Jyothika plays the titular character in director Bala’s Naachiyar. Unlike other Bala films, this movie is easy to summarise; Naachiyar, a tough and honest cop, develops a soft corner for a rape victim who is also a minor. She investigates and eventually avenges the culprit.
The audience applauded at the end of the movie and I came out smiling. The movie had an uncharacteristically happy ending! Here’s why I wonder if Bala really directed this.
Oh, and btw, the cuss word that went viral in the trailer was muted out in the film. It made no difference, because everyone heard it in their heads, thanks to all the publicity.
The Actors
Music director-turned-actor GV Prakash plays the male lead in the movie. The 30-year-old has acted in six movies so far (minus Naachiyar), and has been uniformly bad in all of them. His talent as an actor is inversely proportional to his brilliance as a music director.
Or so I thought, until Naachiyar, in which he delivers an honest, though inconsistent performance. What is unclear is how smart or dumb Prakash’s character is. Occasionally, he channels Vikram’s character from Pithamagan who can barely string two words together, and then suddenly switches to a street-smart Surya character from the same film.
Ivana plays Prakash’s pair and is brilliant as a debutante. Dr Guru, who runs a multi-specialty hospital in Madurai in real life, plays Jyothika’s husband in the movie. In the film, too, he is a doctor. While his role is limited, it serves to further the plot.
The Brilliance of Jyothika and Side Artistes
Jyothika’s rise to stardom in Tamil cinema, her sudden exit to focus on her personal life, and her reprise after 15 years with 36 Vayathinile – all of these have been picture perfect and well timed.
She is now a standalone female lead actor who can carry a film entirely on her shoulders. Which is exactly what she did in Naachiyar.
But due credit goes to the many nameless side artistes, including Naachiyar’s colleague, her female subordinates at the police station, GV Prakash’s contractor boss and the rich Marwadi family who employee Ivana as a house maid. It is their natural, occasionally self-conscious acting that gives the film the rawness it requires to make a predictable plot believable.
Ilayaraja Still Has It
The sound of the film and the background score are both top notch. Thanks to the run time of less than two hours (100 minutes), the film is taut. Ilayaraja’s symphonic BGM, especially in the romantic scenes between GV Prakash and Ivana are both fresh and reminiscent of the Raja of the 80s.
The Bala-Ilayaraja combo has given Kollywood some haunting melodies from movies like Sethu, Pithamagan and Naan Kadavul. While there is no ‘signature song’ in Naachiyar, the movie will be remembered by its occasionally heavy BGM.
But Where’s the Bala in the Bala Film?
The hero goes mad in the end in Sethu (1999). The mother feeds poisoned curd rice, thereby killing the hero in Nandhaa (2001). The villain cuts the hero’s friend to pieces and packs the head and torso in a sack in Pithamagan (2003).
In Thaara Thappattai (2016), the villain cuts the pregnant heroine’s stomach, rips out the child and leaves her to die.
You get the picture.
There is no such unimaginable gore in Naachiyar. In comparison, the premise of juvenile rape (not visualised, only implied) is practically certified U (uncharacteristically Bala).
Bala’s films are usually nuanced. Even in Avan Ivan (2011), which could be called Bala’s version of a comedy caper, the world that Bala creates deals with dying monarchies that still exist in far flung Tamil Nadu, the influx of pop culture that the locals find hard to process, and so much more.
Naachiyaar has none of the depth or layers that I had grown accustomed to in a Bala film.
Naachiyaar makes for a compelling watch and is riveting in places. Nevertheless, it is but a shadow of a dream of a genre of films that over time had redefined Tamil cinema.
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