Barring one fundamental flaw that equals Minnale’s Abbas/Madhavan flashback, Mani takes his beloved tamil audience to a place that is not only deep but has enough grey areas to ponder. Its understandable that the movie is already widely hated given that it makes one uncomfortable at places, just like any great piece of art.

With it’s cast providing great support, Jeyamohan’s story with rich characters and their back-stories lit up at right places, Kadal is Mani’s masterstroke that will be unfortunately overlooked due to one huge mistake, setting expectations. Kidnapping a literary story to people’s heart while marketing it to be a outright love story is deceiving and Mani will have to pay for that. For a Jeyamohan story, its not all that black given his track record but for Mani Ratnam this blackness is very new. Editor Sreekar Prasad and ARR have missed opportunities at right places to backup Mani with that extra cut or that punchy BGM but after all its the captain’s fault at the end.

As we drove back, my friend and I filled up the remaining holes by discussing and this is exactly what Mani should have done implicitly. Also should have had the heart to cut the Disney graphics at the end and should have stopped at the hospital shot.

Regardless, a work to rejoice for the cinephiles. 5 -8 years from now, this will be regarded as a classic. Come back to read this again.

P.S: My cheap shot sentence – And please stop saying the movie is about a 3 hour religious discourse. Get a life, become inclusive and take it easy, yo’all!