After seeing Anubhav Sinha’s Cash in 2007 or Ra. One in 2011, would you have believed that the same filmmaker would direct films like Article 15 in 2019 or Thappad in 2020? I know I couldn’t have guessed that. I felt a similar wave of emotion while watching Gautham Vasudev Menon’s coming-of-age story of a gangster, Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu.
“This film will hopefully be the beginning of the next 20 years,” Menon said during a recent interview about the new brand of cinema he wants to create.
Written by Jeymohan, Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu is only the first instalment (Part I: The Kindling) of a thrilling series. If the film does well, Menon plans to create a second part that will go on the floors soon after.
A painful, beautiful coming-of-age film
The film is centred around Muthu Veeran (Silambarasan TR), a young adult who goes to Mumbai from Tamil Nadu’s Naduvakurichi with the hopes of building a better life. But life has other plans for him. A parotta shop in Chembur becomes his place of residence and work. The living conditions are miserable, to say the least, with over 20 people squished together in a room — an aspect most people who have struggled in the city would be familiar with. Little did Muthu know that the parotta shop is also a front for his Tamilian colleagues to work for the underworld. Parallelly, they also have a budding rivalry with a bunch of Malayalis operating out of a barber shop in a nearby market. Stuck between the tussle are Muthu and his new-found friend Sridharan (Neeraj Madhav), who want to escape this ‘bad’ world. Their attempt proves to be futile, and Muthu is pushed into making some hard decisions, making it impossible for him to leave.
In one of the film’s early scenes, Muthu’s mother tells her lanky and seemingly naive son about an astrologer’s prediction. She was told that her son would inevitably become a murderer. From thereon, Muthu’s arduous step-by-step journey into the world of crime in Mumbai becomes the strongest and most wildly engrossing aspect of the film. His internal journey of feeling out of place and wanting to go home gradually shapes his external reality as the desperation for survival pushes him down the ledge.
Needless to say, Menon nails this coming-of-age angle, which forms the focal point of the film.
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The weakest link
While the dominant aspects of the film — action, gangsters and drama—feel authentic and immersive at the same time, Muthu’s romantic life is the lone proverbial elaichi in a scrumptious feast of biryani. The songs and music, composed by the legendary A.R. Rahman, try to enable the love story between Muthu and Paavai (Siddhi Idnani) but the screenplay has enough punctures to halt it from even being partially inflated.
But to Menon’s credit, the film manages to stand on its feet. The action sequences are not picture-perfect or ‘heroic.’ But the imperfect action shots elevate the authenticity and ground reality of Muthu’s universe. Silambarasan TR—or Simbu as he is famously called—is every bit malleable as Muthu. As a lanky 19-year-old from Naduvakurichi standing up to his landlord, shooting on command and rising up to be the commander himself, Simbu is a force to reckon with. The supporting cast is also rooted in the universe Menon has built. However, Idnani as Simbu’s romantic partner is the weakest link.
“We are just tiny screws in the big machine,” says a character in the film. As opposed to seeing the life of a devious gangster, Menon’s hero is a cog in the wheel, who rose to the ranks of the dark world of crime. It is the journey of the most incomprehensible — or an underdog if you will — man in the pyramid that makes Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu worth a watch. And, most certainly, a sequel too.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)