- 96, directed by C Prem Kumar, was released in 2018 and became a blockbuster Tamil film
- The film stars Vijay Sethupathi and Trisha as Ram and Jaanu, reconnecting after 22 years
- 96 explores teenage love, memories, and nostalgia resonating with audiences across generations
When the film 96, directed by C Prem Kumar, came out in 2018, no one thought that the lives of Ram and Jaanu would become so personal to audiences and touch everyone who watched the film.
The Vijay Sethupathi-Trisha starrer became a blockbuster and went on to be remade in Kannada and Telugu. The film is now all set to re-release on October 9, keeping in line with the spate of re-releases of yesteryear Tamil hits.
However, the re-release of 96 is more than just another attempt to cash in on nostalgia. In many ways, the film has itself become a memory, one that has grown more personal and poignant with time.
When audiences first watched Ram and Jaanu meet again at their school reunion in 2018, they were looking back at the characters' memories of 1996.
Eight years later, the audience is possibly going to look back at their own memories of watching 96 for the first time. And new, younger audiences are going to discover what nostalgia is all about.
96 was never just about a teenage love story between Ram (Vijay Sethupathi) and Jaanu (Trisha), who had been 10th standard classmates in school. Meeting up 22 years later at a school reunion, the two go back in time to talk about their lives, what could have been and ultimately, come to terms with how they have to part ways once again when the night is over.
The film explored this teenage romance and how those memories were frozen in time for Ram and Jaanu despite the years. And this is precisely what connected emotionally with every audience member who became nostalgic about their own school days, crushes, first loves, friendships and the missed opportunities, especially in relationships.
For viewers, the school corridors, photographs, songs, friendships, and those unspoken teenage emotions that they had locked up in a corner of their heart came tumbling out. While this was particularly significant for those who grew up in the 1990s, it was impactful on everyone as it transcended that time period because its emotions were universal. It was the bittersweet realisation that there are moments in our lives we can return to only through memory - especially our school and college days.
The re-release of this classic today is significant because very few Tamil films are nostalgia films. With 96, those who first watched the film in 2018 will likely re-visit the film now and discover a completely different emotional meaning as they are eight years older today. They might discover an entirely different meaning to Ram and Jaanu's life or just want to experience those same sentiments they felt when they watched the film for the first time in theatres.
There is also something special about catching this film in theatres once again. Many already know the dialogues, the evocative hit songs (especially Kaathala Kaathale and Life of Ram) by music director Govind Vasantha, and the emotional beats of the film. This familiarity makes the theatrical experience more powerful because the audience already knows what happens to Ram and Jaanu. They are likely to watch the movie again to experience the same feelings they felt the first time when they caught the couple on screen. The audience became nostalgic about its own past, and it's precisely this emotional core that has people excited about the film's re-release on October 9.
Interestingly, the entire first draft of this film was written by director C Prem Kumar when he was stranded inside his apartment during the Chennai floods in December 2015. With the power out across the city, he wrote the script over 20 days, working by candlelight and, when the candles ran out, by the light of his mother's kuthuvilakku (lamp).
The seed of the story, however, came before the floods. Prem Kumar had been unable to attend his own school reunion. After watching a video of the reunion and speaking to his former classmates, he conceived the love story of Ram and Jaanu. It was a story born out of memory, absence and the longing to revisit a past that can never truly be recovered. And when 96 finally hit screens in 2018, lakhs of viewers found themselves doing exactly what Prem Kumar's classmates had done- looking back at their own past and the people who had once been an important part of it.
For a film about the impossibility of going back in time, Prem Kumar's 96 has achieved something rather remarkable: it has given audiences an emotional reason to go back, and the film itself is nostalgia eight years later.