The Movie I Judged by Its Title: Modha Rathiri
Always after I watch a good film, I want to write… to write, to tell a story from my heart. Good art wakes an artist in you.
One good film I watched recently is Modha Rathri on Netflix. Sorry, I judged the movie by its title, so I skipped watching it in theatres. How could I tell someone in my office that I watched Modha Rathri last night? It is funny, right?
I thought it was just another movie from a quirky new director who wanted attention with an unusual movie title. I was wrong.
After watching the movie and his interviews, I realised that Raja Karuppasamy, the director of this film, is a brilliant articulator of my contemporary time. He understood filmmaking by watching films, watching directors’ interviews, observing the people around him and in his family, watching Neeya Naana every week, and doing all the things a normal cinephile who dreams of directing a film someday would do. More than that.
Each of his interviews had hundreds of references to the films and interviews he had watched. You could almost see the things he had consumed becoming part of the way he thinks and creates.
You really need guts to openly reference everything that has inspired you. It felt like a higher level of metacognition to me an active awareness of how your own thought process is being shaped by your experiences, and the ability to articulate that process well. That is something I rarely come across.
Many directors might have this ability, but they may not explicitly talk about it in a public interview. Or, if they do, they might get trolled for it, like Atlee for openly referencing his inspirations from older films.
In this AI era, I personally believe in the ‘taste’ we cultivate through our experiences. What we watch, read, listen to, observe and absorb becomes a part of us. And perhaps, what we produce from all of that is what makes us unique from AI-generated slop.
We could see that taste getting translated into the movie very well.
Posted Sep 23, 2026, 8:43 AM UTC