“Aghathiyaa” Film Review

Lyricist Pa. Vijay’s third directorial, Aghathiyaa is a curious mixture of historical fiction, horror, family drama and social drama with doses of romance, comedy and action. One can forgive the audience for not being able to slot this film into a genre as the film’s writer and director – Pa. Vijay – clearly could not make up his mind about what he wanted to say through this film.

Aghathiyaa has been almost four years in the making – and this unfortunately shows in its staccato screenplay and the fleeting appearances by various characters. The cast includes Jiiva, Arjun, Raashi Khann, American actor Edward Sonnenblick, Shah Ra, Rohini, Abirami, Poornima Bhagyaraj, Senthil, Charlie, Yogi Babu, Delhi Ganesh, Nizhalgal Ravi, VTV Ganesh, Daniel Caltagirone, Redin Kingsley, TSR Srinivasan and Revathi Elango.

Aghathiyan (Jiiva) is an aspiring art director who has invested heavily into a film with the hope of making it his big break into the film industry. However, an unexpected turn of events sees him face a huge challenge, but a brilliant idea from his fiancé, Veena (Raashi Khanna) sees him change direction towards a new endeavour. They soon discover a more daunting and potentially dangerous challenge. How they deal with this new challenge forms the rest of the story.

Jiiva is a talented and versatile actor but this is not evident in his portrayal of the antagonist – not from a lack of effort, but purely because of the very flat writing. One would think that a talented lyricist like Pa. Vijay – who has written some amazingly poetic lyrics – would have a lively script, but Vijay’s script is simply a conduit to transition from one disjointed scene to another.

This waste of talent applies to all the other members of the cast as well. Arjun, who has shown great maturation as an actor, is also powerless against the flat script and flatter screenplay.

It is a wonder how Edward Sonneblick continues to accept such one-dimensional roles that turn the central characters into embarrassing caricatures.

The tragic thing about Aghathiyaa is that the germ of the idea was an excellent one, but the execution could not have been worse.  Practitioners of the Siddha medical system ought to sue Pa. Vijay and his producers for reducing the ancient and revered system to the same level as a poorly conducted magic show. There is no indication of the founding principles of Siddha medicine, nor is there any indication of the scientific, physiological and biological basis for the system. In particular, the sequence of scenes depicting the curing of a quadriplegic is a colossal embarrassment to the entire film industry.

There are two redeeming aspects for Aghathiyaa: Yuvanshankar Raja has come up with a brilliant soundtrack which has a wide variety of styles and genres and includes the creative remix of En Iniya Pon Nilave from Balu Mahendra’s Moodu Pani. His background score oscillates between brilliant and average.

The other positive contribution to the film comes from cinematographer, Deepak Kumar Padhy who uses very creative framing and angles. His light usage, indoor and outdoor, all make for brilliant use of light. Unfortunately, this visual display has been wasted on a film that is lacking in other critical aspects.

Aghathiyaa is a tedious journey into mediocrity despite its huge cast. Its intended focus on Siddha medicine remains as unexplored as the writer=director’s sense of logic in developing this script.

Aghathiyaa scores 4 points out of 10.