Richie is an oxymoron of a movie. Despite multiple narratives, it’s neither boring nor confusing, even for someone who wants to leave behind his brains at home. All thanks to the taut script and story. The downside though, is that the only thing that actually performs in the movie – including the lead Nivin Pauly – is the script.
FYI, the movie is a remake of the Kannada film Ulidavaru Kandante, written, directed by and starring Rakshit Shetty, who’s co-written the screenplay for Richie with Gautham.
That Kurosawa, Seven Samurai Thing
Richie is a confluence of five isolated narratives that crash into each other. Same incident through multiple perspectives. In fact, that’s what Ulidavaru Kandante (As Seen by the Rest) means.
A number of movies in Tamil have used this form of narrative. The best of them all undoubtedly, is Kamal Haasan’s Virumaandi (2004), which is a literal textbook of dialect, narrative tautness and performance.
Richie fares poorly in two of these three. Nivin Pauly’s Malayali accent put me off the moment he delivered the first dialogue – ‘What is your name?’. All of the other characters up to that point had gotten the typical Thothukudi slang almost bang on; not just in the choice of words, but in the way they are spoken. And then this local boy, who never left that little seaside town, chews on his Tamil like puttu in channa gravy.
Nivin dubbed for himself in Neram (2013), which was set in Chennai (also made simultaneously in Malayalam). Accents don’t really matter in an urban setting. Not so if the story is set in Thoothukudi. I had the same grouse with Toilet - Ek Prem Katha too.
In a movie that has so many characters, I’ve usually come to expect lacklustre performances from some of them. Don’t we all? Even Lagaan, and The Hobbit trilogy aren’t exempt from this possibility.
But Nivin Pauly was disappointing. He does have style. He does have charisma. Heck, he can even convey an emotion from the back of his head, or through eyes covered by Ray-bans. And yet, for literally 90 percent of the movie, all he did was chew tobacco, speak in a slow, dragged out drawl, hit a few people, and amble around.
The few scenes where he talks to his father (a priest, played by Prakash Raj), and his confrontation with his childhood friend, who betrayed him; would have been poignant, if not for the distracting accent.
Music and Lyrical Visuals
Ajaneesh Loknath (music) is a welcome addition to Tamil cinema. There’s just one song in Richie. Ajneesh’s work speaks volumes in adding mood, drama and occasionally, even a sort of black comedy to otherwise normal scenes. The theme music is thumpy, full of synth samples, and quite catchy.
Pandi Kumar’s cinematography is what sets the movie apart, right from the first frame. The lighting is either completely natural, or so dramatic that I know it’s trying to tell me something. And the use of such extreme close-ups on the large screen somehow seems to intensify the experience. His work in Haggada Kone (end of the rope), a Kannada film, is worth checking out.
Wasted actors and side-artists, an extremely stylised visual narrative, dramatic music and visuals and a story that should have kept me at the edge of my seat; all of these collapse under the triple whammy of weak performances, multiple accents, and an unnecessarily long second half.
Like the last three murders in the movie that shatter hope, lives and dreams, these inconsistencies are what make Richie a tragedy.
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