Superb & Deluxe: My quick take on Kumararaja’s classic “Super Deluxe”
I should thank my buddies’ @nisha Shivam & @pushpa to have strongly recommended this Tamil movie as my current love affair with Vijay Sethupati’s movies is blossoming. This 2019 release is simply outstanding and a work of art indeed. Take a bow Thiagarajan Kumararaja for directing this movie. This movie in the Tamil language is available on Netflix.
A few months back I had written a review titled “Ludicrous Ludo” wherein the barfi director Anurag Basu had experimented with a novel concept of having four simultaneous tracks running and culminating in a climax. Though it was a lousy movie to watch with some outlandish performances by Raj Kumar Rao & Chota B, I had loved the format of the movie, for a moment I thought it was an out of box idea conceived by the director. But now having seen “Super Deluxe” you will realize how Basu had got inspired!!! By its format. While Basu made a mess of the format which Kumararaja had made it into a piece of art.
There are 3 distinct tracks of stories running in the movie (in fact there is one more track which is kind of a subset of other tracks), and each track is so distinct that a full-length movie can be made out of it. Director has so beautifully blended all these stories like interlocking tiles which eventually dovetails into each other in the climax. I started to watch this for Vijay Sethupati’s performance, but I was pleasantly taken aback to see my one more favorite actor Fahad Fasil in this movie. I should say every character and actor were handpicked by the director, hence it’s simply awesome to watch outstanding performances from this amazing galaxy of actors. Young boy Ashwath is too good, the Bagavathi Perumal’s portrayal of a lecherous bad cop will make Ranjeet and Prem Chopras look pale in front of this ‘Berlin’. But the cherry on the cake is “Shilpa” a transgender played by Vijay Sethupathi, take a bow buddy. It needs real guts for an Alpha male personality to play a character who does a sex change and becomes a lady. While portraying this character Vijay Sethupathi is so convincing that you will forget for a moment that a male is playing this transgender character. There is a shot where he wears a saree in front of his wife, OMG it’s a goosebump worthy shot where the entire scene is shot without any dialogs yet it ‘speaks’ a lot.
All these tracks have sexual overtones and ‘adultish’ themes, but the way the director has given the treatment to these storylines, you will not feel ‘odd’ sitting through this bit longish dark comedy movie. The cinematography is simply outstanding, every frame is like a Ravi Varma’s painting, so vivid in color scheme, art direction is awesome as minute details are carefully manicured and presented.
There are few instances where the storylines digress in unwanted directions like evangelism, Alien sub-story which in my view could have been avoided. But the direction and performances are so overpowering that you will tend to ignore such blemishes. If you are fine with a bit of black comedy, double entendres, swear words but packed with powerful performances you will enjoy this movie.
Super Deluxe is indeed a Superb Deluxe treat.
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