Kuiko review: Director Arul Chezhian crafts a masterpiece

Journalist Arul Chezhian, who proved his mettle as a writer in Manikandan’s Aandavan Kattalai, shows how good he is as a director in Kuiko.

Kuiko, without a doubt, is a gem that needs to be celebrated.

The pace at which the story is told is gentle and gives you no indication of the strong points it is to make about people and society in an unassumingly humorous way.

T Arul Chezhian’s writing is brilliant, and it shows that for a movie to work, nothing else matters if the storyteller has something significant to say and knows how to say it.

Synopsis

Panpazhagan (Muthukumar) is a moneylender with a conscience in a small town in the state. Apart from lending money, he makes money by renting out an electric ice box, which he seized from a debtor looking to cheat him, to funerals.

In a remote village surrounding this town, an old lady passes away. Her son Malayappan (Yogi Babu), a cameleer working in the royal stables in the Middle East, is distraught when he learns of her demise from his uneducated sister back home.

Malayappan asks his sister to take help from their neighbour, Calculator Shanmugham (Ilavarasu), in preserving the body of his beloved mother until he arrives.

Shanmugham, who always takes a cut out of everything, agrees to oblige and heads to town to rent the ice box that Panpazhagan has to preserve Malayappan’s mother’s body.

Panpazhagan, who gets caught in a criminal case without fault, agrees to rent his electric ice box. But says he can’t go along with Shanmugham to fix the ice coffin box. So, he convinces his nephew Thangaraj (Vidaarth), who has plans to visit Chennai to watch an IPL match, to accompany Shanmugam to his village and fix the ice box.

Shanmugam promises to send Thangaraj back immediately after he fixes the ice box at the home where the death has occurred.

However, fate has a different plan. What happens when Thangaraj reaches the village is what Kuiko is all about.

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Kudos to Arul Chezhian

Director Arul Chezhian speaks very little but observes a lot. His careful observation of life in the rural parts of the country seems to have enabled him to come up with this masterpiece.

One other factor that makes Arul Chezhian’s film tick is that it is high on humour. The humour isn’t forced or inorganic. It comes from stating the truth as it is — no matter how different it is from the government’s version.

For example, in a scene, women who are supposed to be working on a government project under the MNREGA scheme are seen making a beeline to the house of the bereaved. A funny dialogue uttered on the occasion drives home the point that most women employed under the MNREGA scheme are paid for practically doing nothing.

Kuiko might be a light-hearted entertaining story, but what it does is it breaks the stereotypes created by groups to gain benefit.

For instance, the issue of all money lenders being labelled usurers or money sharks by borrowers looking to cheat the lenders of their money. Through the character of Panpazhagan — a reasonable person being taken for a ride by borrowers and who eventually finds himself having to bribe a corrupt police force for no fault of his because of a false complaint — Kuiko shows how sweeping generalisations are ruining lives.

The beauty of the movie is that it can gently and pleasantly surprise you through to the end.

For instance, one would have imagined Vidaarth to be the hero and Priyanka to be the heroine and the story to revolve around the romance between them. But in reality, Vidaarth and Priyanka are just characters who are only as significant as the other characters in the film.

Romance is absent for all practical reasons. If at all there is any romance, it is presented subtly as it would happen in real life.

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Marvellous performances

Kuiko has some outstanding performances to offer.

Yogi Babu, as Malayappan, steals the show. Comedy levels skyrocket from the moment he appears in the film.

Ilavarasu, as Calculator Shanmugham, delivers yet another exceptionally brilliant performance in this film. The man, who played several fantastic roles, is highly underrated and seriously needs to be recognised for the outstanding work that he has done so far.

Vidaarth, Priyanka, and Vinodhini also play their parts convincingly.

Muthukumar, who plays Panpazhagan, catches your eye with his convincing performance in this film.

Arul Chezhian’s journalistic tendencies come to the fore in his writing, and he doesn’t spare anyone — taking potshots at almost anyone and everyone in the system. And yes, that includes journalists as well!

Final take

Kuiko is a must-watch film, not just to laugh but also to realise how blindly have we let certain perceptions be ingrained in us.

(Views expressed here are personal.)