Film / Documentary - Recently watched & worthy of some discussion

[mappi]

Kirumi [2015 : Tamil : 1h45m : Thriller (Drama)]

Co-written & Directed by Anucharan

Aptly titled, Kirumi talks about the deadly germ - Fear. Kirumi directly enters into the hollow thoughts of an aimless man, Kathir. Kathir's life is inserted with moments which kicks starts gloriously, but quickly takes a drastic change that ends up rough. An opputunity puts Kathir in the corridors of joy, but soon turns into a disaster sucking his life and pulling everything assosiated with him like a skyscraper eaten by the earth during a quake.

The visual track of the film is splendid. The ambience is set solidly by a quality filming tone, introducing us to yet another promising technicien, Anucharan. The director takes a peculiar narrative style by providing only temporal and spatial information. This peculiarity establishes the point of view of the film, which in return depends purely within the audience. A complicated study (even the precedent line) which can be illustrated with many extracts from the film - the climax of the film sees Kathir bleeding; POV shot of Kathir which visualises a close up face with eyes starring at him (at us) directly. Those who have watched the movie should have (most probably) experienced a 'self-narrative' running inside their head. Most of the scenes with Kathir's gaurdian Prabakar, wonderfully played by veteran actor Charlie, includes such dramatic moments assited by crisp dialogues. To aid the focalization, the film constantly changes the mood, where the ACT 2 concentrates mostly on the drama of realisation that smokes out a pungent evil - fear. Its this character study that differentiates Kirumi from other main stream films.

Kirumi is narrated within a specific frame of time - a start point somewhere in middle of an young married man's life. This aspect allows the movie to become a perfect thriller, as the time frame is short. A diverse music score differenciates the drama from the psychological exploration of the protagonist. The songs are matching and used to move forward the film. And the best part is the characters and the casting. A gem of actors roaming around the film as though they are all real. Special mention to Kathir (who plays Kathir) for his fantastic use of his eyes and neck movements - another promising actor, maybe an equivalent to Dinesh. I simple adored Reshmi Menon, both how the character was sketched and the way she played it. Plus she is very pretty. Yogi Babu is funny. The police officials & the criminals are directly lifted from Suseenthiran's books, so apt and perfectly organised. The climax is kind of terror, eventhough it tries to match Naan Mahan Alla or Madras. Ofcoarse, the cinematography by Arul Vincent has motion in every scene where the camera follows each character in a candid way making the viewers as onlookers. When the characters are not moving, there is movement inside the frame - a quick exemple would be, Kathir standing still at the cremation ground while a train passing above his head, and when edited to the next shot, we see the flames dancing. And editing is picture perfect.

Kirumi is certainly a new wave cinema, that does not try to over do, but sticks to what it wants to convey visually.

Kirumi - Sacralised Infection