Film Review : Beginning
Director Jagan Vijaya's novel effort, Asia's first split screen Tamil movie, Beginning hits theatres this week.
The unique usp of the film is that on the split screen, 2 stories,run parallely and the viewer has to concentrate on both simultaneously. At one point, the characters in both parts connect. What happens next?
Balasubrami ( Vinoth Kishan in a brilliant performance) though grown up now, is a person with special needs who is locked up in the flat when his caring mom ( Rohini) leaves for work daily. On the other side of the screen, a young girl, Nithya( Gouri) has been kidnapped by youths, led by her spurned ex-lover Chandru( Sachin who nails the part). Somehow, Nithya manages to find a phone and ends up calling a random number which happens to be that of Balasubramani, who is in no position to help her due to various constraints.
Does Nithya escape? What else do the evil doers have in mind?
All the actors have done a brilliant job ( see cast list below) to keep our attention unwavering till the end and connect is with the emotions they are feeling at every stage.
The screenplay sometimes slows down but picks up again, in a bid to not only introduce us to Balasubramani's lifestyle but also show what bearing it can have on later events.
The mother-son bonding scenes are superbly done as are the poignant yet humorous interchanges between Nithya and Balasubramani.
Laguparan as the boyfriend is well cast while Vinoth Kishan steals the show along with a superb bad boy act by Sachin. Gouri too displays well the emotions and frustrations.
The crisp and to the point focus of the screenplay is a plus, with no deviations.
There is a subtle message the director conveys which one discovers as the story moves forward.
Watch out for the twists from time to time.
On the flip side, the lags do weigh down on the viewer at times while Nithya voice is bit too shrill in decibels, which could have been looked into by the the sound department.
Beginning , a split screen movie, is an interesting concept and the experiment seems to have been well executed overall. A commendable effort to showcase something different indeed.
