After a long time, felt like writing about a movie. Watched Director Selvaraghavn’s #NGK starring Suriya. Selvaraghavan tried to get the art house of cinema into the commercial format leaving the film open ended rather than answering all the why’s. The film is like reading a novel where you tend to loose the narration and at some point feel senseless about what’s happening. But if watched closely, many hidden layers and metaphors are used in the screenplay and its amazing if we connect the dots.
#NGK is about the journey of a guy who don’t know the ABC of politics to knowing the alphas & betas of the game. Suriya who was nothing short of a spectacle as #NGK starts off acting like a kid and this is clearly established by the way he asks Sai Pallavi to encourage him before he enters politics.
In movie we keep hearing the dialog “I’m learning” very often. The film is about what NGK learned from the circumstances and how did he apply it to become successful. During his initial interactions with the local MLA, NGK is all calm, confused & surprised (he hardly blinks his eyes during this portion) about what’s happening indicating that he’s a kid in the political system. But once he learns about how to get into the system, NGK is all fun, quirky and the brilliance of Selvaraghavan comes in the way he shows the entire episode in a satirical, dark comedy way. In the mean time we get introduced to Vanathi(Rakul) who is a political analyst. The film progresses well until we reach the interval, where his friend asks Suriya to stab him to death in a dharna as he’s going to die of a disease and it will help him for his image building. I found this out of sense and bland writing initially but the brilliance of the film maker is how he had an underlying layer in this episode. The 1st half of the 2nd half is also about the circumstances what the character goes through and the film literally gets interesting after the fight in the hospital. The character transformation happens from here.
NGK underplays allowing the people to think that he is dead after the attack on him gets a widespread attention. He wants the people to sympathize him and understands if he comes out of no where its going to be a celebration. This is displayed through a fantastic music and dance beat. The blocking and framing were just lit here ( If closely observed the song starts of with a music that’s played when a body is taken to a graveyard indicating the peoples belief that NGK is dead and when he suddenly appears, the music is all blasting ).
The extreme transformation happens in the stage scene where NGK is all alone with the person who raises the spark in him to join politics discussing about his way of speech. NGK is all of respect to this person till now but he threatens him not to discuss what’s happened with anyone outside. This clearly establishes that he’s transformed into a selfish politician.
Before leaving to the meeting, NGK asks his parents to look at him for one last time. We get the feeling that Suriya will die and yes he will be attacked. But its his parents who will die. The director uses the interval scene as a metaphor and indirectly indicates that NGK killed his parents for his political mileage(initially its through his friend’s death that he gets noticed). So, all the climax speech by him was acting from his side so the people sympathize with him.
Its his men in the meeting who start the attack on the opposition leader and the crowd follows. NGK thinks of starting a political party but learns from Vanathi that he will be needing money and cadre support. So, he continuous with the opposition party so he has better prospects of winning the election(This is established in the media discussion). The movie ends with NGK giving an interview to a telivision channel where he is asked about forming the government on an alliance. He replies “I’m still learning”. The director clearly establishes that he is a full fledged politician now and we understand that some people might have turned against him continuing with the opposition party and so he didn’t get an absolute majority.
Overall #NGK is a complete director's film with a stellar performance from Suriya. Highly recommend watching it.
