Mozhi | The Theme and Characters | Video Essay Script | Moving Images

Hello, I’m Kishor and this is MOVING IMAGES. Mozhi is more than just a movie to me. Over the years and after countless viewings, I have a personal connection with the characters in the story and I feel I know them well like I do my friends. This connection was only possible since Director Radha Mohan took the effort to make every character, both leading and supporting, three-dimensional. They are not your cardboard cut-outs present just to make the hero look good. The film is character-centric and I would like to talk about how the characters were designed.

A good story will not just have a strong lead character and weak supporting characters selected at random. Instead, each character in the story will demonstrate an aspect of the central theme of the story. Mozhi’s theme is love. Let’s look at the characters and see what makes Mozhi so great.

We have our protagonist, Karthik, who is on the path to discover love. He discovers it in the deaf girl Archana and wants to share his life with her. During his journey, he falters and makes mistakes but learns from them. His journey is about learning to accept people for what they are.

Archana being a disabled person and having grown up in an unloving environment, is against letting anyone love her as she feels she doesn’t need anyone in her life. Her journey is about realizing love isn’t about being pitied at or being dependent but rather sharing ones’ life.

Viji takes life as it is and is spontaneous and jovial. He finds love accidentally and the way he approaches it is just as funny as he is.

Sheela is someone who has lost her love when her husband died. She knows what it feels like to love and lose it and she wishes for Archana to love. Her journey is finding that love again in Viji.

Those are the main four characters but the theme extends to other characters too. Professor Gnanaprakasam has lost his love when his son died and he refuses to accept the loss and hence lives in the year 1984, refusing to come out of it. Even Ananthakrishnan, the irritable apartment secretary trying to evict Karthik and viji from the apartment just cause they are bachelors, has a funny arc where he tries and fails to pursue a romantic relationship with a younger girl through various mishaps and finally learns to love the two boys for what they are. Not that way!

Karthik’s journey makes him encounter each of these other characters and evolves the story as the characters make their own journey while complimenting each other.

Director Radha Mohan takes the theme one step further and attaches it even to language. After all, the name of the film “Mozhi” means language and the characters each express their love through language. But the language here is not just the spoken word. Karthik express his love through music to Archana while Archana expresses hers through sign language. Viji expresses his love through his humor and spontaneity. And finally, Gnanaprakasam expresses his love or more precisely the grief of losing his love through tears. Mozhi speaks love to us the audience through its music and silence, through its comedy and drama. The theme of the movie love penetrates through every frame and by keeping the characters grounded and shades of the theme, the director manages to give us something more than a movie, an experience.

Until next time, this is Kishor signing off saying….