I expect movies to move me. When I go to a movie, I expect it to add value to me as much as a book does or even more, because of its easy to understand and follow nature. A movie has to inspire me, it has to leave me with something gained as I walk out. I think this attitude of mine was built from watching all the intense movies I was exposed to in Malayalam as a child. This most definitely is not agreeable to many friends of mine who are of the view that movies are nothing but an escape into magical worlds in order to forget the arduous and insipid lives we live. They are the pictorial portrayals of everything we yearn for in real life but never get around achieving. I have no refutation to either of these logics, and when a movie can do both, inspire and entertain- we have a winner.
Kaaka Muttai is one such movie that has successfully merged the so called "art movie" with a commercial one. That's about how much I will "review" the movie. What I really want to do here is to write about how it touched me and how it awoke in me a consciousness that exists in all of us,but never is never allowed to awaken.
While we run in our daily lives in pursuit of the things that we think will make us happy, there is another world out there that is striving too. But their struggle is for the things that we take for granted. While we have material comforts and yearn for more to move into the next level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there is a world out there without any of the basic amenities we have, that are equally or more happy than we are.
Every time I decide to buy something - I find myself asking this question - will I buy this thing if I wasn't looking for validation from the world? I remember the first time I had pizza - I despised it. I threw the entire pizza out of the car window surreptitiously so that my parents wouldn't chide me for pestering them to buy it for me and then throwing it away after only one bite. I wanted that pizza because the whole school was speaking about it, it was a "cool" thing to do then. Another example. I was really a poor dresser. There could not have been a shabbier dresser than me, but one day a friend refused to take me with her to a wedding with the grouse that I was dressed shabbier than she normally did even when chilling at home. That was enough to make me start dressing up - just so that I got validation.
This movie reminds us that in this world filled with unending desires and contrived needs (by corporations on the lookout for profit at any cost) to fit in and look good in societies eyes, there is a silent world co-existing, hidden away from the shiny city buildings and cool AC vehicles. And in this world, the desires of its inhabitants are simple - the lowest in the much spoken about Maslow's hierarchy of needs - physiological and security related.
What is a movie if it cannot make you wiser; if it cannot expose you to a pin headed size of hitherto unknown fact of life in this vast and endless world. This movie not only does this, it goes one step ahead and gives the viewer a view point that is bound to make her a more sympathetic person to the plight of the less fortunate humans of this world.
"Kaaka muttai" is the metaphor for the insight the movie gives - ugly and shunned like a crow this other world is, but it isn't by choice. Just because this hidden world or the crow is ugly it does not mean they don't have the same feelings, needs or aspirations that we do, or did at some point in our lives.
Kaaka Muttai is one such movie that has successfully merged the so called "art movie" with a commercial one. That's about how much I will "review" the movie. What I really want to do here is to write about how it touched me and how it awoke in me a consciousness that exists in all of us,but never is never allowed to awaken.
While we run in our daily lives in pursuit of the things that we think will make us happy, there is another world out there that is striving too. But their struggle is for the things that we take for granted. While we have material comforts and yearn for more to move into the next level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there is a world out there without any of the basic amenities we have, that are equally or more happy than we are.
Every time I decide to buy something - I find myself asking this question - will I buy this thing if I wasn't looking for validation from the world? I remember the first time I had pizza - I despised it. I threw the entire pizza out of the car window surreptitiously so that my parents wouldn't chide me for pestering them to buy it for me and then throwing it away after only one bite. I wanted that pizza because the whole school was speaking about it, it was a "cool" thing to do then. Another example. I was really a poor dresser. There could not have been a shabbier dresser than me, but one day a friend refused to take me with her to a wedding with the grouse that I was dressed shabbier than she normally did even when chilling at home. That was enough to make me start dressing up - just so that I got validation.
This movie reminds us that in this world filled with unending desires and contrived needs (by corporations on the lookout for profit at any cost) to fit in and look good in societies eyes, there is a silent world co-existing, hidden away from the shiny city buildings and cool AC vehicles. And in this world, the desires of its inhabitants are simple - the lowest in the much spoken about Maslow's hierarchy of needs - physiological and security related.
What is a movie if it cannot make you wiser; if it cannot expose you to a pin headed size of hitherto unknown fact of life in this vast and endless world. This movie not only does this, it goes one step ahead and gives the viewer a view point that is bound to make her a more sympathetic person to the plight of the less fortunate humans of this world.
"Kaaka muttai" is the metaphor for the insight the movie gives - ugly and shunned like a crow this other world is, but it isn't by choice. Just because this hidden world or the crow is ugly it does not mean they don't have the same feelings, needs or aspirations that we do, or did at some point in our lives.
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