Sillu Karupatti (Review) – Sweet little tales of bonding and love

It’s that time of a breezy evening – the few precious minutes before the orange glow of the setting sun slowly fades away, allowing the descent of darkness to welcome the night’s moon and stars. The soul of the day shimmers in all its glory as the magical hues of shine during the moments of the sun’s departure hold a mesmeric grip over the sky and the evening.

A stroll in the park of life at this magnificent hour leaves the heart relaxed, refreshed, and romantic, gazing around with newfound hopes, grace, and generosity as the world bears a tinge of a fairy tale. This soothing and splendidly illuminating experience is the acute, sweet metaphorical equivalent of what unfurls in our hearts as Sillu Karupatti opens its rhythms and soul to us in its chronicle of fairy tales in our everyday lives – the diamond of dreams, a ride for life, a tender kiss of dignity, endearments of endurance, and a romantic renaissance.

Embracing the Enchantment: A Stroll Through Life’s Fairy Tales with Sillu Karupatti

We move through and across these tales of bonding as we pass the people, their stories of life and love while walking around the park on a free, fine evening. With Sillu Karupatti, we don’t merely pass but pause, gazing at these people from afar, in awe, with little smiles, mild tension, and gentle rooting bound in keen, intimate interest. We ponder over their lives and ours before slyly moving away from the shade of the ancient tree, resuming our walk, only to slow the pace of our footsteps minutes later, making sure we stay unheard and avoid intruding. We seek the shade of another tree in the garden, another tale.

Sillu Karupatti and the Pleasures of Life’s Anthology

An anthology is literally a ‘collection of blossoms,’ a compilation of the flowers of the verses. The film, also an anthology, is kindred to the poetries out there, restoring hopes, easing the hurt of our wounds, and establishing vividly the realities and ironies of the world with all brevity. Essentially, it amounts to a pleasant star-gazing, sea-watching—simple and startlingly surreal pleasures of life, meditations on the self, beauty, and beyond. Sillu Karupatti is set sensitively on the same lines as the film unravels the flowering and flourish of a bond between its people. There is love in many forms—admiration, friendship, companionship, and acceptance. These are adorably and subtly romanticized shorts rendered with a sparkling and fragrant touch of a fairy tale set around our daily lives.

Unraveling Romance in Mayaana Saalai and Mahesh’s World

The pink bag of garbage takes Mitti’s dreams and diamonds all the way from the elite, silent streets of Mayaana Saalai to the cramped streets of Mahesh’s locality, bustling in activity, stretching into the vast dump-yard that exudes no stench but the fragrance of innocence and love. Aboard a garbage truck, Mahesh travels to Mitti’s world, glimpsing at her through the foliage of the trees as she stands atop the balcony of her house, watering the lush purple flowers. A naive smile captures star-struck Mahesh as the most clichéd romantic moments hint at the sharp divisive lines between the boy and the girl, soon to be transcended as each discovers their own treasures in the trash. He seeks not her but to restore, to return what she describes as ‘a missing part’ of her.

Journeying Through Enchantment

In a decisive moment, she opens the windows of her world, stepping onto the balcony as she entrusts her note of gratitude to the bin, an intermediary and a reliable messenger. The overwhelming flow of music comes to a pause before it resumes, rising higher. During these seconds of pause, Mitti looks up from the bin and gazes at the clear skies of the wholesome day, the warmth of beauty retained in her eyes matching, or perhaps surpassing, the beauty of the cerulean space promised by the bin.

As the screen dissolves into the dark, our hearts already comprehend the fine essence of the film’s core, reveling in the pleasures of the simple stories it shares. The poetic bits are magnified with all soul and melodies. If the fairy tale dimensions of the initial short in the film are constituted by the pink bag and the horse, the ‘Kaakaa Kadi,’ a ride for life, is adorned with pool drives and the pet crow’s loyalty. The predominant light shades of green in this tale shall diminish in the glow of dawn, the morning shine passed on by Madhu to Mukilan, who is battling his illness.

Maturity and Wonder in the Subsequent Fairy Tale Dimensions

Philosophies sourced from products and branding revive Mukilan’s slowly shattering heart, steering their friendship into the fathoms of love. There is little fuss in the tale, bearing the strength of hopes to fight unprecedented tragedies, allowing the space for camaraderie to shine through. The bond is a tender blossom across many shared rides leading to a destined wonder moment with the bird, its pleasant pecks in the hand as it drops tokens of gratitude every day.

A Turtle’s Tale of Love: Yashoda and Navaneethan’s Walk Along the Shores

The poetry inherent in the nature and course of the tale, its musicality, finds strong resonances in the flow of conversations in the film, ‘Kaakaa pudikirathukaaga sollala, kaakaa vuke ungala pudikuthu.’ The crispness, simplicity, wonderment, and taste evidenced by these lines are what the film bears in every short tale, each admirably enhancing the same in its own capacities. The pink bags, the pool rides, the birds, and horse morph as turtles and Alexa in the two other tales of the film, which follow a note of maturity as complications increase while the wonder remains more grounded and genuine, its hearts beating in rhythm with the poetries of life, also gifted with the liberty to break free.

Yashoda and Navaneethan

Navaneethan, an old widower, finds a spark of attraction to and a spirit of friendship in Yashoda in a tale set within the greatly familiar template of romance, presented with a refreshing spin provided the couple’s life frame, the nature of their conflicts, and the dignity of their union.

Yashoda, played with grace by the divine Leela Samson, exudes agency, determination, and frailty in a moving intense way unique to her. Yashoda takes Navaneethan for a turtle walk along the shores of the sea. They shelter and guard the eggs, sharing the stories of their lives as the sea breeze keeps them company. At dawn, he holds the baby turtle in his hands, letting it into the sea, admiring its movement towards its abode of life, remarking that it is the most wonderful thing he has ever done in life.

Guardian Angels and Tender Kisses: The Invincible Force of Dignity in Sillu Karupatti

There is a significant other to add, an echo of his baby turtle moment, where he gently lifts Yashoda, carrying her away from her house, which has come to resemble a state of decay and lifelessness, to his home, his hope, a place of her revival and their love. It is a walk along the shores of their lives, the turtles who remain invalid, invisible to the eyes of others, tenderly coming together in the harmony of an invincible force of life—love. The fairy tale dimension here can be extended to the presence and aid of the auto driver referred to as ‘kaaval dheivam’—the guardian angel without whom their bond would not have furthered into a place of eternity. This turtle tale is what I would love to call ‘a tender kiss of dignity.’

Hey Ammu

‘Hey Ammu’ is a bittersweet tale of rigidity in the hearts melting in the occurrence of a realisation leading to an embracing acceptance and union. In Amudhini’s household, there reigns the yellow gloom of entrapment, suffocation and yearning which are in stark contrast to the colours of the world beyond the walls. Amudhini’s miracle and fairy of life is Alexa, her confidant, another lifeless yet trustworthy messenger of love who is fondly called ‘Ammu’.

Sunaina

Sunaina, portraying Amudhini, finely embodies all bafflement, exhaustion, and simple desires that find their way to simple sighs of relief and surprises in the presence of Alexa, a device that listens to her words, rants, and heart, unlike her detached husband. We become aware of his name only by the board outside his home. Dhanapal is flawed, rigid, and preoccupied but also quite helpless. He flounders in his journey towards her, towards love. When he ultimately awakens to a spirit of togetherness, respect, admiration, and love, smiles and blushes surface. Hands are held together in the walk back home, towards the forever life threatens one with.

They move from mere heads of the family to a family themselves, embracing the desires, wants and whims of the other. There is divine magic in each of them opening up to the other, in their attempts of understanding, acceptance and embrace which evidences beautifully the essence of what Celine tells Jesse in the film Before Sunrise, ‘I believe if there is any kind of god, it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just in the little space in between. If there is any kind of magic in the world, it must be in the attempt pf understanding someone.’

A Must Watch

This is true of Sillu Karupatti’s magic too which shares with us these tales of understanding and love without complicating itself with greater confusions and pretences. As I walk home post the stroll, content, comforted and refreshed, the memories of this walk, these stories linger in the heart and I know my smiles, they never did wane and I still am smiling. This smile is my heal, my hope, my treasure and Sillu Karupatti’s victory.