The opening scene of Jiivi has Saravanan (Vetri, known for his restrained role in 8 Thottakal ) curiously (more about this later) looking at a disposed water bottle, that gets crushed by a speeding car. Saravanan draws parallels to the crushed bottle (it’s a metaphor of him being an ‘outsider’) and compares his life being squashed in the arms of Chennai. He works in a juice shop. Of course in Tamil cinema’s universe, this immediately warrants a flashback where the hero is seen as a small-town ruffian, who will also have an action block with slow-mo shots.
The writing (written by Babu Tamizh) is consistently bad in the initial few scenes, which follows the village-thug-lands-in- singara -Chennai template. It gets worse when Saravanan meets whatever-that-name-of-his-lover. And suddenly, the scenes are rushed (thankfully) to a point where everything happens in a single shot. The girl meets him for the second time and they fall in love… all in one shot. To all the ‘soup’ boys loving for love on Tinder, I suggest you get in touch with Tamil filmmakers. They also get a romantic ‘awee-cute’ song. The conflict and the ensuing break-up, too, takes place in a single shot. But these end up as minor squabbles when the actual plot takes the centrestage, and the writing becomes consistently good.
- Cast: Vetri, Karunakaran, Rohini and Mime Gopi
- Director: VJ Gopinath
- Storyline: A series of mysterious events begins to mirror Saravanan’s life when he robs his landlady
Saravanan and his friend Mani (Karunakaran, whose gag about ‘Amma’ is a scream) plan a robbery on their landlady, who, ironically, is called Lakshmi (Rohini). Lakshmi lives with her visually-impaired daughter and physically challenged husband. But nothing stops Saravanan from committing the crime. When asked about the ‘sins’, Saravanan espouses his atheist principles with a comfortable: “ Namba kashtapradatha kadavul pathutu dhana irundharu...idhayam paakatum .” I was pleasantly surprised about Jiivi, which, I thought, would follow the archetypal heist-thriller-trope. But it doesn’t, and has much more to that. Midway through the movie, there’s a scene where a significant character says to Saravanan: “Curiosity killed the cat.” Curiosity is both Saravanan’s strength and weakness. Early on, there’s a scene where Saravanan explains the theory of library —pick up a book and change its rack; the librarian would follow a certain paradigm while searching for the book.
That bookshelf is the screenplay of Jiivi , that guides you to think a certain way while the actuality is far different. Saravanan, in fact, invents a term for it called: Thodarbiyal . I don’t know its English equivalent, but I’m sure he meant the interconnectedness of life. Saravanan’s story, miraculously, interconnects with someone else’s, quite seamlessly. And when this transition happens, Jiivi becomes more engaging, more engrossing than its pointless first half. Some of the dialogues land really well. For instance, Saravanan describes his job as the blue uniform-wearing security guard with a terrific: “Megam illatha vaanam pola .” Later in the second half, when Mani questions him about the plan, he says, “ Avangala porutha verikum nanba ellarum verum bommai .”
Acting may not be Vetri’s biggest weapon. You can see him awfully struggling in a scene where he keeps adjusting his lungi , not knowing how to react. But if we were to take a leaf out of 8 Thottakal and now Jiivi , it’s interesting to note Vetri’s choice of films.
I loved the books that Saravanan reads. I also loved the low-key ‘closure’ that Saravanan and Mani end up getting. The latter finds a novel called Thavarugal, while the former has a book called Vidiyalai Thedi, if I remember correctly. Jiivi wasn’t too bad after all.
