Pizza

My review: Pizza

Debutant Karthik Subbaraj's "Pizza" can't be categorized into one particular genre. Movie seamlessly flows through various moods and shades ending up fooling the viewers on numerous occasions. Movie's script is undoubtedly one of the best this year in Tamil. It once again reiterates the fact that script is paramount and everything else is just value addition.

Great scripts are those which not only link each and every character into  a smooth confluence to tell a story, it has to do justice to the attributes, personality and talents of each of those characters. In "Pizza" no character looks unwanted or forced in. And each of their character sketch is fully formed and adequately utilized for the story to move forward and to justify it. Heroine is a ghost story writer, hero is a very demure and timid person, the eatery owner's daughter is considered to be haunted by spirits and hence he is a staunch believer in spirits and ghosts, etc. All these aspects form a strong foundation on which the script is built around.

Another aspect of a good script is that it should fool the viewers at least once during the narration. Here not in one or two occasions, viewers get fooled on numerous occasions. Script is so intelligently woven that it is very difficult to guess the twists and turns, at the end everyone is taken aback.

Movie is two paced though. It starts of very slowly, taking its own sweet time to establish the characters and the direction it is going to progress. During this phase, one do get  feeling of getting bored. Once the movie shifts gears into murder mystery initially followed by horror mode, there is no looking back. At the intermission point air of expectancy is predominant. Post intermission, movie moves into couple more modes revelation of which might spoil the fun of those who have not watched it yet.

Since in this movie script is the real hero, each and every artists chosen fit into their characters impeccably. Vijay Sethupathi is brilliant. He carries whole movie on his shoulders and comes out unscathed. The effortless manner in which he is able to portray myriad of emotions and  body language appropriately is outstanding. Ramya Nambeesan is good though she has only limited scope. Each and every one in the support cast have done their parts excellently.

Not only in the aspect of script and direction, technically also the movie is top-class. Gopi Amarnath is the cinematographer who teams up with the music director Santhosh Narayanan to scare the viewers at more than couple of occasions. Gopi's lighting inside the dark haunted house is outstanding. Santhosh's background score has not tried to scare the viewers with usual gimmickry associated with horror movies. He has taken a more sensible approach to go about  his work. "Mogathirai" is a delectable melody while "Rathiri" in various versions of it is foot-tapping and adrenaline pumping.

Karthik Subbaraj not only seem to have a good knowledge of scripting a movie, he also has done a stupendous job of presenting it to the viewers in a very presentable manner. He has good visual sense too. He also show glimpses of  how progressive his thinking is by portraying things which are not explored much in Tamil cinema, live-in relationship and premarital sex for example. Future holds promise for this youngster. One can only hope that this movie is his original idea, especially considering the amounts of plagiarism one is coming across in the Indian movies these days.

If one is able to sit through the initial draggy half an hour, a scrumptious treat awaits. Go for it without further ado.

Bottomline: Brilliant debut by a promising team.

4/5