Meenaxi - A Review

Saw Meenaxi in the weekend – most people told me it was boring or incomprehensible or plain waste of time. But yet, having watched “Gajagamini” I knew what I was getting into – I had liked that also – so went ahead and watched it. Did not disappoint me at all – in fact it hit home harder than I thought possible.
I will not uphold it as a good movie anyday – if you are expecting drama and a story this is not a movie for you. It is the exploration of an idea – to me it felt like just letting my mind go on a trip of imagination.
The movie is about the struggle of an artist to write this unusually different story to capture the “ehsaas” or essence of this character in some form. The embodiment of this feeling is Meenaxi. The writer has come up against a psychological block which prevents him from concluding his stories or resolving his characters.

It is amazing to see how deeply the writer has understood the female mind. In fact his protrayal of the male mind is not as fine – it is more or less surfacial. The male character is kinda there – hanging around in the background – it is the female who is in charge of the situation – she is the one who has to make a decision! Somehow the characters do not reach resolution – there is something wanting – something lacking……in the thought flow, in the narration, in the characterization or simply in the author? The obsession with the character – the feeling that he will be able to understand it better by somehow altering the location, situation or the supporting characters is so realistic. I am sure many of us who write seriously on sulekha would be able to identify that struggle to color or flesh out a character. Personally the half dozen unfinished stories in my computer are a testament to that!!

Trying to fit into words the essence of a character is so difficult and somehow never seems to do justice to it. I could identify with that elusive search for completion – in more ways than one! It is amazing what an artist can do with feelings.

The camerawork is excellent – I guess we shud not expect anything less from Santosh Sivan!! The choreography and art direction are too bollywoody for my taste – inspite of which the cameraman had managed to make it look like one long painting flowing and merging to make a narration. I wish they had taken out half of the dialogues, given the cameraman the central idea and let him run with it. Felt like he understood the idea better than the director!

Anyways I enjoyed it like a piece of art – gave me lots to think about.
The dialogue “Zindagi ek ehsaas ki talaash hai” about summarizes the effort.