Went for Kumki movie at S2 Perambur, Chennai last night.

Kumki is one of the best Indian movies I have watched in my life.

Kumki movie is based around the incident in the life of a mahot and his elephant named ‘Manickam’.

The hero Vikram Prabhu (he is Prabhu’s son, Sivaji Ganesan’s grandson) has the right physique to be projected for this role. He does not have much dialogues in the movie and also does not have to act much. He just looks expressionless in many scenes.

The heroine, Lakshmi Menon, appears to be one of those hundred heroines who have popped up in recent days in Tamil film industry after the explosion in the number of low budget movies. While she has done her part well, her role is so limited that she virtually does not exist.

There is one man, supposed to be the uncle character, who speaks to himself and to others throughout the movie. After a point in time, it gets boring to listen to him, but looking at the way the other people in the theatre responded with laughter to his dialogues throughout the movie, I might not have many others supporting my view of his role in this movie. In any case, I felt bored by his dialogues.

In spite of the above limitations, the direction, script and the cinematography have kept the audience mesmerized till the end of the movie. There was not a single scene when I felt bored in this movie. Hats off to the director Prabhu Salomon for weaving this magic. Hope he does it more often in the future.

The cameraman has done wonders behind the camera. The choice of location as well as the angle of shots are amazing.

In one of the scenes, the hero and the heroine go to the top of a falls and the way the cameraman has shot this scene is breath taking. I remember seeing such angle in Cliffhanger movie a long time ago. The only other comparison I could remember of was in Raavanan movie where Mani Ratnam had amazed us with a wonderful location for most of the movie.

The last scene where the two elephants fight is a clear limitation in the animation skills of the director, but might not be easily picked up by the common audience. In any case, the director got the climax sequence and the message across very well here also.

The songs are very nice. Soy Soy song and Sollittene song are my favourite, and I continue to hum the sollittene en kaadhale song. I heard all other songs were also quite good, but I was not impressed.

After watching the movie, did a basic research on this topic. Kumki is a Tamil word, used to refer to the elephant that is brought in to tame or counter the wild elephants (refered in tamil as ”). Most of the times, it appears the kumki elephants get beaten up or killed by the single male elephant, which causes havoc in remote forest areas.

All these days I have used the phrase ‘kumku kumkunnu kumki eduthuttanga’. Now I know the context behind this word in reference.

Overall, it was a happy movie watching experience and we felt satisfied after watching Kumki. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who wants to watch a high quality movie in tamil.