Minutes into the Sivakarthikeyan starrer Doctor (2021), you feel alienated as a viewer. Scenes are not shot with the usual shot-reverse shot grammatical shorthand; actors are positioned mid-frame with mostly shallow focus background—there is a sense of detachment to the way the performances are pitched with cold, acerbic wit, that is totally at odds with the nonchalant presentation style. Something is not right off the gate, and you can feel the dissonance after years of watching mainstream Tamil cinema. There are clearly choices being made in the way the film is being captured on screen, which feel almost alienating and enriching at the same time. The man behind the camera, Nelson Dilipkumar, who was making his sophomore outing with this film, had to do with all this captivating unfamiliarity. Also Read | From Kakka Muttai to Idli Kadai: Food as nostalgia, resistance and love in Tamil cinema Nelson Dilipkumar, who made his debut with the wry comedy 'Kolamaavu Kokila', is a comedic voice who sees his stories of buttoned-up heroes trapped in a world of tragedy. In Kolamavu Kokila, he dealt with a young woman who was forced to forge relationships with drug mafia to facilitate the funds for her dying mother's cancer treatment. The film, unlike many Tamil films, played it all straight. He knows the inherent quirkiness of his central ideas and is banking on a sense of detachment in his filmmaking, which would be the source of the comedy, considering the severity of what is transpiring on screen. Nelson's cinema is a cinema of straight shooters trapped in the world of flawed, insecure, funny ensemble side characters. He does not take any of the 'serious' things happening in his films seriously and is constantly undercutting the gravity of his storylines with his acerbic lines and assembling films that mostly function as restrained comedy of manners. Imagine a Wes Anderson by way of framing, caught in the world of a Thyagaraja Kumararaja, where characters blurt out anything and everything that comes to their mind in lower registers; that would resemble a Nelson Dilipkumar film. Also Read | Rhythm turns 25: Meena and Arjun Sarja’s career-best performances anchor this tender romance classic Doctor, begins with a military doctor Varun (Sivakarthikeyan), having to choose between two patients' lives simultaneously after an operation goes wrong. He decides to let the military officer die and focus on saving the wounded terrorist, and is questioned on his choice by a senior officer in attendance. Usually, in our cinema, we see heroes maintain a basic moral discipline in the way that they view and save human lives. But Nelson inverts this trope and uses an almost banal but logical explanation as to why the hero thinks the terrorist's life is more valuable than that of the wounded soldier in this context, "If we save this terrorist now, we might get more information about his other operations later." This scene pretty much tells us all about Nelson's neurosis as a filmmaker. He is a product of the post-irony generation of filmmakers, who are invested in sidelining tropes and cliches with a sort of mechanical dissonance in the execution. There is zero sentimental gesturing here, pure vibes thrive in his films. Also Read | The weird and out of the box romantic fables of Vignesh Shivan Doctor is filled to the brim with these minor notes of artistic quirks within its core text, and Nelson uses humor as a means to investigate dark, brooding stories of people caught at their lowest. There is not much scope for flowery sentimentality or kitsch in his films. Nelson likes to keep things moving and is least interested in pausing and contemplating the inherent tragedy of his weirdly rendered screenplays. Though he does address the tonal contrast with serious investment. In Doctor, a child's kidnapping and the subsequent search by the family becomes a rack for Nelson to hang his quippy humor, thinly drawn caricatures, and sardonically stoic sensibility. None of the talking points of the film involving the grim aspects of organ trafficking rings and child abduction syndicates are dealt with the usual self-serious, overtly didactic emotionality in Doctor. Nelson papers over the emotionally challenging moments in his screenplay with a sort of irreverent humor and uses levity to divert the grimness. For his characters, comedy and tomfoolery are coping mechanisms that help them deflect from their deep sorrow and grief. Watching Doctor in 2021 truly felt like such a refreshing swerve in movie watching as you got to see a filmmaker successfully implement absurdist humor and 'black comedy' as storytelling devices within his narrative with clarity and tonal mastery. The film more than holds up four years later with its neurotic visual grammar and perplexing brand of humor. Also Read | From Ghilli to Balti: The evolution of the sports genre in Tamil cinema We are quick to refer to unconventional humor in our films as 'black comedy' as we inflate weird humor and quirky characters with this sub genre. However, 'black comedy' is truly a difficult area in humor that needs a particular off kilter sensibility and detached ambivalence to work. Weird humor is not always the same as 'black comedy' which by definition is dealing with tragic circumstances in a comical register. Weirdness for weirdness' sake won't do going by this definition. This is what Nelson has been trying to get at with each of his four released feature films to date, but no other film captured him at his element more than Doctor. Nelson uses Sivakarthikeyan as his grounding device for narrative dissonance and his stiff, borderline robotic leading man almost becomes the direct counter weight to the weird ensemble cast, filled with colorful and cartoonish characters. The hero does not smile at any point in the film and you see Nelson using his stoicism as a means to transpose the absurd situations the characters find themselves in and his nonchalance response to crisis situations become a recurring character joke that never loses its edge. His 'buttoned up' persona (which gets a solid reasoning earlier on) is more suffocating and suspenseful as we can't expect what he might do next in any particular scene. As Yogi Babu's character calls him "Psycho Doctor" which is a befitting title for his calm, unsettling demeanor and actions. The interactions with his ex-fiancée (the marriage was called off moments before the kidnapping as she found him to be an 'emotionless bore'), played by Priyanka Mohan, also explores relationship dynamics in a very peculiar pitch, the battle between the man who feels nothing and the girl who craves emotion also gives Nelson ample scope for levity. Also Read | The unconventional villains in the cinema of AR Murugadoss A doctor threatening three possible delivery guys in a child trafficking syndicate, after secretly removing their kidney during surgery; a blossoming, awkward romance between two people from the hunting party looking into finding the missing girl; a casually insensitive police tracker assigned to the grieving family of the missing girl - all these strands sounds like overkill and slight dramatic exaggeration on paper, but Nelson uses them tactfully for deconstructing the conventions of films that deal with 'kidnapping' as a plot point. There is heavy-handed sentimentality that dominates most of Tamil cinema, a result of decades long conformity to audience expectations and market forces. But Nelson clearly subverts the cliches and uses refreshed versions of tired tropes to get the most laughs. He is fine being prickly and irritating in his humor and let his actors go about their lines, although he unifies their performances through his almost robotic delivery, which is straight faced and unsettling given the context of the story. Also Read | Rajinikanth’s Coolie begins streaming: How much logical gap is too much in the age of instant trolling and YouTube breakdowns? He also uses the visual tools necessary to make the humor stick out with weird camera movements and overtly blocked dialogue scenes, with only one character in focus at most times. The humor derives further impact with his center to middle framing of action, where actors move in particular, solidly blocked choreography within the frame while engaged in conflicting actions and saying the most bizarre lines. There is no much scope for improvised humor in the films of Nelson as he has the visual grammar all figured out. He can play out a funny gag on an extreme wide shot and make the physicality of the actors stand out against the backdrop, making their actions even funnier. Nelson willfully holds back scoring the humor scenes and uses uncomfortable silences to make the innate banality of his dialogues seem louder. In Doctor, all the secondary character gets as much punchlines as the leads, and he is careful to make the ensemble work, as opposed to make the humor sporadic and emanating from the leads alone. There are momentary flourishes of pathos like in the scene where the hero gets to choose between saving the missing girl or end up leaving all the other girls being held by the syndicate, all of which add a flavor of unpredictability to the hero's actions. Also Read | Before Madharaasi, examining the social issue based commercial cinema of A R Murugadoss In these moments, Nelson in between all the funny exchanges, is wise enough to keep the humanity of the hero in check and make his question the selfish desire of the family of the missing girl to comply to the demand. The writing is so flippant about the core emotional weight of the hero's decision and there are cutaways to Yogi Babu and the maid character that are genuinely funny playing out in the background. Nelson can cut from such a striking somber scene to a scene where the family is again sitting around cracking situational banter that de-escalates the severity of the previous scene. This constant push and pull between conflicting tones makes the comedy feel almost therapeutic and even more pronounced. In his most recent directorial effort, Jailer starring Rajinikanth, you can see Nelson applying this almost stoic detachment over intensely emotional scenes and derive propulsion from the transposing of moods. Jailer, which deals with a retired jailer's efforts at retribution towards his son's killer's is as straightforward a story for a commercial film as it gets. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this would be the most linear, template offering of an Rajnikanth action film. Also Read | Jeethu Joseph: The director who proved that a strong script can make audiences overlook even a film’s most obvious flaws But Nelson's ability to switch between different moods and swing between tonal planes makes it a more idiosyncratic film, where a self absorbed meta superstar character gets mocked relentlessly, a grieving father is taunted by a driver over imagined verses from the 'Tirukkuṟaḷ' and an vengeful father is made to become a background dancer in movie shoot to get critical information. The violence, father-son angle and 'high intensity of jokes in every scene' structure is all integrated in Nelson's vision of a mainstream film without seeming over packed or gimmicky. However, it is in Doctor that is penchant for no-holds barred minimalism worked wonders. The villains were perfectly threatening with the right mix of seriousness and self reflexive plans, the relationship dynamic between the family of the abducted girl was adequately funny without going overboard, the side players consisting of clueless gangsters and henchman who are all being deceived by the hero and gang; all the elements came together with perfect harmony in this unsettling comedy. The director seems to be able to inject a brand of self reflexive humor in the mainstream, where you least expect them. Doctor, on retrospect, feels like the first signs of greatness from a comedic talent, who landed the right material to unleash his weird vision of a funny, bitter, yet hopeful world where pitch black comedy becomes the best device to deal with pitch black issues of these crazy times.
