Dev

Mannnnyyy, mannnyyy thoughts on #Scene (Possible spoilers, so don't risk reading if you'd rather not know about events in the film) ____ In today's extraordinarily image-conscious world, there’s something wonderfully reassuring about a star who lets us laugh at him. Someone secure enough to let another actor take the fight, another character take the punchline, and still know we’ll be looking at him. Massive credit to Suriya for doing this film, because Scene gives us a hero who takes himself very seriously, while we are encouraged to laugh at him for doing what all heroes generally do. Think of that first big fight. Inbaraj, who is visually impaired, swings about with magnificent confidence while Maya, played by Nazriya, does the actual fighting. Sushin Shyam’s music is pure adrenaline, while the comedy keeps coming from Inbaraj’s mistaken understanding of the situation, from his over-confident masculinity. Somehow, with every laugh, with every small puncture to his dignity, Suriya becomes more and more endearing in Scene. It isn't just Inbaraj; almost nobody gets to preserve their dignity in Jithu Madhavan’s world. In one scene, Maya’s father (Gajaraj) begins a sanctimonious parental rebuke about Inbaraj and his family’s depravity and how it's a bad idea for Maya to be involved with them. We know this speech. We’ve heard it from so many disapproving cinema fathers. Except, as he continues, we see what he’s doing, and suddenly, it becomes impossible to take his authority seriously. Scene keeps setting up familiar situations before pulling something quite unfamiliar out of them. A senior police officer gets abused by his subordinate. A serial killer urinates on the most senior cop. The hero’s mother makes illicit liquor. Even Inbaraj's clothes suggest little interest in looking like a policeman. This film plants landmines of disrespect around everyone, and the more reverence you expect, the worse your humiliation. It’s almost as though Jithu watched the earnestness and child-friendliness of early 2D productions and wondered how far he could stretch the boundaries of what's acceptable. Quite far, it turns out. And with such entertaining results. He doesn't spare even cinema, or the many formulas that govern screenwriting. When someone asks Stephen (Lal) why he tolerates Inbaraj’s disrespect, he prepares to explain. “In 1972…” he begins, and I leaned back for a flashback. Here it comes, the formative incident, the core memory. Except the junior officer listening to him interrupts: “Sir, please, let’s go talk to Victor.” We never hear the story. And the lovely thing is, we don’t need to. We understand Stephen’s attachment without being taken through the mandatory episode explaining it. I was particularly surprised by Jithu's willingness to interrupt even the sentiment that works, even the emotions that the film has sincerely earned. There’s a gorgeously vulnerable moment when Inbaraj feels Maya’s wrists, hoping she has accepted the bracelet he gave her, hoping she is in love with him too. It’s such a small physical gesture, this visually impaired man tentatively feeling the woman's wrists. When he feels no bracelet, Suriya is a picture of hurt and vulnerability. I really was on the cusp of tears. Except, his father, Irudayaraj (Anandraj) dramatically announces: “Heartbreak!” And I’m laughing, where I should be crying. In another moment, Inbaraj softly calls out, “Amma?” “Sollu kannu,” she responds affectionately. For a second, we’re in the comforting space of a mother answering her son. Except, he locates her with her voice, so he can fling something at her in anger. The film keeps doing this. It gets close enough to touch a feeling, then finds a way to make us laugh. The sentimentalist in me was almost frustrated. But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that there’s something unexpectedly warm about Jithu's refusal to leave us a teary mess. Jithu knows he can have our tears, but with Scene, he shows that he would rather have our laughter. I think that makes me quite emotional. I even wondered whether Maya’s condition is simply an extension of Jithu's own aversion to heightened emotion. In her intro scene, young Maya gets diagnosed: "If she gets exposed to heightened emotion, she will develop seizures." We get it, Jithu. And yet, at all times, Scene understands how much is at stake emotionally. It knows what it means for Inbaraj to trust another person to be his eyes. It knows how frightening it can be to depend on someone, particularly when you have built your identity as the man who sees everything. In that scene when Inbaraj feels Maya has deceived him, Suriya is so good. Beneath the anger is the vulnerability of someone who has allowed himself to trust a stranger. And by the way, isn’t there something beautiful about 'kannu', that familiar term of affection, holding such a literal meaning here? The woman he loves functions as his eyes. Somewhere in the first half, we see a small wordplay when the title Scene changes to Seen, and I didn't think much of it as an obvious reference to Inbaraj’s eyesight. By the end though, it felt more rewarding for me. So much of this film involves people gradually seeing each other more fully: Maya recognising the vulnerability beneath Inbaraj’s boorish behaviour, Inbaraj recognising that she completes him, Stephen truly being able to see the man he has defended for so many years. Even Naslen’s Eeswaran allows himself a little smile of admiration for his enemy. And Naslen makes that recognition count. His confidence, his playful evil, gives Inbaraj someone worth confronting, someone whose appreciation means something. Their exchange has the pleasure of two smart minds playing with each other. And again, Jithu breaks this idea that to take on a star of Suriya's magnitude, you need someone of his age, someone of his physical strength, someone who's socially powerful. A young, cocky adult is good enough, it seems. And throughout this film, Jithu’s affection for Suriya also keeps showing up. The film has great fun with his image, but you can tell it knows and respects the work that created it. In fact, a woman describing the world to a man who cannot see reminded me of Ghajini. Somewhere, Inbaraj screams, “Ondra ton weight!”, but it's a joke. The heroine’s name, Maya, feels like an affectionate nod to Kaakha Kaakha. And since we are on Maya, that Jyotika cameo is beautifully done, its existence emerging out of Inbaraj’s condition. Even star nostalgia, even a nod to Suriya's personal life, becomes something specific to his character’s experience here. Some of you who have followed my work know by now that like Tyrion Lannister, I too have a tender spot for broken things. Perhaps that’s why I found myself so fond of this collection of people in Scene who would fail any basic test of normalcy. Inbaraj cannot make peace with himself. Maya struggles to find work that makes use of what she can do. Their parents have addictions and eccentricities of their own. In fact, nobody seems qualified to look after anybody else. But somehow, they all begin to manage it. Given that the film is about a serial killer, you can see why this is a film preoccupied with bodies: a body needing disposal at the beginning, bodies at the centre of the investigation, even Inba's proposal has a piece of jewellery being placed in a dead person’s mouth. Jithu finds comedy everywhere, including in such horror. Among all these bodies, all this death, he manages to create life among a few small, ridiculous people. Among casual moments, he unearths unexpected depth. Like when Inbaraj is asked to come to a mortuary and he says, "Enakku elaa edamum onnu dhaan." There's understated heaviness that exists so casually. Perhaps the most fitting assessment of Scene, which happily subverts so many ideas, which joyfully takes such liberties with the idea of a star vehicle, comes from within it. At one point, an unnamed woman in this film who has managed to get her boyfriend wrongly arrested, declares to the media: “Enna nenacha enakke perumaya irukku.” I think Jithu Madhavan has enough reason to feel the same.