Beast Review (2022)

Warning: Comparison with Vikram is based on memory of watching the film in June 2022. So nanum Manishan thaan, naanum marapen. Will probably write another article if I get to rewatch Vikram.)

Unmaya Sollanum Na, VTV Ganesh is the real Beast of This film, man, of course, after Vijay. Every counter and punchline and body language of his is absolutely a firecracker of humour and the best parts of the film is the opening action sequence before the title card, the stretch before the stupid Mini Cooper joyride in the mall kidnapping the Home Minister’s daughter and wife and as mentioned, and all the portions involving VTV Ganesh.

Considering that there is a 1 year anniversary for a stupid film like Don, Beast is a film which despite the stupid, elongated and hero glorifying writing, deserves a 1 year anniversary because I fully saw It for the first time now (Saw it for Diwali And Ekachaka Ad Pa) and instead of discussing the negatives that everyone knows (which is the screenplay), I want to discuss something else.

Currently the most famous young Director is Lokesh Kanagaraj probably followed by Nelson Dilipkumar and this is primarily due to the failure of Beast. But having said that, Nelson is a better director than Lokesh and to go a bit further, I’d say Beast is a better directed film than Vikram (barring the over the top illogical climax). This stems from the simple use of shots that are deliberately framed unsymmetrically to create an unease. In fact Nelson actually goes a bit further by twisting his own style because he is naturally famous for his symmetric framing, the one with characters in the middle of the frame shot with a wide angle low aperture shot. But what Nelson also does is that he uses the same kind of framing to achieve different pieces of emotion such as humour, fear (not much but that’s a writing problem), hero elevation etc. The style that he perfected in Doctor is still present here and the fact that he actually tells this invasion story without much use of a handheld camera is quite brave (though again, the screenplay doesn’t support him).

With Lokesh though, he if I can remember films in a on the moment style wherein there is no stylistic similarity across films (in terms of framing, blocking, staging etc.) but the style is continued more in terms of writing which I’ll admit: Lokesh is a better writer than Nelson though. Take Master and Vikram… No Take Vikram and Kaithi itself, two films which belong in the same universe. There are great sequences individually in the films themselves, with only Vikram having the Agent Tina and Interval Sequence being the sequences that are directorially great. This is an important aspect which I feel needs to be put out.

The Autuer theory holds great importance in the case of Nelson here and he fulfils in that aspect absolutely well. In fact, Beast is a better action movie than Vikram simply due to the blocking and cinematography. Even though the action sequences in Vikram are aplenty, the blocking is painfully average which is doing the job of just capturing rather than elevating the action. Whereas with Beast’s opening sequence, apart from the no bulletproof logic, the camera exquisitely shifts from tripod to handheld in the required positions and more importantly puts us in the perspective of the hero, thus elevating them from mere action to live action. Of course, Agent Tina action sequence is the best overall no doubt, but I believe the other action scenes in Beast are much better. Another evidence of Lokesh’s inferiority in terms of directorial prowess when compared to Nelson is how Nelson uses CCTV style blocking to convey the invasion both in the mall and even in the final stretch when Veera has invaded POK. Thus visually Nelson is a better storyteller than Lokesh.

However if you ask me which film do I await this year between Jailer and LEO, Lokesh wins my vote as Beast’s writing is so hero centric that after a point it becomes brilliantly boring. Even Vijay’s charisma cannot pull together the generic nature of the film.

But the first sign of danger in the film can be noticed in Vijay’s title card when we get a theme from Master rather than Beast theme for Vijay’s name, showing how Nelson metaphorically accepted his defeat to Lokesh.