Kazhugu - A Plummeting flight!

Day in and day out you hear people whining about how unfair our world is. Actually, it is more funny than unfair - Pizza deliveries reach us faster than an ambulance, tobacco shops are ‘strategically’ located near cancer institutes and Manmohan Singh is India’s Prime Minister (Ok, the last one isn’t a joke). The worst of the lot being that we have all the time in the world to complain about our cricketers’ performance but not a minute to spare a thought about the people who climb down steep mountains risking their very lives for extremely low wages to recover the bodies of suicide victims. Debutant Director S.Sathyasiva has taken up the story of such people who for a living put their lives on the line in ‘Kazhugu’.

Sera (Krishna Sekhar), Nandu (Karunas), Shanmugam (Thambi Ramaiah) and a friend live in Kodaikaanal and recover dead bodies from the suicide point for a living. They spend all their money on alcohol. They lead life on their own terms but things change when Sera meets Kavitha (Bindu Madhavi) who instantly falls in love with him. Sera refuses initially but soon he can’t help but reciprocate as well.

Meanwhile factory owner Ayya (Jayaprakash) is the resident ‘goonda’ and indulges in many illegal activities. Very soon, as expected, their stories get intertwined. What happens to the 4 friends, Kavitha, Ayya and his illegal business is the crux of the film.

When we talk about people who are involved with death and dead corpses we usually expect them to be tough, rigid and serious. But the Director has given these people funny quirks to lighten the movie. Even though they manage to be funny at times, we are not sure how logically valid that would be. The Director has done a fine job of letting the world understand the profession and the risks attached to it. He is further assisted by Sathya’s fantastic camera work and the aptly gloomy locations of Kodaikaanal. But the Director should’ve realized a fact. When a noted film maker (Vishuvardhan) does not cast his own brother in any of his films, it obviously means something. Krishna successfully manages to continually get on our nerves throughout the film. Karunas and Thambi Ramaiah with good performances do their bit to compensate for the above mentioned tragedy.

It is a film which tells us that it is human mentality to realize pain only when something bad happens to us or our loved ones. The cliché rural love scenes get a bit boring after a while. To make things worse, all the extras are worse than the hero! That really says something. Yuvan Shankar Raja’s songs are a hit and his BGM works well for the movie too. Even though the hard work put in by the team is evident we get a feeling that the plot is not all that strong. The poor screenplay adds to the woes of the audience. The Director’s attempt to deliver a disturbing ending is obvious and the final scenes seem rather pointless. What disappoints the most is that the movie is really engaging until late into 2nd half but the Director loses it from there on.

Overall, Kazhugu is a film which is a completely different and a bold attempt which leans a little too much towards bizarre in the end.

Kazhugu! Sure one time watch.