What I feel, separates Sukumar from his contemporary commercial peers in TFI
Sukumar is known for his idiosyncratic style of film making. I don’t know any other director in TFI who is as creative as him in the commercial space. He infuses into his stories whimsical, layered, and unconventional writings to narrate a story.
Right from his debut movie, Arya, Sukumar has always been keen on showing his creative & intellectual bent of mind to the audience and entertain them with his trademark style. Hardly there is any movie by Sukumar that shies away from showing his quirks, and quips and in fact, one is sure to get disappointed if it does not have one. If you ignore the commercial liberty, his stories have intricacies, they have metaphors ,they are nuanced. Over the years, it turned out to be the signature of the filmmaker. His story lines are not unique but the design is. Sukumar’ s characterizations are fleshed out well, rather than being one dimensional, holding a do-gooder or savior complex persona. Sukumar delves deep into the psyche of his protagonists.
For instance, a guy uniting his lover and her lover is not a novel story line, as told in Arya, but what sets apart is the characterization of the protagonist. Arya is eccentric, and emotional in equal measure. If you look at Arya’s intro in Arya, he is being introduced to us rescuing a pup from a septic tank. This conveys to us the characterization of Arya, who is not reluctant to jump into the filth to save a life, conveying his unconditional love. (Mentioning this because this is my fav hero introduction of a Sukumar movie). Arya believes the onus is on him to give his lover what she wishes for. Arya constantly tries to unite her lover and her boy friend but at the same time he also tries to woo her and win her love consistently. I am talking about this disparity here in his personality.
100% Love, on the exterior, is just a story of two cousins falling in love but in the story we get a peek into Balu’s flawed personality and his desperation to win her adulation, that he deems to be an accomplishment beyond anything. If not for this characterization , the story would end up just like any rom com with banters and misunderstandings and finally uniting in the end.
In Arya 2, being deprived of love since childhood, all Arya craves for is some belongingness. Then he’s put in a dilemma where he has to choose between his only friendship and his love of life. Morally ambiguous, he conflicts with his own self every time he has to take a decision between the both.
In Jagadam, Sukumar shows how a vulnerable young mind is attracted to the persona of a rowdy and how he ruins his adolescence and learns the lesson the hard way. This is not the truimphant story of a gangster, although commercial cinema has the space for such glorification.
Sukumar wanted to convey through these characterizations,that what appears like a sociopathic behaviour or egoistic attitude or vulnerable mindset is inherently human. We are all fragments of Arya, or Balu or Sreenu in a way.
Now, let’s talk about a scene in Arya 2. The climax scene of Arya 2 is in place not to just reveal the empathetic & unconditional nature of Arya but also bring the story to a closure (or happy ending owing to its commercial- ness), altering the perspectives of both his friend and lover, who otherwise perhaps would never really get to understand him. In this scene, to cut it short, Ajay being self-centred tries to exploit Arya’s vulnerability putting his life at stake and flee away from the spot with Geetha. This is where Geetha realizes the true character of Ajay and her wrong choice that was purely made from hate for Arya .She finally falls for him.This is a complex scene. (Watch the scene to know why). If not for this brilliantly written scene, Ajay and Geetha would have happily settled down in life, occasionally catching up with Arya, a loser, in their leisure. If its some other commercial director, the other one is either shown in bad light to redirect the love to the right person or he would have had generously sacrificed her to Arya for the sake of a convenient happy ending, accepting his fate.
In 1-Nenokkadine, the complex screenplay did not work for many, as they were unprepared for that coming from a big star during a festival time but it is one of the best works of Sukumar, in my opinion. For instance, in the story, Goutham is in search for his past, which exists only in his memory. We don’t know his past. He collects all the clues and traces towards his past and discovers that he actually has one. There are enough twists coming all this way but the story is not exactly about his past, interestingly. It is about his journey towards finding the golden rice — his father’s dream. Saying this, because I am not sure any other commercial director would think of such a story layer when we just kept thinking that Goutham discovering his past completes his quest.
Nanaku Prematho is the story of a son seeking revenge for his father’ pain. But again it’s last wish of his dying father. This is not just a plain revenge story. We hold on to emotions and supress them for a long time, which actually does more bad than good. The story emphasizes on venting them out, whether good or bad to make to make peace with our selves . This emotion blends with a tact screenplay based on ButterFly Effect concept.
Kumari 21 F may look like coming of a age love story outwardly but the story is not just about misunderstandings and differences and both the parties patching up together for a happy ending. It has a progressive theme beneath. It deals with a social taboo and voices out for acceptance in a relationship.
Rangasthalam is a commercial potboiler, just that it is set up in a rural backdrop with rustic characterizations. Chitti Babu is nothing more than a average country lad ,a saviour, who gets the village rid of a wicked village head but he is vulnerable too. He has a hearing disability. This handicap is smartly used in writing as it poses as the main hindrance to the character in avenging his brother’s murderer. What is used to generate humor in the first half turns into a serious curse for him in the second half. If its some other commercial contemporary director, I guess, a disability would not have bothered much to the him as he is bestowed with all the commercial hero power to outwit the opponents and emerge successfully and the handicap is used only used as a wacky element to entertain the audience.
Although Sukumar belongs to this elite group of big commercial directors in TFI, he is also someone who has his heart at the right frame. There is much more to discuss about this maverick director, who needs a bigger celebration in TFI, but will do it later . I have listed out few aspects of his filmmaking just as a tribute to him on his birthday.
Wishing Sukumar, many more happy returns of the day.
