Genuinely teared up at certain moments and apart from the movie, what made me more happy was the way it was received with applause at the end. Not a unanimous applause, and definitely not an applause out of mockery, but one with genuine admiration and respect. Well, atleast a small step in the right direction.Great performances from everyone, especially the two leads rishikant and Sanath. While I'm not aware of the former, I have noticed the later in other Subbu movies. Deserves all the applause and recognition for this.This is an out and out commercial cinema, everything from its filmmaking techniques to its writing which is also rooted. I felt the writing could've been a bit more nuanced, and the portrayals a bit more subtle especially during the second half. That's just my personal "emotional quotient" preference, it is a bit loud for me but it does justice to the time period, place and the kind of people that it's set around. We can't expect them to understand everything or be subtle about it as they're socially conditioned in a certain way and the added fact that there was little to no awareness in those times. So the journey in the second half, time taken for acceptance and a few moments of unlearning along the way make sense. It does have pacing issues and the climax was dragged a bit to get the point across, while I felt the perfect moment to end it was after he vents and later takes off in his lorry. The sudden realisation of love did not feel earned, but it beautifully culminated what Subbu ultimately wanted to say through this movie. It does have the usual Subbu writing problems, I have never found it as a roadblock, but there's no denying the fact that he tends to over explain everything. A little subtlety and nuance would've made this a banger but at the same time I respect that he went along the usual commercial route with this. Never felt any of the genre shifts he's done so far were for shock value. It's his way of saying that there's a lot more going on the inside than the surface. This has always been a consistent feature and atleast he's still honest even after working these many years in the industry.The time period adds a lot of sense to the movie, the abuse and trauma women go through, especially highlighting the lack of agency. Rather than showing what they go through, Subbu decided to show how these men go around doing and saying whatever they want without any consequences. All these violence has no repercussions and not including a conclusion or a change in the end just shows the reality that some people will never change. A lot of it is left to us, we can either take it as misguided writing or think about it from the pov of the time period. The character identifying with the gender norms forced upon women is nothing but a reality of that time as they never knew what else women could do other than take care of the family, cook or clean. That's how I saw it, but there's nothing wrong in saying that he just aligned with the stereotypical traits associated with portraying women. At the end of the day patriarchy and toxic masculinity destroys men and women alike.Also, why did Dorothy, someone who seems to be educated, compassionate and full of empathy even choose to get married to such a guy? Well, It's not that hard to figure out that probably she never even had a choice to begin with.The music is just amazing, it honestly looks like he poured his heart and soul into it. As an outsider, I never got the Ilayaraja hype tbh, I'm not aware of his hits or discography, but the music and score in this movie was like a slap on my face lol, damn, the hype is real. The cinematography is simply breathtaking, a lot of amazing framing and compositions throughout. Just makes us realise that most movies are not even doing the bare minimum, probably busy chasing faster bolt cameras. The editing, the lighting, costumes, everything felt so complete after a long time. It's sad we're getting happy with something that should be considered as bare minimum lol.P.S: Desi star wars nadaswaram during a wedding scene got me 😭
