Raja (Murali), from Kathir’s debut film, Idhayam (1991), may have become iconic over the years, partly due to the grating niceness and tragic innocence of the character (and mostly due to Ilaiyaraaja’s music). But in a contemporary world in which we reevaluate gender, misogyny and the obsessive nature of love, the idea of unrequited romance makes the conversation feel like the colloquial phrase we use to describe it—one-sided. Rathna Kumar’s superior Meyaadha Maan (2017), refracts the idea through a class lens, where the disparity in economic positions chokes the character out of expressing his true love. This year’s Hollywood phenomenon Obsession reimagines extremities of a nice-guy-dream realized to the point of stifling one life for the other’s wishful fantasy.
Aakash Baskaran’s Idhayam Murali (also marketed as Idhayam Murali—The One Side) doesn’t have such lofty ambitions. It is happy to coast along with nostalgia, pop aesthetics and tolerable comedy. Written by Baskaran and Ramana Girivasan, it stars Murali’s son, Atharvaa, as Idhaya, a spiritual successor to his father in Idhayam. The film begins in space, where an Indian astronaut is on a call from earth. Idhayam Murali then rewinds a few months to New York City, where our ever tongue-tied hero and his friends rush to the airport to catch a flight to India, for his wedding. They relay their life story to a hapless Fahadh Faasil on the flight, an unfortunate Vikram to the gang’s Betaal. So, the film walks back in time again, all the way to the 90s, then jumps to 2006 and 2011, registering Idhaya’s love stories along the way.
For a hot minute, Idhayam Murali is light and pleasant, even fun. It has regularly bizarre touches, like making Jonita Gandhi play a pregnant class teacher (contrast this with 96’s inspired casting choice of Janagaraj as a watchman). The '90s iconography lift proceedings, but by the time Dhoni rolls along in 2011, Baskaran has run out of ideas. After we are past Preity Mukundhan’s Samantha and Kayadu Lohar’s Amudha, the film plateaus, much like all of Idhaya’s love stories.
A host of TV and social media personalities play Idhaya’s friends—Parithabangal Sudhakar, Dravid Selvam, Rakshan, Angeline B and Niharika NM. This isn’t as egregious as it usually is, even imparting a certain freshness to the Tamil romcom palette, which is frankly at its lowest point now (though With Love provided much-needed resuscitation earlier this year).
But a film can run on nostalgia only for so long. When the pivotal railway station (the site for all Idhayam high points) scene rolls along, a clunky Pottu Vaitha usage competes with an unwieldy Chinni Jayanth cameo in a sequence that’s ripe for parody. Baskaran wants to subvert the airport ending, but he ends up unnecessarily prolonging the film. We never really understand the Idhaya character, a man otherwise well put-together, successful, with great friends and support systems, struggling to express his feelings as a kid, as a teenager, as an adolescent and even as an adult.
In the age of Tinder situationships, unrequited love as an idea sounds quaint. It is only unrequited when the offer faces rejection. But in Idhaya’s case, it doesn’t even take off. His friends have way too much patience to put up with him, and the film expects the same from the audience. It’s nice to see good-looking people yearn and fall in love. But to what end? Kaali Venkat appears in one scene as an auto driver and tells a dejected nine-year-old Idhaya “Feel panna evolvo irukku!” There is so much to feel but Baskaran, like his protagonist, never gets there.
‘Idhayam Murali’ is in theatres.
Aditya Shrikrishna is a Chennai-based critic.