CHENNAI : Writer-director Rajendra Chakravarthi’s Yaavarum Vallavare is a film split into four different chapters that uses an episodic narrative to tell its unrelated (and disjointed) stories. It abruptly jumps from one chapter to another. The film revolves around the larger theme of, ‘A hero can come out of anywhere’ (more on this later), but it takes a while for the film to take off.
Early in Yaavarum Vallavare, Samuthirakani’s Krishnan gets released from jail and is immediately followed by a gang of goons who are out there to kill him. The fact that he is walking home covered in a long blanket shows that he is expecting an attack. At the same time, he seems so nonchalant that a cop gives him a ride home and tells him that he is a good person. But we wonder why he is being followed if he is a good guy. Chakravarthi spends some time showing the goons chasing the man, only to jump to another chapter that involves a different set of characters.
One of the chapters involves a cameraman (Yogi Babu) and a director (Ramesh Thilak) approaching Athaachi (Devadarshini) for a film. The duo want to use Athaachi’s house as the location for their film, which involves an eloping couple, they even offer her a part in the project. Soon, another set of characters joins the oddball crew, including Paandi (Rajendran) and Athaachi’s husband, played by Ilavarasu’s Baskar. Ilavarasu’s character learns that his daughter is eloping, but he has a hard time making his wife understand the situation because she lives in a filmy world and thinks the old man is talking about her new film project. In a more realistic film, the adult wife will understand the reality of the situation in one exchange with her husband, but this is a deliberately screwball piece of narrative that sticks out like a sore thumb in a film that contains three other serious chapters.
There is also a chapter involving Arunthathi’s Then Mozhi, a teacher who comes home to realise that her Army officer husband is no more. Vijay Sethupathi makes one of his briefest appearances in a feature-length film in a tearjerker of a chapter. Arunthathi plays a grieving wife at a funeral, but Chakravarthi uses this situation more as an opportunity for a big speech about the deep entrenchment of caste and politics in society. Arunthathi delivers the big speech, and the film jumps back to the start with Samuthirakani.
Returning to Samuthirakani’s chapter, we see the actor give one big speech about the societal and cultural importance of Jallikattu—which has little to do with the plot of the film. While strongly opinionated monologues might still be entertaining even if they don’t serve the plot of the film, they hardly work in a disjointed film like Yaavarum Vallavare. The speech comes abruptly out of nowhere in the film, with very little buildup.
You keep watching the film with the hope that every chapter coalesces into one meaningful whole, but the parts remain as they are without any connective tissue. Let us talk about the section that works to some extent. There is a piece of storytelling in the Samuthirakani chapter that catches you off-guard with the nifty and deceptive way in which it unfolds, even though Chakravarthi uses phoney storytelling elements such as red herrings to achieve this effect. In one scene, Chakravarthi shows a character with a weapon in his hand in front of a goddess statue. Later, that character is behind the wheel by happenstance and racing against time to save a life. The contrast between a lifetaker and a lifesaver is startling, in line with the film’s hero theme, and Chakravarthi’s attempt to bring it out is appreciable, although one would hope for it to come in a better film.
I really like how Samuthirakani creates some sort of arc for his character, even with such a thin plot line. He has a commendable ability to cry on cue as well. His exchanges with Riythvika’s Revathy are also wonderful, but I wish they belonged in a film that is not as disjointed as Yaavarum Vallavare.
Film: Yaavarum Vallavare
Director: Rajendra Chakravarthi
Cast: Samuthirakani, Yogi Babu, Riythvika, Ramesh Thilak and Rajendran
Rating: 2/5