What we know about Rajasekar’s Kamali is that she hails from a town many hundred miles removed from Chennai, and so getting into an IIT, as the topper Ashwin wants to, seems out of reach. Nambi steps in to help and Kamali makes it to IIT-Madras. Since there hasn’t been a campus film — with its spirit in the right place — in Tamil cinema in an eternity (come to think of it, there is very little representation of ‘2K kids’ on the big screen), it would have been apt for the filmmaker Rajasekar to, perhaps, explore aspects of “big city culture shock” that a small town girl is likely to face. But, he ties a fruitless romantic angle to drag Kamali along and what it instead does is generate relentless boredom.
However, Atkan Chatkan does have its high points... like the scene where Guddu and his little sister listen to the different sounds they hear as they fall asleep. But it fails to dwell on the many dramatic plot points spread throughout the narrative. The film meanders into the second half, attempting to work crisis torn adults into the mix, when instead focussing on building more drama around the story’s protagonists would have been the wiser choice. Its unique background composition that relies heavily on percussion makes Atkan Chatkan an interesting watch. However, the film stops short of being a musical journey par excellence. The fault for it lies with the pen and not the drumsticks.
Due credit to Virumandi, the debutant filmmaker, for his writing (dialogues) is razor sharp in places. There is also a touch of simplicity in the manner his scenes are crafted, an appreciable quality since most debut filmmakers fall for the trappings of Tamil cinema and try to go overboard with the drama quotient. State apathy doesn’t hit you hard — or slap you across the face, if you will — like in a Shankar film. It happens, it is usual and there is nothing you can do to change it. There is no feeling of helplessness or desperation that these scenes leave in you. It doesn’t move you, at all, and that there is how reality sans fiction feels like.
Perhaps, it is time that film industries in India woke up to the fact that COVID-19 has brought in the acceptance among audiences on the type of films that deserves to be watched on the big screen. The ones that bet on witty dialogues and entertainingly sketched scenes for success can very well stand the test of time even if they are viewed on a mobile screen.
