Suriya Plays Air Deccan Founder ….Or Does He?

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.