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By Behindwoods Visitor Vamsi
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In my 20 something years of watching and understanding movies, I don't think I've ever seen a non-Hollywood movie that had the chops to beat a Hollywood one in technical aspects. In areas such as makeup, visual effects, animation, graphics, cinematography, editing and stunts, no single movie has been equal to a Hollywood one in all these disciplines at once. The creation of a fantasia that suspends our collective disbelief has never been better accomplished than in a Hollywood movie. Movies such as Terminator, Jurassic Park, Avatar, Indiana Jones and Star Wars have had facets to them that simply could not be reproduced by a contemporary movie made anywhere else but in Los Angeles. Today, that world in which Hollywood ruled the science and technology of movie making changed for me. Well, it actually changed a couple of days back, on 1 October 2010. To appropriate a much bandied about quote from politics (thank you, sister Sarah for making it the slogan of wolf hunting hockey moms all over the world), "there is a crack in the glass ceiling." Endhiran has arrived.

What can I say about this movie? There's no way to put into words the accolades that a technical feat of this magnitude deserves. To talk about each behind-the-scenes area of movie making for this film will require an individual blog and more. So, I've decided that I'd rather talk about what this movie did for me, and I hope, for many more as well. If its a review of the film and its various facets you're looking for, I'd recommend this excellent video review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL_55IVCCRY. Unfortunately, its all in Tamil, so you need to know the language. But hey, if you're already here having braved the blog's moniker, you would, wouldn't you?


There have been countless films in which robots, and more specifically androids - or a human looking bucket of bolts - have featured prominently. Mr. Sujatha's core story, while not unique in any way, is still a nice platform on which to build a colossus. You see, for a movie like this, where fantasy has to carry the underlying reality, presentation is everything. That is why a post-apocalyptic world in Blade Runner or a superhuman cyborg killer in Terminator carried us away, while Robin William's Bicentennial Man or Robocop have faded from memory. Okay, the basic story of an innocent entity gaining sentience and being manipulated by the fickleness of human nature with a love triangle thrown in (yennadhaan Hollywood padathukku yeedu kuduthaalum, Tamil sentiment iruukanomudaa!) is quite predictable. But the flow from scene to scene, the picturization of each event in the movie, and the visual effects that are used to show unrealistic situations with as much verisimilitude as possible boggle the mind and addle the brain. You are left with a look resembling that of a dying duck gasping its last - mouth agog and eyes bamboozled by the sheer grandeur of each shot. This movie works not so much because of the story, but because of the breathtaking visuals, sublime background scores and Rajni's superlative acting that all gel into a cohesive unit.

Suspension of Disbelief:

The Chennai city of 2010 that Shankar has created for us, replete with its opulent houses, buildings that are architectural marvels and roads cleaner than a baby's freshly powdered bottom probably only exists in some parallel universe where India has no politicians. Several times, like when looking at scientist Rajni's lab, or the fictional AIRD (the Indian Army's advanced technology procurement division) headquarters, I was left scratching my head, wondering where these places are supposed to be located...

When Chitti, the robot says that his processing speed is 1 terahertz and memory capacity is one zettabyte, you have to wonder. The World's fastest computer today has 225,000 processors operating in parallel, and has a speed of 3.4 gigahertz, with total RAM of 360 terabytes. That sits in a room the size of two football fields. So, Chitti, the size of Rajnikanth, with limited cooling options, has about 300 times the processing speed and three billion times the RAM capacity of this computer. Interesting that such a robot was developed in Chennai by one man.


Chitti's varied talents include technical wonders for which we simply do not have the know-how today to be able to incorporate into the space constraints of one average human sized body. As a simple example, his ability to become a high intensity electro-magnet would require roughly the same power as to run an MRI scanner.

But, Shankar asks us to take all this in stride, and reassures us thus: accept that this might be all be possible at some point in the future, that's all I ask. I'll give you a watertight explanation for every stunt, every action sequence and every superhuman action that follows. That is this movie's greatest strength.

Visual treat:

Without giving anything away, its impossible to describe the feelings the visuals in this movie evoke. Because, more than the story itself, its the visuals that, if I were to describe in any detail, will give away a lot of what you will see on screen, probably for the first, and maybe the last time in your lives. All I'll say is, while every visual effect is a treat in itself, watch the last 45 minutes of the film. There is a sequence in which thousands of cloned Rajni robots join electromagnetically to blitz from one shape to the next - starting with simple shapes like spheres and cuboids and finally culminating in... well, that last one has to be seen to really understand its magnificence! I will wager you anything that you won't be able to find another movie that was ever made that has anything that comes close to this sequence!!!

Asimov, Sujatha and Shankar:

Isaac Asimov gave the world the robots of dawn, the three golden rules of robotics and the first true romanticization of robots. Sujatha, I'm told, gave that romance with machines a distinctly Indian flavor with En Iniya Iyandhira and Meendum Juno, two novels on which the movie is loosely based. Shankar has given the concept wings. I honestly believe that there is no director in the world today with Shankar's imagination and selling power. In him, we have a bit of P.C. Sarkar, a tad of P.T. Barnum and a whole lot of P.G. Wodehouse. He can create new world on celluloid, snare us into it for those three hours the 20 dollar ticket is worth, and give us a ride in that world which leaves us with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Rajnikanth:

What can I say about his performance in this movie. Playing characters like robots is usually described as very difficult, because the performance has to be muted. But, what starts out as such a performance, goes through the full gamut of thespian prowess as the robot changes from an emotionless machine, to one gaining sentience, to one exposed to the evils of human nature, and finally one succumbing to that same evil. His gear shifts from phase to phase are seamless, and when the final villainous being emerges, you can actually experience the definition of evil first hand. This is a very different Rajni that we see here, and I am in love with his performance. Many said that this being a movie originally intended for Kamal, Rajni would be a misfit. But I believe Kamal could have at best matched Rajni's performance here. No more.

So, as Vivek said in the music launch function, Endhiran, the mass. Ergo, watch it in the theatre with the mass. Like Haley's comet, this kind of thing happens once in a lifetime in Tamil cinema. This is its first occurrence, and if you think I'll wait until it comes on TV as a Deepawali or Pongal special, you'll probably die having missed one of the celluloid wonders of our lifetime.

Vamsi
(Vamsi Krishna Sridharan, PhD student, Stanford University)
vamsiks@stanford.edu

Tags : Endhiran, Rajinikanth, AR Rahman, Shankar, Aishwarya Rai

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