The cabal finally decided to sit down and wrestle with Super Deluxe this past weekend. We were ably aided in this quest by @NadikaNadja as we dove inextricable deeper and deeper into the universe created by Thiagarajan Kumararaja. While we’ve all tried to come to terms with what we experienced, I think we’ll all be either watching the film in the theaters again or on some streaming platform as soon as it is available!
Big thanks to Nadika for joining us! Look forward to everyone’s feedback and having an open discussion with our listeners on their thoughts.
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the thing u told about berlin was cloned was awesome, gonna rewatch again and again
Haha! Glad it caught your attention. Thanks for listening!
Where’s the podcast??
Should be there now! Apologies for the delay in updating!
Super Deluxe destroys subjective moralism, ethics thrive but morals are only a temporary thing, as the movie represents. Same thing Manushyaputhiran and Ramya Krishnan tell at the end. Random events happen, nobody deserves anything for what they did in past, whatever happens has just happened and it is us who see it from different lenses and find meaning in them. Those uttering of lines on caste, pathini, num urimai are all in a way making fun of us. We find coherence in all that happens and Super Deluxe represents the coincidences of life. And the biggest thing it does to completely support that is the Alien character. A movie which tells everything is random and does not have meaning in life should also do that right, I guess thats where the Alien comes. Random but yes it happened. Super Deluxe also egos with any tamil conventions we see, it saves the cheating wife, porn star, transgender who spoilt childrens life, but it only kills the lover and Berlin. But in the habitual sense we see Berlin deserved it, but actually no one deserved anything. They just happened. And the inclusion part, the inclusion goes as far as including an Alien, not just telling humans are equal. The best part about introducing the Alien is someone need to utter these lines “neeyum nanum kallu mannu ellam onnu dhan”, if any normal human utters this it sounds so cringe, definitely an individual from alter reality uttering these makes way for it to seem very much palpable. Manushyaputhiran follows up as the doctor and the conclusion sets in. So the Alien served what it intended to, to preach humans what this world really is why the dash we should not care a lot about things that we care to.
And probably that is why a film like this will never be awarded in our circles as no one digests the fact of a cheating wife, a pornstar mom being ok with what they did, and the movie itself tells it is ok. Magnolia will be a perfect dual for Super Deluxe, on the theme of randomness in life and why they should not make any sense. Except Super Deluxe has a much larger theme about life.
The point is not about cheating is ok or porn is ok, but it is about how we perceive morality as a concrete wall that cannot be molded. Super Deluxe presents it as the wall which we see, but not because it is right but because we just see it now. 10000 years ago the wall would have been different but now it is something else, we could give space for it, but there could be some point where we let go of it, just to taste that honey :D. Lastly Thiagarajan’s twitter handle summarises the entire movie – itisthatis. Things are what they are.
And the moment where Shilpa curses Berlin and he dies is not really about him deserving for his illness, but the actual essence of it is in the counter line by Berlin when he is cursed “en podatti periya paththini ava saabam vitte onnum agala”, something a normal tamil convention would approve as well. Be it a whore or wife Berlin would still die, dismissing the authority that purity has in this society of ours. Same case with Veambu in the lift.
[…] Express (The New Indian Express) and Nadika, who returns to The Other Banana once again after the Super Deluxe […]