fallen far from the tree, taking with him Shankar's disdain for corrupt authorities, love for the poor and anything else that can be scraped from MGR's cinematic legacy barrel. And off we go again in another pseudo Puratchi Thalaivar crusade with heavy dose of anti-heroism. Heavily sterilised, that is.

It's an entertaining fare with plenty of shootout, now that the industry is gifted with proper props and CGI bypassing the exploding squibs stage for realism. It's amateurish in every possible way, but not bad for an Indian film. 

And, as usual, I have issues with the background score... generic, dull and composer Anirudh (who, nowadays, gets A Musical By credit, baffling...) now steals from Ennio Morricone. That unmistakable theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The nerve! You wanna steal, take from something obscure bro. Talented, yes. Brilliant? No. Original? Pu-leeeze.

This is the sort of film that gets rave review and will quickly be forgotten. But there's one thing I really appreciate, the gals. They are shown to be kick-ass types, including Nayan who is in full action mode, and believable in fight sequences. The girl deserves her own action flick. Meanwhile Vijay Sethupathi just keeps bulldozing ahead like a monstrous rhino ahead if it's heard against the sea of antelopes. The sonovagun is unstoppable.

Nostalgia Tinted Glasses: The Biased Generational Perceptions.

“You glorify the past

When the future dries up…” U2 – God Part 2 (a song from their Rattle and Hum album).

This thought came to me when I was reading up another bunch of comments (online, of course) saying that our education system is bad as if, in the past, everyone was taught by Socrates and read books by Plato. If I recall well, all the way back to the 80s someone has always been complaining that education was bad at that moment of time. 

The only time anyone remembered fondly of the great education system are my parents’ generation, and of course it is the leaders from their generation that came and revamped the system, and to quote Jim Morrison, the whole shithouse burned in flame.  

Yet, I have long refused to ride on that bandwagon. First, let’s face it, the quality had already started petering out during the time when kids from our generation hit the school, because I have seen my parent generations’ text books – as mentioned -and have been incredibly amazed. In fact, for some times, I had my mother’s, Little Women by Lousia May Alcott – a novel they studied for literature. Likewise, I am sure that my father thinks highly of the education standard of his parents which were directly under the purview of the Brits. So on, so forth. 

Yet (again) with the forever bitch-able system of our generations, we still had newspapers, limited, but many households had those. I recall going visiting relatives and friends of our parents, and finding ourselves not interested in those folks, but my brother and I (Balan, the newspaper maniac he was, and me, who only read the entertainment section) would peruse whichever newspapers were folded neatly on the undertray of the coffee table at those places. 

We had few TV stations which were our window to cultures outside of the country. Likewise, the radio. We had the usual diet of Hollywood and Asian films, TV shows, only not as excessive as now. The plantation we live in do not have easy access to cinemas, so we can only wait for it to hit the TV, usually taking years. Which is why the pirated VHS tapes proliferated and we were still pretty up to date, movie wise. Those were part of our education system.

Now, the trouble is, we always view our past with rose tinted glass, and we tend to overrate anything we import from there in discussions. But I no longer want to do that, especially when it comes to education system.

No, don’t drag me into that exclusive club that rejects education system that is not of their era, despite the fact that, borrowing a point from above, most of them are the parents of the kids directly exposed to the very so-called poor education system, and could do something about it. In fact, it is that very older generation who are in power and are responsible for that goddamned system, and they have the cheek to sneer at the resultant system festered down the youngling’s throat. 

The attitude behind looking down on education system of the younger generation also has its root to the very tradition of condescending reaction to the culture of the young, while glorifying the past. In plain language, we always have had the habit of looking down at the younger generation for ages. Here’s a long list of commentaries about certain generations in the history criticizing the young ‘uns. Take this for instance: “…Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased … The ordinary spoken language has also steadily coarsened…."

That was from 14th century Japan, mind you.  

How about this from 1771: “The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth…”

It has always been a thing, as you get old, you sneer at the youth belonging to others because of the bitterness that you were forced to leave your own. 

It’s already embedded in the DNA. Take this explanation for instance: 

"There is a psychological or mental trick that happens that makes it appear to each generation that the subsequent generations are objectively in decline, even though they're not," says research psychologist John Protzko from the University of California Santa Barbara."And because it's built into the way the mind works, each generation experiences it over and over again."

It also makes sense, as explained here, on how we are viewing our past with the contemporary thoughts, whichever thought process, level of intelligence or knowledge garnered over the years. 

“We are imposing our current self on the past,” John Protzko, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Barbara said in this article. “We’re sort of idealizing kids of the past.”

"It's a memory tic - you take what you presently are and you impose that on your memories," explains Protzko.

That’s the point. The memory of past you have today is not 100 accurate, its heavily filtered by the person you are today, your preferences, your outlook, worldview, and often glossy when presented to others. 

And how valuable of these memories of our past are? How about jackshit? As mentioned by Nathaniel Sharping here

"First, we tend to judge others more harshly in areas where we excel. An ardent reader, then, will be more likely to deride someone else's reading habits," explains Discover's Nathaniel Scharping. But second and more interestingly "our memories of what we were like as children can't always be trusted."