Celebrating '96: 2 years of Ram and Jaanu

'96 is a musical Tamil language movie, that revolves around the school love story. This movie was well received and the movie goers can very much relate themselves with the movie, because the narration was so natural and it broke many stereotypes of Tamil cinema.

When the whole industry was either talking about the historical movies inspired by Baahubali and beating around the bush with the thriller genre, this movie came as a pleasant surprise, to talk about the love story of 90s kids or rather Gen Y.

Gen Y has some how not been much talked about in Tamil industry. They are either portrayed as modern age Devadas who go to an extreme of abusing a girl or stalk her even if the hero's love was rejected or as a macho man who saves the community, sacrifising his personal life or as a bread winner who finds hard to meet his ends.

96 broke all such stereotypes. There’s something cathartic about watching a film narrated in all honesty. It makes you laugh, and cry, besides invoking a lot of happy memories.  This is one of the rarest movies that brings us a smile in our lips, with happy tears along, throughout the narration.

1) To begin with, it was directed by debuntant director Prem Kumar. Prem Kumar was a cinematographer turned director, who helmed the camera for the famous 'Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kanom". Infact NKPK was also a movie inspired from Prem's life incident. “That really happened to me,” Kumar remembered. “In real life, I recovered within a day and it happened 10 days prior the wedding. I could not remember that incident at all. The director imagined what would happen if I hadn’t recovered at all. The second half was very well choreographed in a very well-written script.” 

2) The script was written during the floods in December in Chennai in 2015, director reveals. WIth no intention to direct it as a movie, prem wore the director's cap because of the constant persuasion of Vijay Sethupathi. “He did not want the spirit of the film to get away, and that is how I took up direction,” Kumar said.

3)The credits of the soul stirring music, goes to Govind Vasantha (of the Thaikkudam Bridge band). “He’s a prodigy and gave us some soul-stirring soundtracks. He had worked in Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom as a keyboard programmer. When I explained the requirements, he grasped them and did a fantastic job. 96 wouldn’t have been what it is without his contribution.” Prem says. All the songs uses violin as a major instrument and it ensures that the voice and lyrics of the songs can be clearly heard of.  The soundtrack album received applause from critics and it was considered as one of the best soundtracks of the year. Govind had also reused the song "Yamunai Aatrile" which was originally composed by Ilayaraaja, with due credits to Raaja.

4) The lyrics were penned by Karthik Netha and Uma Devi, with one song "Kaathalae Kaathalae" whose lyrics was much appreciated by the critics. The words like "Konjum Pooraname" and "Panjavarna Bhoodham" were too unique and poetic, revealing the beautiful love between lead characters.

5) The movie shows Vijay Sethupathi as 38 year old man- Ram aka Ramachandran, who has a career of his own. Again the stereotype of portraying the lead character who has lucrative career, as smart gentleman with a clean shaven look and branded linen shirts tucked in was broken in the movie. Vijay Sethupathi is shown as a man who is never bothered about the looks and has beer belly too.

6) Trisha who plays Vijay's lady love, Jaanu also breaks the stereotypical heroine, who usually has broken marriage when she meet hero of the movie thus making her guilty of ditching the past love or as an ambitious lady who had to compromise her family life for her career. Jaanu has her own satisfactory life or in her own terms she is happy and contended with what she has. Also the movie doesn't portray the lead lady with modern outftits, she being living abroad, neither it had scenes where the heroine is seen flaunting all her make over skills. Infact, Jaanu has only 3 outfits to change in the entire movie and it became trendsetter too.

7) There is no running around the trees duet songs, foreign location duets, color co-ordinated background dancers or a pathos song, where the lead roles had to use glycerine to shed their tears, thinking about the past and their break up love.

8) The hero doesn't have to showcase his masculinity, beating up 10-15 hunchmen, who co-ordinate themselves to get beaten up by the hero one by one. There isnt any punch dialogues, to prove the language skill of the hero.

9) The friendship that Raam and Shuba (devadharshini) stays intact, even after 22 years. There are few movies where the second lead, Shubha in this case, will be promoted as a lady love and somehow the friendship blooms as love overnight, due to the breakup pain that the hero undergoes. Rather, Raam and Shuba lead their own life still maintaining their friendship all through. The friends of the school days still remain friends as such, without using them as a sidekick for the hero.

10) The school students are allowed remain as school children, with their innocence of their age . There is no double meaning dialogues or dialogues that degrade the teachers and the principal of the school. The relationship that the students have with the watchman (Janakaraj) is so natural, that it takes us back to the school days.

11) The mentor- students' relationship that Raam shares with his students. He asks them to drive the car while he sleeps peacefully and the way he hides himself when one of his student finds him with Jaanu was so beautiful.

As the director said, “The concept of love changes with time, and that’s what happens. Love is the purest form of expression. It’s mostly about the right time, the right moment and the right occasion. For every ten years, there’s a cultural transformation that happens. And there’s a drastic difference in the way people think, perceive and act. Let me assure you that there are many Rams out there.”