Soorarai Pottru is a commercial flick that is notable only for its outrageously dumb portrayal of those who pioneered low-cost aviation in India.
A retired army captain pursues an airline business that intends to rebrand aviation from its luxurious appeal to one that can tap into the demand of the low-budget traveler's need. This is the only connection between Captain Gopinath's story and the movie 'Soorarai Pottru', which claims to be loosely inspired by the captain's life.
The movie begins with a flight crash that was forced by vested interests who wanted to ground the low-cost airline. The enthralling start then cuts off for a back story, where the protagonist is a serious street campaigner for establishing a working railway station in his poor rural locality. He proactively takes up public issues and vehemently believes that connectivity is key to economic progress. His father despises his ways and his mother is a textbook example of how Tamil cinema sees motherly love. As the equations with his father worsens, he vows to never return and becomes an officer in the Indian Army (as if it were all that simple). On these lines, the movie goes all out to spice the screen with too much of everything to entice the audience.
To drive home the point that airlines were very exclusivist, the protagonist finds himself short of cash while trying to book a flight to get back home to meet his ill father. Even if the viewers tried to empathize with the character, the simmering superficiality would just win over. The romance track, which is an indispensable aspect of mainstream Tamil cinema also had its share of artificiality - where the visionary protagonist meets an equally passionate baker. Nonetheless, the most overwhelming of all is when all of the villagers pledge their properties and savings to fund the airline.
The movie also notoriously villainizes the establishment and big capital with little to no logical coherence. A venture capitalist firm cheats the protagonist and tricks him into bankruptcy and a rich airline owner exhibits aversion towards the poor. From buying pilots to wrecking an actual flight, the rich airliner seems to be capable of anything to sabotage the protagonist's plans. More hilariously, the depiction of 'Directorate General of Civil Aviation' was akin to a lowly government clerk who sits in the midst of shelves that contain piles of old dusty files. Finally, the story ends on the customary happy note. After overcoming all odds, the airline succeeds and extremely poor people start flying around for whatsoever reason.
Celebrating a real success story is indeed good as it has a lot of motivational value. Presenting such a saga through a fictionally exaggerated movie is still fine, but what isn't is the stupefaction of the plot to emotionalize the experience. Such depictions are an insult to natural human emotions that arise in real situations. Also, blatantly obfuscating the actuality of events like 'the loss making nature Captain Gopinath's airline and its eventual sellout to the Kingfisher group' was intellectually numbing. Further, considering that we live in the age of misinformation, vilification of people with real life parallels feeds into digital conspiracy mills which churn out content that baselessly polarizes the masses into the good vs bad binary.
The story of captain Gopinath's brilliant idea of expanding the aviation market to the middle class had the depth and expanse to build into a wonderful movie. The challenges of entering into a business which was till then a very elite club and the innovative strategies that he used to overcome them are definitely inspirational. But 'Soorarai Pottru' did little justice to that story as it lacked situational detailing and even the semblance of reality. Overall, it is an example of how not to fictionalize a biography.
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