Thanks for your critique, Janet. We actually tried a couple of episodes where House (Hugh Laurie) (please put the brackets in the right place) gets it right first time, but they were only 6 minutes long. NBC weren’t happy. Then we tried some where House never gets it right and the patient dies. The audience wasn’t happy.
One could apply your trenchant analysis to other art forms: JS Bach wrote 30 Goldberg variations on the same chord structure; Frida Kahlo painted 50 portraits of herself; Henry Moore, what??
The point is, or was, variations on a theme; if all you see is hospital, medical blah blah, then it wasn’t meant for you.
Nonetheless, I look forward to your first novel!
As much as I think that the current result is quite risky, especially trusting a newcomer, I am inclined to not think of it as pure large-group mentality. The latter is mostly rooted with an ideology and blindly following that as opposed to what happened now-- there's no idealogy
Saw this on IG and I think even Otherwarya is not sure about what we are being brainwashed into. Everything these women have questioned, my only response to it is so what??? What's the problem here?
When Indians said it, we were mocked and our knowledge was dismissed as myth.
When Westerners say it, they are rewarded with a Nobel prize!
Sheer hate being played out in real time!
Many thoughts on Dude:
Dude opens at a wedding hall with 'Nooru Varusham' from Panakkaran. It's the song you hear at every Tamil wedding, a song meant to celebrate the beauty of marriage. But here, as a thaali is tugged off a bride’s neck and chaos erupts, the film’s intent is declared instantly. This isn’t a story about preserving the sanctity of marriage, or celebrating the importance of customs. This is about breaking down ritual (when done for its own sake) to uncover something more beautiful: the beauty of self-sacrificing love.
Pradeep Ranganathan often gets compared with an established actor or two, but to me, he’s quite original, a performer who's so childlike in his antics, in his purity of emotion. He claps with his feet, kisses dogs, makes dog-like faces at his mother when begging for her blessing... and yet, at the drop of a hat, he is able to move you. That balance between innocence and intense emotion, between caricature and character, is offers many joys. Credit to director Keerthiswaran too, who's able to make you laugh one moment, tear up the next.
Mamitha brings an easy, unpretentious air to Kural, her playfulness feeling sincere, her character feeling very lived in. What’s quite cool about Dude is how it takes what's usually shown as a familial bond—selfless suffering—and executes it through romantic love. I thought Agan (Pradeep) was almost Christ-like in his endurance of pain. He suffers, bleeds, and yet the film, like Agan himself, maintains a strange tone of happy energy. It’s a serious story disguised as a cheerful entertainer.
There's a twist so unpredictable, so casually done, that it ranks among the year’s best for me. A great twist isn’t merely about surprise; it’s about how inevitable it seems. When it arrives, it must fit perfectly, like a truth that makes total sense. Dude sets it up well too. Even the film's revolutionary, radical premise feels emotional, natural... and very, very palatable.
The film slips profound thoughts into casual moments. It equates friendship and love. It captures the tragedy of mismatched timing in romantic love. There’s a lovely bit when a married woman tells a man they weren’t meant to be... and she means it so genuinely and it never feels wrong for a second. This is Devdas in a way, a Gen-Z Devdas who smiles through heartbreak and who is able to cry on the road one moment, and snap out of it the next, almost embarrassed by his own vulnerability.
Self-sacrifice is deeply moving always, and it's more so when a protagonist does it so casually, as if it were simply the right thing to do and there's nothing more to think about it. The film, at one point, poses that question—maanama, uyiraa?. I loved that Kural chooses uyir as any rational person would and should, while Agan chooses maanam initially, he changes his mind, out of love. Beautiful.
Keerthiswaran’s love for Rajinikanth is all over Dude. You see it in the phone flicks, the finger snaps, the hand gestures. In one moment, I heard Pradeep's laugh and already knew that his next words were going to be, “Good joke” (thanks to watching Sivaji as many times). But more than these homages, the film channels something fundamental from Rajinikanth’s legacy: the portrayal of a pure-hearted man whose innocence causes him much suffering. When such a man suffers, we tear up. I certainly did in Dude.
Sure, there are issues in the resolutions. The ending around Sarathkumar’s character felt hurried (and perhaps even misplaced). The romantic closure for Agan felt forced. Kural, in hindsight, does feel rather self-absorbed and not nearly as generous as Agan. But these are cracks I can overlook... in a film brave enough to propose something radical, and kind enough to mean well.