Aravaan

This movie was visually breath-taking and a fascinating portrayal of a culture long-gone. The story of the movie was simple yet extremely well-handled with all the main characters fully fleshed out. Even the minor characters (e.g. Vannapechi) were well-rounded due to excellent acting and a great script. My greatest issue with this movie was the songs. I was rather irritated that the director found it necessary to dumb down an excellent movie with silly song numbers that added absolutely nothing. The songs completely detracted from the pace of the movie as I had to get re-absorbed into the actual story after every song.

In summary, I loved the movie and I am even planning to re-watch it in the near future! I really hope that Vasanthabalan makes more fantastic movies like this and I am very much looking forward to his future endeavours.

First things first,kudos to G.Vasanthabalan and team for their admirable attempt to recreate s.venkatesan's sahitya academy award winning novel kaaval kottam.The casting is near perfect with Aadhi ,Barath,Dhanshikha and Pasupathy.I am not going to give away the story,watch it for yourself.The art director and the cinematographer(Siddharth) deserve special mention.This movie is not for the average moviegoer who is accustomed to gravity-defying stunts, over the top heroism ,gaana\kuthu songs, so its not surprising that this movie did not fare well in the box office.The movie also conveys a valid and relevant message at the end.

On the flip side the director (and the editor) could have made the movie shorter as the movie spans over 2.5 hours .Kathik's re-recording has nothing to write home about.Songs also act as speed breakers at times.Singampuli's characterization could have been handled better

Lets hope that the box office failure of this movie does not thwart the director to stop from making good movies like this...