Vimaanam movie review: This Prithviraj movie has no trouble taking off!

Vimaanam
Cast: Prithviraj Sukumaran, Durga Krishna and Alencier Ley Lopez
Director: Pradeep M Nair
Rating: 3

“The right way to look at the world is through your heart. For, what is essential is invisible to the eyes,” says aeronautical engineer J Venkateswaran (Prithviraj Sukumaran) after receiving an award for excellence in his field from the President.

Vimaanam (flight) is about J Venkateswaran’s life and dreams, and his secret ingredient for success in the field of aeronautics.

Venkateswaran receives a call from a woman who wants to fulfill her terminally ill mother’s last wish. He sees a photograph of himself with his uncle -- a man who told him about the power of dreams -- from an age lost to the past. That’s when he decides to visit his hometown.

During his train journey, Venkateswaran closes his eyes to travel back to a time when he was just Vengidi, a man who wanted to build a plane and gave up his education for it.

Vengidi’s dream is to make a plane that he can fly. It is this dream that gives him wings, just like his uncle promised. But it’s not easy to make dreams come true. There has to be conviction, confidence and patience. The world might not understand your dream, and society might demean and belittle your vision.

Vengidi crosses these hurdles, but how and why he was stubborn about making his dream reality forms a cinematic sequence filled with scenes that makes us draw similarities with our own lives. Especially the part where Vengidi discovers an all-new world about making planes through books about aerodynamics. He is in this beautiful place, calm and perfect, but then comes the disturbance.

Venkateswaran recalls everything -- the child he was, the man he grows up to be, and the love he receives from Janaki (Durga Krishna). The secret behind his success, he says, is buried deep in his heart. It gives him strength only because he hasn’t divulged it. We get to know more about this secret in the second half of the film.

It’s an extraordinary story simply told, something that Prithviraj’s films are increasingly turning out to be in recent times. In this case, it has worked.

In life, you win some and you lose some. In trying to make his dream a reality, Vengidi lost something very important to him. And yet, his story inspires you to dream and give flight to your aspirations. The way Vengidi deals with his loss is realistic. It’s almost as if Vengidi is questioning if everyone who dreams has the guts to really turn it into reality.

The simplicity is kept intact through the film. There are no extra flourishes to make it dramatic, and that only leaves more of an impression on your mind. The music goes hand in hand with what the film wants to say.

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The author tweets @Priyanka_S_MCC