In the trailer of director Sudha Kongra’s bio-pic Soorarai Pottru on economized air travel’s prime architect G R Gopinath, Suriya is not named Gopinath. He is Nedumaaran Rajangam. Shakespeare has warned us about a rose by by any other name. And this rose really rose in the sky to bloom where no man had gone before. It matters little what you may choose to call him.A dreamer is a dreamer.
The Air Deccan saga is really quite phenomenal. For a man from the humblest of beginnings to dream of flying the entire nation in a low-cost airway requires guts , and more importantly, vision. I don’t know if Suriya is able to convey the dreams and vision of Gopinath. In the trailer no shot is longer than 5 seconds, so we really have no way of knowing what Gopinath(who is not Gopinath in the film) is thinking.The camera is constantly on the move.
What we do get in the fast-paced trailer is a glimpse into the dreamer’s relationship with the outside world specially his wife who supported her farmer-husband to realize his dreams. At one point Suriya tells his screen-mate Aparna Balamurli, “The world thinks we’re both crackpots. We might as well marry.”
I also saw Paresh Rawal playing what looks like the the man who wants to clip the high flier’s wings.I remember Mira Nair’s Amelia which was about the first woman who flew a plane. Soorarai Pottru is about the first man who dreamt of flying a plane for the common man. Such uncommon dreams about the common man are hard to come by.
Watching the trailer of Soorarai Pottru is a reminder that cinema need not always be aspirational. They can also bring a dreamer close to his dream.
