“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love,” reads a popular quote from Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, an inspiration for countless sci-fi films and stories. In essence, it contextualizes humans from the perspective of an extraterrestrial life form. A notable exploration of such an idea in India is Aamir Khan’s PK. While the Bollywood film delved into the belief systems and values of humans, Ayalaan superficially touches on such ‘deep’ subjects. Upon arrival, the alien in this film finds a plastic bag, and its advanced system reveals that plastic takes 300 years to decay. Later, a drunkard mistakes it for a fellow alcoholic and gives him some money. The system now says that it is just paper and will decay relatively fast. The alien discards both items with equal disdain. It also has a similar distaste for all the junk food consumed by humans. Naturally, when he is desperate for some help on Earth, he ‘gravitates’ (since it’s an alien film) towards the hero Tamizh. Now, Tamizh is an organic farmer who would rather live in poverty than use pesticides. He politely pleads with the locust swarm (because even that is a life form too) to leave as it destroys his cornfield in minutes. You get the drift.
The reason the alien—by the way, he is called Tattoo by his human friends for a reason that’s not as funny as it is supposed to be—arrives on Earth is to inspect a catastrophe caused by new technology. It finds out the man behind the menace, Aryan. These days, Tamil filmmakers aren’t too subtle about the nomenclature and the politics behind it. If the hero is named Tamizh, it is fitting that the villain is Aryan (Sharad Kelkar). But no brownie points for the way his character is written. He is the quintessential Jagapathi Babu kind of villain who has gotten hold of an alien rock called Spark, which gives immense power for deep mining. He drills too deep into the Earth, and the prehistoric toxins are released into the atmosphere, which, obviously, is not good news. The rest is as predictable as it can get, except for the bond Tamizh and Tattoo form. It goes beyond being just emotional bromance as they start sharing powers. It is only fair that the villain gets some of it, and so he does. It is all achieved with some contrived writing.
Ayalaan, however, is anything but a lazy film. A lot of effort has gone into the VFX. Tattoo looks far from being realistic, but given the campy tone of the film, his texture and look are effective. The elaborate stunt sequences might have been hard work, but they also end up as a tiresome watch. And the redundancies. Director R Ravikumar’s lack of trust in the audience makes him resort to elaborate detailing of his ideas. For example, the idea that Tamizh and Tattoo have to be in physical contact to remain powerful is explored in a tiresome fight sequence where things are repeated more than required. We get it. Or the pedestrian exposition intentionally catering to ‘all centers’. In any case, it has come at a cost—the cost of the film being too simplistic when it could have been much more.
Ayalaan movie cast: Sivakarthikeyan, Yogi Babu, Rakul Preet Singh
Ayalaan movie director: R Ravikumar
Ayalaan movie rating: 2 stars
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