Aazhi Movie Review:

Aazhi is a fascinating mess. Its shortcomings and strengths are paradoxically the same. The film revolves around a surprisingly simple story. Moorthi (Sarath Kumar) is a rich, brutish father who loves his daughter, Mukila (Devika Satheesh), to death but cannot stand that her classmate, Arul (Indrajith Jagajith), who is from an impoverished background, is in love with her. He abducts the young boy, takes him to the middle of the ocean, and tortures him. The father, played by Sarath Kumar, is portrayed as a violent, impulsive man who amasses power and wealth through illegal trade. The writing firmly establishes him as an unabashedly dark character, but leaves just enough light that we secretly hope he will turn good and accept his daughter’s lover by the end. And since it could swing either way, we are sufficiently gripped for most of the film.

Director: Madhav Ramadasan

Cast: Sarath Kumar, Indrajith Jagajith, Devika Satheesh

Director Madhav Ramadasan takes an unapologetically minimalistic approach to storytelling. With the focus entirely trained on the battle between Moorthi and Arul, all the peripheral characters are brushed past. Almost entirely through montages, we are shown Moorthi’s mafia-like power, his emotional attachment to his daughter, Arul’s love for Mukila, and his sense of responsibility to support his family. The stakes are established with an almost industrial precision before rushing to the middle of the ocean, where the film turns into a survival drama. The only thing that could have benefited tremendously from a more minimalistic approach is Sarath Kumar’s hair. The veteran actor’s hair and makeup consistently overshadow his efforts to project an intimidating presence. Apart from that, both Sarath Kumar and Indrajith are evidently giving their all to hold our attention for a major part of the film with a heavily physical performance, which starts off as an assault, turns into a brawl, and transforms into a struggle to survive.

While it might not work for everyone, the film’s slow, measured pacing comes across as a welcome breath of fresh air at a time when audio-visual content is hyper-focused on information bombardment and is always anxious to hold the audience’s attention. Maybe we do need to patiently watch Sarath Kumar climb down a ladder, walk across the cabin to the boat’s engine, and take his sweet time fixing it. Maybe your brain needs that time to register the layout of the cabin, or maybe it helps you soak in the isolation of floating in the middle of the ocean, or maybe the frustration of time passing that we feel is exactly what the character feels as well.

Even as you are impressed with all these above-mentioned strengths, there is a lingering doubt about whether any of them are deliberate. Are we witnessing a minimalistic approach or a lack of nuance? Aazhi does more by doing little, but it still isn’t sufficient. Even as a short film, ten minutes would have sufficed. The outline of the story is refreshing, but it never fully develops into anything more than a vague sketch. Characters like Moorthi and Arul are carefully unravelled; the film never rushes to introduce us to them. But once it does, it suddenly stops, and then we realise that these are rather one-dimensional characters. Except for Sarath Kumar’s Moorthi, there is no character evolution. And the most cardinal sin of Aazhi is how it utterly fails to give us an impactful ending. The film has your attention, but as an audience, attention is the payment we pay in anticipation of a reward at the end. And the reward could either be catharsis or maybe even a lingering bitter feeling. All we get with Aazhi is a sudden and desperate attempt to make us feel something, a knee-jerk reaction to make us take it seriously. Aazhi in Tamil translates to the ocean, the deep, which is ironic considering how the film is anything but that.