3 is a 2012 Indian Tamil romantic-psychological thriller movie written and directed by Aishwarya R. Dhanush in her directorial debut. It stars her husband Dhanush, who himself co-produced the film, alongside his wife. The soundtrack and film score were composed by debutante Anirudh Ravichander while the cinematography was handled by Velraj. The film gained high anticipation due to the viral marketing of the song “Why This Kolaveri Di”. 3 released on 30 March 2012 to mixed reviews.
The story of 3 opens with the death of Ram . His wife Janani realizes that her husband did not die naturally, as she finds his room stained with blood spatters. She recalls memories from when they first met and the story starts with a flashback when Ram and Janani were 12th grade students. Ram is a rich happy-go-lucky boy. He sees Janani and has a crush on her straightaway. He begins to follow her around with his friends Senthil and Kumaran. When Janani reciprocates his love, she is stopped by her family. When Janani’s mother tells her that they are moving to America, Janani burns her passport so she can stay with Ram. She is then disowned by her family by her mother and she lands up at Ram’s door. The two get married with Ram’s father’s help and lead a happy life.
The story then returns to reality with Janani finding a suicide letter in Ram’s coat, and after reading it, she asks Senthil about his death. Senthil tells her the truth about Ram, that there were two sides to him. After Janani had told him she was leaving for America, the same night his best friend Kumaran had also planned to leave for Singapore. Ram couldn’t take all this pain and went for a jag, which was when Senthil had realized that Ram was suffering from bipolar disorder.
If something positive happened, Ram would jump in joy, but if a tiny negative thing happened, he wouldn’t be able to control his rage. Senthil explains that once when he told Ram about his disease, Ram smashed a glass bottle on his head. Ram escapes from the house and while walking on the road, suddenly hit his head on a vehicle. After that accident, Senthil couldn’t see any other strange behavior from him. Ram agrees with Senthil to go see a doctor. But he rejects medications thinking that Janani would know about the situation. He loves her very much, and he didn’t want to see her in tears. As a request of Ram, Senthil stays at Ram and Janani’s house for few weeks, in case the situation becomes dangerous and if Ram tried to hurt Janani. Once, Ram tried to kill Janani during her sleep but was luckily stopped by Senthil.
The story moves forward to one evening at a nightclub, where Ram gets into a fight with a guy who misbehaves with Janani. Ram takes Janani to their car and sends her home. After she leaves, the guy who misbehaved with Janani shows up with his friends and attacks Ram and Senthil. In the course of the fight, Ram hits his head against the hood of a car. His medical situation is worsened as a result. He begins to experience bouts of rage. Owing to this, Ram manages to defeat the attackers. Meanwhile, Senthil injects Ram with a medicine the doctor had prescribed in case of an emergency, thus sedating him and dissipating his rage. Janani sees an injured Ram and cannot bear his pain, she falls sick. Seeing Janani’s condition, Ram breaks down even more, he could see anything but not Janani in pain and thus decides to never tell her about his illness. Ram slowly loses his self-confidence and is scared to go to the hospital and take electric shocks and also starts hallucinating images of non existent people. Sentil drags him for electric shock therapy and he has to stay the whole day in the hospital, which angers janani as she is unable to believe that Ram is lying to her about being in office and doing something else. Janani slaps Ram for being a liar and showers her anger, rage and frustration over him for the current situation in their lives. A silent Ram refutes when she insults Senthil. After the whole fiasco that night, Ram again loses his mental stability and tries to stab Janani with a knife, but Senthil stops him from doing it. Later on, when Ram comes back to his senses, he feels guilty, heartbroken and scared that he tried to kill his only love and decides to go to his father and transfer all his property in Janani’s name.
On another day, while Ram and Senthil are in the car, Ram suddenly bashes Senthil’s head against the steering wheel, rendering him unconscious. Ram says his last words to his friend, “Sorry dude, you have done so much for me” and leaves the car in order to and go see Janani himself. He remembers all the beautiful memories from their young age, and the ending takes onto the final scene of Ram’s life, as he goes to Janani’s bedroom and watches her sleeping. He tries to control his emotions and kiss her for the last time and suddenly he hallucinates seeing a young girl saying “Either kill her or you die”. He immediately gets away from her bed and goes to his office and writes a suicide note.
He sees visions of many people in front of him crying and laughing. To avoid causing further harm to Janani, he picks up a knife and slits his throat, and kills himself, saying his final words “I love you, Janani”. The film ends with Janani wailing in grief, as she learns her husband’s fate.
Directed by Aishwarya R. Dhanush
Produced by Dr. K. Vimalageetha, Dhanush & Aishwarya R. Dhanush
Written by Aishwarya R. Dhanush
Starring Dhanush, Shruti Haasan, Prabhu, Sivakarthikeyan
Music by Anirudh Ravichander
Cinematography Velraj
Edited by Kola Bhaskar
Production R. K. Productions Pvt.Ltd
Distributed by Wunderbar Films
Release dates 30 March 2012
Running time 148 minutes
Language Tamil
