Ingredients in place. And yet...

Rajitha

The food is ready, the drinks are chilled to perfection, the house is sparkling clean, you've sprayed pinewood freshner in the rooms, the guest towels have been laid out in the bathroom...

All perfect. Or it would be, except for that niggling feeling that you have forgotten something of the utmost importance.

Rhythm, the latest from director Vasanth's stable, gives you that feeling -- it is all there, the various components, but yet... but yet...

Break it down and see what kind of balance sheet we come up with.
Story: Fair enough, definitely not run-of-the-mill.
Performances: Better than average, Vasanth gets all his stars to suit their roles to a T
Music and lyrics: All that you could ask for. A R Rahman and Vasanth together for the first time; five songs, each seeing love in terms of one of the five elements. The music, the lyrics, the choreography, the cinematography, all combine perfectly to tell the tale

And yet... and yet...

What, then, is wrong? Could it be that some directors arouse more expectations than others, and therefore, that a movie you would otherwise accept, falls short simply because of your own expectations from its maker?

Or is it that a movie, any movie, that takes aeons in the making -- Rhythm, you will remember, has been in the works for some time now -- has a tendency to lose focus?

The storyline, briefly told, is this: Arjun and Jyotika are married. As are Meena and Ramesh Arvind. In a devastating train accident, Jyotika and Arvind lose their lives, leaving Arjun and Meena bereft. Both pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and live on, intending that their lives serve as monuments to their dear departed.

But human beings are not meant to live in an emotional vacuum. And thus, the two -- without knowing of the strange coincidence that twisted their lives out of shape -- begin to craft a relationship with each other.

Does it gell? That is what the rest of the film is all about.

Before getting into an analysis of the film itself, let's look at the bizarre coincidence -- which, prima facie, you tend to dispose of as one of those things only the fevered imagination of movie makers could dream up.

Not so. Many years ago, a tragedy on these lines impacted on the life of S Viswanathan, editor of the Tamil weekly, Saavi.

Vishwanathan's daughter, Jaya, was newly wed. Her husband was flying down to be with his wife on Diwali, and died in an air crash. Also losing her life in the same crash, was a married woman. A couple of years later, through fate, chance, circumstance, whatever you chose to call it, the two bereaved families in fact got together, and Jaya ended up marrying the man who had lost his wife in that crash.

So -- truth is, in fact, not only stranger than fiction, but often forms the spark for much of the best in fiction.

Now, to elaborate on the storyline: Karthikeyan (Arjun) is a photojournalist with Indian Express, Bombay. Chitra (Meena) is a bank employee. They both live in New Bombay and, gradually, build a relationship.

Karthik's parents (Nagesh is superb as the father) wish he would remarry, and see in Chitra a nice girl they would love to have as their daughter-in-law.

Jyotika makes a brief appearance (her way of saying thank you to director Vasanth, for giving her that first break in films) as Karthik's wife. At the time, Karthik is a bomb disposal expert, who gives up his risky job in order to give his wife some peace of mind.

Ramesh Arvind plays a cameo, as a bank employee who falls in love with Meena. Arvind's mother (Lakshmi), however, refuses to countenance the wedding. And it is when returning to Meena after a failed bid to win her approval, that he dies in the same train accident that accounts for Jyotika's death.

Arvind, a philanthropist by nature, has adopted an orphan. Meena assumes that responsibility. Once they meet, Arjun, too, takes to the kid.

Everything is set for the two to come together, when a remorseful Lakshmi lands up on Meena's doorstep and, after sobbing out her sorrow, takes Meena and the kid away with her.

Having seperated the two, the moviemaker then has to dig deep into his bag of cliches -- complete with the railway station climax -- to round off the film.

So why doesn't it work, given the inherent dramatic possibilities? The basic problem with the film is that the director goes overboard in painting both Arjun and Meena as people inherently reluctant to put their tragedies behind them and start life afresh. While they increasingly begin to like each other, the liking -- or at least, the director's characterisation thereof -- is predominantly platonic.

Now look at it this way -- if the lead couple show no real inclination to want to come together, why then would the audience want them to?

That is the real problem with this film. At no point in the telling of the tale is the viewer swept along on the tide of emotion. At no point does the guy in the darkened theatre empathise with Arjun and Meena to the extent of wanting them to come together.

In other words, we don't care whether they get together or no -- and that uncaring can be death for a love story.

Generally, when a movie grips, we overlook the flaws. When a movie fails to hold you, the flaws are magnified. Such is the case with Rhythm.

Thus, you wonder why Jyotika hums the Chhaiya Chhaiya ditty at one point, given that her death is shown to have occured in the early nineties, when Dil Se hadn't even been made.

Similarly, while the cinematographer uses to good effect the clean topography of Juhi Nagar, you wonder why, and how, Arjun and Meena get to share an autorickshaw while going to work in Nariman Point, where autos are taboo. Or how Arjun could leave his Juhi Nagar home for an early morning stroll -- and find himself in the middle of that oldest of cliches, the Gateway of India, fluttering pigeons included.

Again, while the music is melodious, the songs don't fit into the matrix of the story -- and this is true most especially of the Pathikitchu number, where love is associated with fire, and where Ramya Krishnan makes a one-song appearance.

Vasanth, disciple of the legendary K Balachander, has in his previous outings shown some of his mentor's traits -- to wit, a gift for characterisation, for inter-personal relationships, for strong storylines. It seems a pity that in this film, the director not only strays from his strenghts, but attempts the kind of "item"-based film-making that is just not his forte.

CREDITS:
Story, Screenplay and Direction: Vasanth
Cast: Arjun, Meena, Jyotika, Ramesh Arvind, Lakshmi, Nagesh
Music: A R Rahman
Lyrics: Vairamuthu
Cinematography: Vinod
Editing: Sreekar Prasad
Art direction: Raghavan
Choreography: Raju Sundaram, Suchitra and Cool Jayant
Stunts: Shahul Hameed
Producer: Pyramid Natarajan