A quick and rough note on வேலைக்காரன்

Found வேலைக்காரன் quite effective. (There, I said it.) Still wondering why it hasn't received even a minimal praise or attention from discerning film-viewing circles...

The movie does tend to get verbose (and the director very much so in his interviews!) and and adds way more scenarios/incidents by way of plot than it needs - to that extent, it's a film of excess and it'd have been better and tauter if it had dwelt on just 1 narrative strand for more time and kept out some of the other narrative strands. But I liked that the film constantly strives to be imaginative, and when it works, it bristles with ideas both in terms of political imagination and (more importantly) storytelling style.

Some elements/ideas/strands that I found interesting if modest (in some cases, even somewhat confused):

• We'll come to the politics of the film in a bit but I suspect one of the reasons this film is not receiving attention among the critics is because it's seeped in mainstream form and conventions. It's to Mohan Raja's credit that the film never mistakes serious purpose for a need to be dull and long-faced (never mind how the director seems to give himself a short shrift in this regard in interviews where he emphasises more on having a message than telling an interesting story). It strives to fold its purpose in a story arc, in the scenarios it invents, employing squarely mainstream storytelling idioms. The staging is all masala in a way that is first of all refreshing and also at times gives the film an edge/potency. Some moments/arcs that are worth mentioning:
• The dramatic framing of Arivu (Sivakarthikeyan) taking a vow to transition from being a fool on Apr 1 to a worker proper on May 1, for instance, is beautifully done.
• (Some other reviewers have highlighted this scene.) The scene that involves a live commentary of a local gang fight is again mounted with a sense of drama that has become all too rare. Consider the number of things that you learn as the scene progresses. This is when it's also revealed Arivu considers Kasi annan his chief nemesis. Even the visual of every individual appearing as Kasi has a meaning, as that's how Arivu sees the problematic, as not an individual issue but one of the "winning idea."
• The scene in the 2nd half where Aadhi a.k.a. Adhiban Madhav (Fahadh Faasil nicely doing his thing) burns down 2 days of stock the workers have produced. We see Aadhi and Arivu rush to the place but at the site, they slow down having a measured dialogue of sorts as if they are witnessing the immediate proceedings from a distance, the products Arivu and co. have built being wasted on fire and other workers in panic trying to escape the fire and/or save the stock for sale, finding their way out, etc.
• I was more than once reminded of Rajkumar Hirani even if Mohan Raja is never nearly as seamless in pitch as Hirani is, not to forget the latter's wonderful humour. But I'd add here that Hirani's own ideas can sometimes be bloated e.g. in a film like Lage Raho Munnabhai. Incidentally, I think வேலைக்காரன் probably owes a bit to that film in particular. After seeing the film, I realised the FM radio connection of course - it's used as a plot device too in a very similar way - not only for lead characters to reach out to the wider public but also for the principal characters to indirectly have their own conversations in public. But I must add I mean the Hirani influence as a general remark - even the way the film has multiple supporting characters gaining importance in unexpected ways and having their own closures, etc. I particularly liked the visual of Kasi (Prakash Raj), and Kasthuri (Sneha, in a role and segment that's just rushed), the former a local don who served as the hunting dog for his corporate bosses and the latter one of their victims, stranded together and sharing the same pedestal (and yes, in true masala logic, they're in the hospital!), as ultimately victims in their own respects.

Now to the film's politics.

• First, the representation of the underclass or working class - I'm sure there were some offensive or insensitive bits (that betray the film's outsider gaze) but it's remarkable how the film squarely privileges the working class as the authentic agents of change. In this film's logic, the well-to-do middle class is thoroughly colonized if not complicit (unwashed masses, as it were!), political change if any has to emerge from the working class. This is refreshing amidst the tiresome spate of movies where we see iconoclasts from educated upper middle class rising to some occasion or the other and invariably recoiling back to their cocoons after blaming "dirty politicians" for everything! At some points, it seems this is even placed as a burden of the working class - the analogy between gangsters who kill for money and worker class in the bottom rung of corporate system begged for a more nuanced portrait, the casual equivalence drawn between the two was a glaring overstep - but it must be said that this is a rare film which privileges the worker class in very interesting ways.
• That brings me to the next point - the onus here is not on the 'moral superiority' of the worker class and the film never degenerates to 'goodness!' i.e. a vague plea from 'a few good people' to an amorphous group (Corporate top rung in this film) to be more humane. This is a trope that even the seemingly political films so easily resort to - the likes of ஜோக்கர் and அறம் come to mind (the former is obviously crafted with care and hits the aesthetic registers a lot more than the latter but I found both of them very blunt in terms of their politics) . The film's hero deploys the very ideas of the system's functioning against itself. But I'm not talking about just that. The very premise of the story arc is based on the assumption that the sociopolitical space is an ever-contingent one with all participating groups bound to it (may I use the word 'interpellated'?) and one open for radical changes. This is exactly what most of the seemingly rousing but ultimately cynical movies miss when they offer little more than a 'berating' of the world we live in (call out politicians or the unwashed masses/people at large for voting them in!). The film keeps the motives of its protagonist simple and targeted and is the first to recognizes that too.
• The film is dead serious about the fast food industry killing all of us. The film is at its weakest when it goes on about the worst ill-effects of consumer economy but I was very surprised by how it leaps from this (a standard-issue film dealing with some corporate misconduct killing off kids, etc.) to rattling off about modes of production and then to the enormous stakes workers have in the functioning of this economy itself and the system at large. I mean, really, weren't the more thoughtful films suggesting 'returning to mother nature' as the answer?
• This is what enables the film to fearlessly (some would say doltishly) go the whole hog from disparate, even divergent, strands of consumer activism and underclass social emancipation to full-blooded communism. I for one was charmed by the rousing 'எழு வேலைக்காரா இன்றே!' at all as the film ends.

TBD: If I have something more to add, will just keep adding here. :)