Iravin Nizhal Movie Review: Iravin Nizhal’s impressive filmmaking overcomes ineffective writing

Iravin Nizhal Film Evaluation: If there may be one factor you’ll be able to all the time make sure of with a Parthiban movie is that it’s going to by no means be a lazy, inconsiderate effort. The truth is, too many concepts is a defining attribute of his movies. His fixed quest to present his viewers a special expertise is what makes his movies one thing to look ahead to (and barely dread, as a result of his failed experiments, like Koditta Idangalai Nirappuga, have that what-was-he-even-smoking high quality).

Iravin Nizhal, like the perfect of Parthiban’s movies, is not a movie you’ll be able to ever fault for lack of effort. The filmmaker truly makes us see this effort with a making-of characteristic that’s performed earlier than the precise movie. The movie is alleged to be ‘the world’s first single-shot non-linear movie’, and on this nearly 30-minute characteristic, we see the blood, sweat and tears (each actually and figuratively) that had gone into making this movie in a single 96-minute-long unbroken shot. You typically hear filmmakers speak about how a lot onerous work they’ve put into their movies, however right here, we see it – the inventiveness in constructing the world of this movie, the heartbreaks when minor errors end result within the staff having to shoot the movie throughout (one crane error on the 92nd minute would have positively been soul-crushing), and the jubilation once they lastly handle to get all of it proper within the twenty third take.

Transferring on to the movie, it opens with Nandu (Parthiban), a movie financier, studying that the cops are about to arrest him, and making a run, with a gun, which he hopes to make use of on Patamananda (Robo Shankar), a faux godman, who’s a kind of to have out him on this precarious place. As he lays ready for his goal at a dilapidated ashram, he recounts his eventful life, the individuals who pushed him into darkness, his sins and the one flicker of sunshine that is nonetheless a part of his life.

When it comes to content material, Iravin Nizhal is an too acquainted story of the rise and fall of a person. We see how a toddler orphaned at beginning is formed up the societal forces, pressured right into a world of crime for survival, how love helps him to get out of it and the way he’s pushed again into the ceaseless pit of darkness. We see the ladies who stroll into his life – Lakshmi (Sneha Kumar), Chilakamma (Brigida Saga), Parvathi (Sai Priyanka Ruth), and Premakumari (Varalaxmi Sarathkumar) – shaping it up positively and negatively. We get the Parthibanisms (there may be even a nod to his first movie Pudhiya Paadhai). On the entire, it’s previous wine in a brand new, quirkily designed bottle.

However it’s the kind that makes the movie really attention-grabbing and distinctive. Like his earlier movie Oththa Seruppu Measurement 7, which experimented with only one actor within the solid, this movie additionally looks like one thing that will have labored as a stage play. Regardless of the flowery units, the movie is targeted on one character, who additionally occurs to be the narrator. Despite the fact that we now have 5 actors (Chandru and Anandha Krishnan get the utmost display time) taking part in this character at completely different levels of his life, the voice belongs to Parthiban, which makes it onerous to shake off the Oththa Seruppu vibe.

However to his credit score, the filmmaker would not make the movie static. Arthur Wilson’s digicam is consistently on the transfer, and the impact that the movie give us is that of flitting inside an individual’s recollections. One second we’re in 1971, when he’s simply an toddler, and the following we now have him as a person counting his (ill-gotten) riches. On the draw back, this steady motion additionally makes it onerous for us to get into the character’s footwear and expertise his feelings. Many a time, we want for the narration and the digicam to decelerate. Due to the way in which it’s designed, the movie (and the digicam) appears to be solely in shifting on to the following scene, and would not allow us to to totally soak up these feelings, even when a personality is sexually abused or dies.

This strategy actually robs the movie of being an emotionally impactful one. In single-shot movies like Victoria or 1917 (which technically has a number of photographs stitched to make it seem to be a one-shot movie), the character of the content material dictated their kind. An evening of partying takes a darkish flip.. A younger soldier has to ship a message within the midst of a struggle.. These premises lend themselves to such methods as a result of they’re primarily in regards to the what-next. However right here, it’s primarily in regards to the how – how did Nandu end up the way in which he did and the way will he discover redemption – which requires deeper writing and immersive filmmaking.

That mentioned, Parthiban has clearly talked about in his pre-release interviews that his solely intention behind doing this movie was to search out out if a non-linear story could possibly be filmed as a single-shot movie. Just like the makers of the early silent movies, who had been extra concerned with exploring the brand new know-how that was cinema and discovering out the way it could possibly be used, which got here in useful for those who got here after them, Parthiban has, with this movie, damaged a path for future filmmakers to experiment with unconventional storytelling utilizing the single-shot approach. There are a number of moments while you marvel on the smoothness with which the scenes transition from one time interval to the following. Parthiban additionally makes use of music (AR Rahman, whose stirring rating is sort of a ray of sunshine on this movie’s darkish world) sound results cleverly to make us overlook that whole movie has been shot in a single place, inside the massive set that we’re proven within the making-of video. In that sense, this ‘undertaking’ is unquestionably successful as Parthiban achieves what he got down to do.