Super Deluxe - a director's cut

Remember how, in the movie Baasha, Manickam's brother Shiva asks, "Sollunga! Bombay'la Neenga Enna Pannitu Irundheenga?" Kumararaja's affectation for Rajini, is shown on how he would name a character and the place of his short exile. 

Just like his first directorial, Kumararaja begins his film inside a bedroom, where the woman becomes a victim of guilt, and tries to mend it. A woman and his soft-rebellious husband, a father-son duo, a bunch of harmonal guys, a pious man, and other characters form the film, which looks like an essay on life itself. 

The logic of a man dying of cardiac arrest because of an overdose of something, and the couple trying hard to conceal it doesn't work, but what enchants one is how Mugil gets nitpicky of the socio-politico system, and his monologues with Arjun Reddy-like guy behind his jeep.

In Aaranya Kaandam, one of the most heartwarming line is said by Kodukkapuli, and again in Super Deluxe the most heartwarming line belongs to a kid, who is the most humane portrayal of a character one must have seen. However, the director seems to have taken cinematic liberty at will. The kid's father is a trans-woman. The very basic understanding between trans-people and cross-dressers is missing and what shown in the film is outrageous. How does a director, who wants to create eccentric art cinema, disregard a vital fact and go on to portray his own understanding which is a falsity? Also, the portrayal of Shilpa as a trans, is poorly designed, and is demeaning to the community of transgenders, and uncompromisingly backward and oppressive. 

Spiritually, Aaranya Kaandam, and Super Deluxe are an episode of progress and regress belonging to each other. The teens who get to learn some very important lessons when they set out for porn look like an younger version of Chittu, who asks, "Ungalku Rajini Pudikkuma, Kamal Pudikkuma?" to aunties he wants to seduce. They discover something that wouldn't go well in India. Not in our motherland.

Of all the evolving and interlinked stories, the three teens who just want a TV replaced, carry the film through their adolescent adventures, which is funny and karmic. 

The Kumararaja's cop, who always wants a bait or benefit, "Adhu Aen Ya Apdi?", is played by a Bagavathi a constant charmer, that you want the screen to throw him up. Berlin as he is characterized, because it is associated with hate? wants to get the benefit of everything he pokes his nose into. Both Berlin and the teens have a common goal. And how these both, try to get what they want and how it ends for them, is what the director wants to inform us. Kumararaja, goes on to show what two different forms of process for a common objective can lead to. Karma fucks with you like it damn will, but you never know in what form. So the next time you have a disregard for a broken TV, do not underestimate it.

When one of the teens who has an early break, finally becomes conscious, physically, and he faces the most poignant question from his mom, a question to the society, and perhaps with which his mental conscious awakens, and so should the audience that is watching it. 

Mysskin, who plays "Arputham", is a miracle in acting, and is a man of immense capacity, who should simply quit and start acting in films. His counter with his God, at a point makes his ponder the most important question, that probably many of us should ask to ourselves, but the director also has an answer to it, which he doesn't explain. Arputham's aide, Ramasamy, is a notable player.

Kumararaja, and Art:

Kumararaja, is a lover of Ilaiyaraja. As good as it is, the score by Yuvanshankar Raja, it is Ilaiyaraja who scores through the whole movie. The classical touch to Star Wars theme, when a certain thing falls on the ground, shored the audience. And that's not only to say of the music in the film. But the sounds in the movie keep your observation disturbed. The screen constantly has a background audio telling stories. The outside world in the frames of the movie have something to tell you. 

Just like film scores in music, the color grading and the objects that appear in the film is probably the most striking feature that makes the film to stand out. The use of primary colors with an emphasize on cosmic red and marine blue, speaks of the warm and cold layers of the characters and stories. These colors have a static appearance in the film, right from the walls of Arputham's prayer room, to the saree that Shilpa wears. Each character has a particular color associated with them. So does every wall appearing in the movie. Berlin, when he is in the beginning and final portions of the movie, wears an orange Tee. While Mugil dons a blue shade in his watch jacket, and phone, Samantha has a red-orange attire. The teens wear a mix, while one wears a dark blue, with a cat in it, and their glasses when they watch the porn movie.

The buildings, furnitures, walls, and every object that finds itself inside the frame, has a distress to it, showing just like the character's.

Kumararaja is building a cinematic universe of his own, in which he questions, and displaces concrete ideas of a society and allows it to settle on its own into what he finally thinks to be as natural exposition of conflicting, inter-living aspects of life. If Aaranya Kaandam talked about man's inability, Super Deluxe talks about the human over-reach.

Despite its miscomings, one comes out of the movie and,