KO- THE REAL STORY

Ko is this recently released Tamil flick that I stumbled up on while lazing around near the theatres this weekend. It is definitely not the run-of-the-mill story you usually encounter in Tamil cinema. Ko brims with novelty throughout and it strikes you right away as you run through the character sketching. It has a never-seen-before larger-than-life central character who happens to be a journalist, a hot chick playing a “loosu ponnu” character (@director sir: hats off sir! Originality reaches new heights, thanks to you), it has a damsel-in-distress, an aspiring student-politician, two corrupt politicians (Prakash Raj and Kota Srinivas Rao! Brilliant casting by the director. Instead of giving these central roles to accustomed faces, he has bequeathed the responsibility of donning these roles on actors who have never ever played similar roles in their lives) with zero civic sense surrounded by braided goondas and Tata Sumos, a witness who turns hostile owing to political pressure and so on.
The best thing about Ko is that, at no point is logic compromised. There are certain unbelievably believable scenes like the hero somersaulting in his bike as he captures thugs in action with his camera, the bike emerging brand new after being crushed to an excruciating death in the preceding scene, a character triggering a bomb as he flies off a podium in slow motion after being forcefully pushed by another, a chief minister single-handedly trying to handle an emergency as the police and the rest of the defence ministry gleefully concur to his orders etc... The songs by Harris Jayaraj are scintillating to say the least and at no point do they remind you of his previous scores. There is a mystic touch about his re-recording and two deaf people who came to see the movie also claim to have HEARD the background score! The editing is incredibly crisp and unlike other movies, the placement of the songs is extremely precise, compulsory in fact! Any director who doesn’t pack his crew off to a foreign locale for a romantic jig featuring the lead pair after a bomb blast scene must be a fool!
The unbelievable degree of cinematic uniqueness inspired me to find out details about the making of Ko, its maker and its characters. To my surprise, I discovered that KV Anand is a schizophrenic, a film maker who TRIES to behave like Shankar, Mani Ratnam, Murugadoss, Gautham etc at different junctures. He also has hallucinations about afterlife and is so obsessed and addicted to concepts pertaining to the same. He has this tendency of extruding and extending his thoughts to tinsel town as well. So all his characters are KV’s perceptions of what they would have been, had they been given a second chance to live on earth!
Jeeva’s character is “Muthalvan” Arjun’s afterlife. All his yesterlife Karma are settled in this life of his. Firstly, he didn’t want to become CM in his previous life though he wanted to live a life brimming with abundant political activity. So he safely plays second fiddle. Next, he didn’t like his parents meeting with an early end. Hence he prefers to “virtually” kill them than “really” bomb them to death by giving them not more than one scene. Thirdly, he didn’t enjoy riding his bike to a long distance village too much to meet his gal and so Manisha’s afterlife Karthika is made to work in his own office! Fourthly, he was seen in tears after the Sushmita Sen item number got over in his previous life. He so badly wanted her to be his second heroine in that life. So Sush is reborn as Piaa and gets to do the item number as well be the second heroine. So, it’s evident that there is a method in KV’S madness. Arjun’s spirit retains its core competencies and its soul is found to be very much intact though, strongly reaffirming the obsession of KV’s psyche with the concept of rebirth and afterlife. Jeeva is as passionate about photography as Arjun. He’s honest, young, vibrant and agile, thus confirming his origin.
Now coming to KV again, his pitiable mental condition is ubiquitous and glaring in certain scenes. Only, the naive viewer is so engrossed in watching the genius unravel onscreen that he fails to notice the unique psyche of the creator. While canning the first scene (the bank robbery), the director was seen to be behaving like Lingusamy. The director, known for his command over the language was found pronouncing the word action as “ak-san”, exactly the way Lingu is known to pronounce it! The sequence has been shot the way Lingu would have shot it: it’s fast, racy and its over before you know it.
Though KV exhibits shades of different personalities at different points in time, he is known to behave and act like Shankar most of the time. Every time he flew to a foreign location to shoot a song, he spoke, ate and even slept like Shankar it seems. The results are overwhelmingly visible in the picturization of songs: like songs in Shankar’s films, the songs are a slideshow of pictures that have been usurped from the downloaded winrar file “100 best HD wallpapers” from the webshots site and the videos of Jeeva and Karthika dancing have been superimposed over them. The glass sculptures, lush green meadows, the mountains and the rivers have been captured just as Shankar would have captured them. The director seems to have been in a state of mental trauma while canning the scenes involving participation of students in politics. He seems to have vacillated between Mani’s and Shankar’s characters.
Another facet of KV’s self is revealed in a scene where different students from different academic disciplines unite for a social cause. K sababathy, a veteran technician who has worked in every film that Murugadoss has directed, just sent me a mail stating that he saw Murugadoss in every movement, every twitch and turn of his, in KV when he was canning those sequences. K kanakasabapathy, another veteran technician from Gautham Menon’s camp recollects watching a “gauthamed” KV when he was shooting the college flashback scene and the song therein. K manikkasabapathy, KKK’s son, a sound engineer who has worked with Yuvan adds a new speculative dimension claims that he saw a glint in Harris’ eye when he was composing the college song in Ko which resembled the spark that he saw in Yuvan’s eye when he was composing “dosth bada dosth” for venkatprabu!
Finally, i’d like to add that the above article is meant to be very serious and has been published after extensive research. It’s as serious and sincere as KV Anand’s Ko! It contains nothing but the truth. I’d like to end this by adding some spicy and red hot breaking news that i received via sms just now: KV’s finalised the script for his next movie: its going to be a totally different experience for the tamil audience: it illustrates the rise of a poor low caste guy who speaks nasty tamil into a multi-millionaire after braving rich upper caste villains. Amazing, novelty is synonymous with KV sir! Kudos KV sir.