Recommended
I refer, of course, to Ilayaraja. It isn’t everyday that we celebrate a 1000th film, and the maestro rises to the occasion with a rousingly red-blooded score. Even if Sannasi’s climactic transformation makes little sense from a narrative point of view, Ilayaraja’s score — violins, conch shells, beats that slam the brain — almost makes you buy it. The background bits are brilliant — the thavil with konnakol syllables in Saamipulavan’s introduction, which segues superbly into the less-classical-sounding piece as Sannasi makes his introduction (you have reams of character development right there, in that switch); the rhythms and the thrilling pauses in the instrumental piece that plays over Soorvali’s dance in the Andamans.