Asuran Review

Vetri Maaran’s Asuran offers so many things to imbibe, still falls short of his previous works

Cast: Dhanush, Manu Warrier, Pasupathy, Ken
Music: G V Prakash Kumar
Direction: Vetri Maaran

Vetri Maaran and Dhanush is a collaboration that has been consistent in giving great films. Dhanush starring four films or the film where he was the producer were one better than the previously released film. Asuran is fifth film for Vetri Maaran and also in their collaboration. To start with, Asuran is not better than any of Vetri Maaran’s work but the film offers so many things that you admit it, its a very good film. Before I disclose why this film is not the best of Vetri Maaran, we will see what the aspects that make it a good film are.

Let’s start with the actor, Dhanush who plays as Sivasami, a 40+ year old father of three kids. He portrays the character without any prostatic make-up and convinces us with his marvelous acting. He also portrays this character at his 20s and he is convincing there also (except for the drawn mustache). Every time he fights he turns into a demon (Asuran). G V Prakash’s music is daringly good for that.  Vetri Maaran brings best out of Dhanush every single time and it’s mesmerizing to watch the actor perform.

The character Sivasami is introduced as someone who is calm, composed and naïve. His sons Vel Murugan (TeeJay) and Chidambaram (Ken) are aggressive. In fact they complain why their father is so calm and naïve. Dhanush’s expressions tells us that he has experienced a lot and that’s why he is calm. There is no much exploration on the bonding of their relationship, which makes the characters a less sympathetic.

Vetri maaran takes time in establishing the social inequality more than the father-son relationship. He establishes that Chidambaram is in his teens and he thinks he can take care of himself without parents help like any other teenager thinks. The director explores more on the situations which led that teenager to take a drastic decision. Vetri maaran’s writing is interesting as always, especially when the past events has reverberation on the present life.

To quote a few scenes, the problem that facing Sivasami intensifies when the opposite person is hit by a slipper. Both past and present involves a character in early 20s. Both past and present involve a death by burning a person. Both in the past and present the upper-caste people wants land from the lower-caste people. The marrying of social inequality into the narrative is something Vetri Maaran is good at. We saw that in Vada Chennai, Visaranai.

In Asuran he talks about upper-caste people discriminating, dominating the lower-caste people. We get two gut wrenching scenes, one where Sivasami is asked to apologize to the whole village and he falls in the feet of small kids and other where Mariyamma (Ammu Abirami) is asked to keep her slippers on head and walk around the village. These scenes are part of story and the last dialogue “If we have land, they will grab it. If we have money, they will steal it. But if we have education, they can’t do anything” is so organic. We consistently see Sivasami insisting Chidambaram to go to school in present and Mariyamma in the past. The dialogue just hits you hard rather than being preachy in many message-oriented films.

All these interesting things in the movie make this film a great one to watch. But Vetri Maaran has set his bar high that it falls short to surpass his past work beauties. The first thing which totally turned me off was the lip sync. The native language is bought in dubbing and it doesn’t sync on any actors. As told the concentration is on the happenings rather than the characters, it becomes difficult to invest in them and feel sympathy about them.

Verdict: Vetri Maaran’s Asuran offers so many things to imbibe, still falls short of his previous works