Friday WatchAlong: I! The Most Insane Tamil Movie You Didn’t Know You Needed

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This movie is horribly offensive, stupid, and disturbing. And also operatic and beautiful and you can’t look away. Naturally, I am excited to watch it with y’all!

I (on Amazon Prime, search “I tamil” or else you will never find it. Dumb title)

I know Tamil films aren’t familiar territory for a lot of you, so I am going to give you a bit of info in advance. First, Amy Jackson (our heroine) is a nice British young woman. She’d been working in Tamil films for a while by the time of this one, very good dancer and onscreen presence. All her dialogue is dubbed, but that’s actually pretty common for southern actresses since they tend to work cross-industry a lot. Vikram, our hero, is a Big Big Deal actor. Think Aamir Khan type, intense and serious and only makes a few movies and is super serious about them. Shankar, our director, specializes in totally insane expensive plots/song sequences. And he was one of the first to sponsor AR Rahman, so Rahman always does amazing music for him.

Anyway, I! On Prime, or einthusan, or whatever.

207 thoughts on “Friday WatchAlong: I! The Most Insane Tamil Movie You Didn’t Know You Needed”

  18. I see no reason for her to be in love with him or any build up to this relationship at all, but this is a pretty silly movie, so I will try to just go with it.

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  23. Okay, this scene works for me. All the lead up is ridiculous, but the idea of her deciding she likes him and going after him by learning slang and then fighting each other, that’s great.

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          • wait, you found a moral? What is it? Is it just that beauty is skin deep or something more?

            On Sat, Sep 19, 2020 at 7:41 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • Well, it’s super muddled. I did think it was going to be about investing too much into appearances/capitalism, but all the ad stuff was ultimately meaningless, so I guess it’s just the age old being ugly on the outside is better than being a paedophile on the inside, unless you’re a woman because then you still need to be cis, young, and beautiful.

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          • Is this your first Shankar movie? I think they all kind of end up muddled like that. He’s got an incredibly simple moral message, and then gets caught up in the gore and spectacle and everything and the message gets lost. This one, I think appearances/consumerism is supposed to be the point, after all the ending is them retreating to an isolated natural paradise and only using natural ayurvedic methods to cure him. But along the way he’s got the pedofile doctor, and the transgender woman, and a whole bunch of other stuff that ends up being more memorable.

            On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 8:59 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • Yeah, it is. It seems to let go for half the movie of that idea, but I think it must still be the message. I also don’t like the way revenge is bad when people other than the hero do it, and good when he does it. But it is kind of redeemed by him transforming back at the end.

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          • Anything the hero does is good, that’s one of the main things of Shankar. What I find fascinating/frustrating/hateful about his movies is that he sticks with his backing of the hero, even when the film itself kind of takes over and shows how the hero’s actions are wrong. Indian is my Most Hated of his films, he bends the whole world to justify his hero turning to vigilantism and it truly does not hold up to the slightest logic. I know movies don’t have to have logic, but they do when it directly relates to the moral of the film, you know?

            On the lighter side, there is the film Boys where the teenage hero and heroine elope because their parents are trying to separate them, but decide not to have sex even though they are married because they can’t afford babies. So, a), if the parents had just let them date for a bit until they graduated college and then got married, it would be the same result. And b), birth control exists!!!! The whole second half of the film is this struggle of the young runaway couple to survive, without babies, and it makes NO SENSE because they could just still be living in their separate homes so far as their relationship is concerned! And the whole argument of the film is “young love marriages are bad because babies ruin your life, and our couple is wise and noble for not having sex” but CONDOMS! CONDOMS CONDOMS CONDOMS!!!!!!

            On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 9:07 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • They don’t have to have logic, but they have to have internal logic, or there is no story. Unless you’re making a surrealist film.

            Yeah but they have to be mooooraaaaaaaal unless they want to kill people, that’s okay. Sex, though, never.

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          • But they are MARRIED! Why not have recreational sex after you are married? I just DON’T UNDERSTAND!!!!!

            On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 9:17 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • As a not quite expert, I would say “no”, it’s a totally different hang up. More that marriage is for the purpose of children. Recreational sex is fine, but procreational sex is more important because the pressure to have kids is so incredibly high.

            Also, we have to divide things a lot more with Hinduism than we do with Catholocism, because there is no Pope. No one unquestioned authority/interpretation. There are loads of super sexy religious texts, about orgasms as a force of nature and the Gods and things like that. And there’s the strong general social message of limiting the number of children per family and birth control in India. But on the other hand, there is in the air a sort of social message of “good people practice control over their sexual desires and only have sex within marriage with family approval and if it doesn’t interfere with their other duties”. It’s complicated.

            In the case of this film, I think it was the same confusion I see a lot where “good” young people now are expected to have advanced degrees and careers and accomplishments before marriage, but also be chaste until marriage. Which is simply not feasible, but you certainly can’t suggest sex before marriage as a solution. Except it is a solution really. Unless you argue “sex leads to pregnancy leads to DISASTER so you shouldn’t do it until you are safely married”.

            On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 3:13 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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