Review of the 2013 Tamil film ‘Neram’, a debut effort by Alphonse Putharen and starring Nivin Pauly

Neram is like watching an enthusiastic but amateur dancer appear in a professional dance competition; he has spark and some skill but lacks finesse. The concept of it is clear but the design is irregular; each character in Neram has the quality of being memorable but not the essence. He would interest you less in a match between two low-ranked players, regardless of his improvement on the court, than in a battle between two top seeds. Neram sometimes feels heavy and heavy, but you admire his efforts nonetheless. But he wants more, he wants something delicious, something he can taste like sinful dark chocolate, but what Neram provides is Milky Bar. Nice, sure, but not to make you go ‘Bow Chicka Wah Wah!’ style axis.

My intention was not to watch Neram at all when I entered the Mayajaal theater hall in Chennai. Since there were no other movies showing at the time (well, I had a choice, but it was either this or the animated Epic or worse, a long three hour wait for the rest of the movies), I opted for Neram. , just because I was pleased with the efforts that current Tamil directors were putting into their films unlike many of their Bollywood counterparts. When I walked into the room, the movie hadn’t “stopped nicely for me” (I couldn’t resist using the Emily Dickinson phrase!), so I can’t say exactly how it started. My version started with the scene where Vatti Raja, a small-time moneylender and thug berates someone for defaulting on the loan while others, including our protagonist Vetri and his friend, look on in bewilderment. The scene ends with Vetri’s friend farting and I immediately thought ‘Was that necessary?’ Several such ornaments weren’t needed, but Neram retained them, making the film feel like an overdecorated Christmas tree. Like after this very scene when Vetri starts telling about his love life and takes us back to his school days when he met his future fiancée Jeena for the first time in sixth grade I think; the scene is cute until the movie also decides to add a full song sequence with Vetri and Jeena performing the predictable ‘foreplay in the park’ (with bubbles this time) and the more intelligent audience goes ‘Ah! What a cute couple!’. I was impassive.

Later, when Neram gives the silly romance a rest, it works like a Tarantino-esque comedy. Vitri worries about the consequences of not paying his debt to Vatti Raja, while problems also arise when Jeena’s father opposes their relationship after learning that Vetri is unemployed. Jeena plans to elope with Vetri, but that’s when her chain is stolen; Interestingly, one of the members of the same gang of chain thieves steals Vetri’s money, which he had taken from his friend (I think; I’m an unreliable narrator here, haven’t seen Neram since the beginning). A side story involves a guy (don’t ask me the name of the character or the actor playing him. I wish Wikipedia could update his character bio on Neram) who keeps a “cool” nickname for himself, likes to look at a lot of the girls with the eyes (another idiotic scene in the hospital when we hear her inner voice saying ‘Oh, a lady’s voice!’ when a nurse walks into the room during an interesting scene) and also, like many others in the movie , he owes some money to Vatti Raja. The way their lives intertwine is interesting because most of the characters don’t know, even after they meet, how similar their problems are. This all happens after the interval, and so much seems to be the work of sheer chance or fate that I wondered why the film wasn’t titled ‘Chance’ or ‘Faith’, the Tamil word for them.

Neram plays out like a simple comedy, although it tries to emulate a Tarantino movie. While Tarantino’s dialogue is so riveting and unnerving that monologues that would be considered ramblings if heard anywhere else sound monumentally deep, Neram simply jokes around with quirky characters; However, credit must be given to its non-linear narrative. The actors act according to their script; they’re less irritating when the script wakes up but neither one would stick with you after the movie. And who made the decision to give the role of Vatti Raja to Simhaa, who is in no way intimidating? I get that this is a comedy, but I should at least feel a little bit of what the characters feel towards others in order to get more involved with the movie. Even a little more editing skill would have gone a long way; takes the scene when Vetri’s friend’s boss berates him for shaving his beard. He then walks in and yells at another employee, but later apologizes when she turns out to be a girl; the second part happens offscreen and we only got to hear the running gag. Based on audience response, very few got the gag because I heard little reaction from the audience; the gag (a bit silly, of course) isn’t well-treated, with not enough sound for audience members to hear and some sloppy editing treatment that cuts through the gag quickly. I guess the movie wanted to cram as many jokes into it as possible in a short amount of time, but it timed some of them wrong. Well, maybe I’ll see a better outing from its director Alphonse Putharen another time.