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WHY SHOULD YOU WATCH ANGADI THERU!
“The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed,” said Stanley Kubrick once famously. As pleasure seekers, we are only used to (or more often, we only seek) movies that make us happy. That ubiquitous, yet hard to achieve, emotion is what we probably seek from movies - for its absence in our lives or to proliferate its existence. The meaninglessness of life is not necessarily a subject of our movies, the lives of lesser known people much less.

We did not expect Vasantha Balan’s Angadi Theru to be light on us and it rightfully isn’t. He picked the lives of often unseen, albeit apparently existent, people and slapped it right on our face. The sympathetic lives of shop assistants, as if captured in hidden camera without any drama whatsoever, portrayed in Angadi Theru defies description. It has to be seen to be believed. Or in other words, to become informed that there exists such a deprived world in the middle of us.

So why is it that you should watch Angadi Theru? The reasons are many and it doesn’t necessarily begin with the fact that it’s a serious movie. For one, it’s not quite often we see movies that make us cry, smile, wrench our heart – all at the same time. You cry with those poor souls when you
  Angadi Theru
learn even their restroom breaks are restricted to some measly minutes and failure to return will make them lose their salary; you tend to smile with the characters at the simple pleasures in their miserable existence (the happiness of Mahesh and his friend when they get transferred to the 3rd floor of the stores, because it is air-conditioned); the cruelty meted out at them by their floor supervisor makes your heart go out for them (the sexual molestation of the women and that they are hapless to do anything about it).

Vasantha Balan’s characters speak for themselves and the strength of characterization is one of the major plus points of Angadi Theru. Anjali’s inimitably brilliant performance leaves no eyes remain dry. She switches emotions in a flash, going from expressing her inability to protect herself from getting molested to forcing a smile on her face at the waiting customer, appearing to be normal. Director Venkatesh’s villainy gets to you as the movie progresses and when he’s beaten down by Mahesh, you inevitably say, ‘just as well’. He deserves it! Well if this is not the strength of characterization, what else is?

There are two types of applauses, one out of excitement at watching your favourite hero on the screen (which is more common among the fanatics, if you ask) and the other to congratulate the performance of the movie and its cast - which is very rarely conferred upon a movie these days. Although Vasantha Balan’s conviction about his script and Jaya Mohan’s razor edged dialogues leave a lump in your throat, you end up applauding for the movie’s tiniest merry moments.

So watch Angadi Theru for the sake of getting to know the lives of the unknown and for having been ignorant to the fact that their life is not as glossy as the stuff they sell at the stores. Above all watch it for Vasantha Balan – who lets the world know that there are only a few directors in the world who seek out for stories that need to be told and do it with an impossibly fervent grit.
Tags : Angadi Theru, Anjali, Vasantha Balan, Vijay Antony
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