The opportunistic world of Vada Chennai

There are films which you love at first sight and be with the hangover for many days. One of them is the incredibly written & brilliantly made Vada Chennai by Vetri Maaran starring Dhanush, Aishwarya Rajesh, Kishore, Samuthirakani, and an ensemble cast.

Disclaimer: I strongly recommend you to watch the movie before or after reading this piece.

Vada Chennai is not merely a gangster drama, but it has much to cater. The characters with their strong motives, the story involving multiple character arcs, a take on the undermining effect of capitalism and so on.

Delving into the characters and their motives, we can observe that this movie does not go with a plan per se. It’s actions and consequences all throughout.

Anbu aspires to be a carrom champion but gets dragged into the revenge saga (by whom?) resulted due to an altercation about his girlfriend, Padma.

Padma wants to lead a happy life with Anbu, but her name is tarnished in their hood after seeing her in an intimate scene with Anbu.

Rajan wants his hood to prosper with the help of government but falls prey to dirty politics and opportunists desiring his position.

Chandra awaits a situation to properly seek her vengeance after her dreams with his husband, Rajan got shattered.

Guna and Senthil conspire to be sole representative of their hood.

Velu is in prison to finish Senthil at the culmination of awesomely written interval bang!

Thambi after losing his dear brother has only one ambition: to restore peace and diplomacy in their lives as per his brother’s last wish.

Everyone has got their ambitions and this movie perfectly unfolds Causal effect. Every action has a consequence, which in turn leads to another accidental situation. All the characters are some way cause an effect that certainly has a consequence.

I see this movie as one version of Mahabharata — Chandra playing Shakuni, slowly seeking her vengeance by making Guna act as per her advice.

As goes the narration, this movie has a pattern with respect to the lives of Rajan and Anbu — both stand for their people against the capitalist (selfish, here) people. Both of them marry their love life. Both of them want welfare of their hood. And the interesting part — Guna & Senthil are against this because they are not going to commence the development activity proposed by industrialists, thereby losing their commission.

This movie critiques the opportunistic capitalism that we have here — ignore the plight of locals and go ahead with your development projects that only benefits you to the core and throw locals on the road. I like filmmakers like Vetri Maaran because they do not communicate societal issues with a big mic, melodramatic scenes, and a Lord Rama like hero.

They convey these issues as if our brother is talking to us. The priorities are clear — the content has to be conveyed, not the person discussing it has to be glorified.

Also, this movie has some brilliant scenes — the hotel scene where Rajan is killed by Senthil and Guna, spectacular interval bang (definitely a bang), and Rajan confronting police in their hood. You may watch this video that describes the hotel scene:

Coming to Padma, the aftermath of an intimate scene between her and Anbu makes her to deliver these lines:

“Situation like these make only boys look like heroes, but it’s humiliating for girls”

I think I have covered all the points that I noticed while watching this movie. Vetri usually takes more time to make movies but he makes sure he delivers best! My film watching pattern changed after I saw Visaranai by Vetri. Until then I used to watch movies randomly and then, I started watching according to the list of movies made by particular filmmakers.

I am looking forward to Vada Chennai Part-2. Few movies that have planned sequels have inadequate story in the initial parts so that they can dig into plotlines in sequels, but Vada Chennai part-1 looks complete, I mean the movie didn’t have any considerable gaps in the screenplay. Filmmakers and writers can use this movie as a reference while planning to write a script with non-linear screenplay.

This recent interview of Vetri where he talks about his inspirations and opinion on Academy Awards can be found here:

If you find something to be added to this content, feel free to comment below. I will meet you in another blog soon 😊