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Showing posts from May, 2016

24; Time travel in Tamil film industry

I have seen several takes on time travel in short stories, novels, films and anime, but 24 is different from all those.  Usually, the central theme is the adverse effects of changing the past.  Given the dearth of science fiction films in India, I was happy to see the 2015 Tamil film Indru netru naalai, which did a decent job in portraying this theme.  24 does not deal with such deep moral or philosophical questions, but their take on time travel was very interesting. According to the film, when you travel in time you go into your body at that time.  So, there will never be two instances of the same person, unlike many other portrayals of time travel.  Basically, only the memories are different.  In some sense, this is similar to time travel stories where you can only send messages to the past of future.  If you are interested in this theme, I highly recommend the anime Stien's gate. This mode of time travel limits the extent to which you can travel in time, namely, you should

Mili: the best Malayalam film of the year 2015

Mili is a film about an introverted, insecure, and timid girl slowly gaining the strength to stand on her own legs.  In her childhood, she found it hard to meet the expectations people had from the daughter of a reputed Professor.  On top of it, due to the early demise of her mother and the sickness until then, she missed the support of a mother's care.  It is hinted that, her nature and lack of confidence can be attributed to her broken childhood.  Amala Paul played the role of Mili and did a wonderful job. Mili seeks the help of her father (Saikumar) or Nancy (Praveena) even for trivial issues.  Her father, concerned about her and her inability to survive in the real world, forces her to solve her issues on her own.  The dilemma whether to help her or not is shown wonderfully in the movie.  Often, he helps her indirectly through Nancy, his student and Mili's local guardian.  Nancy is very supportive and like an elder sister to Mili.  At the same time, Nancy is sometimes st