What the heck is Tiyaan?
Murali Gopy must have started off with an honorable intention of exposing fake religious gurus and their charades in the name of religion. To that end, he even played the evil mastermind god man and wrote the story placing a mirror on the 1990s infamous Babri Masjid demolition.
The intended result after watching Tiyaan should have been an audience aroused from their complacent slumber, ready to let loose the winds of change. All of us movie-goers should have come out of that movie hall spitting and fuming at the religious charlatans who had been deceiving us for so long and the worst-hit (by the message of the movie) among us should have turned into resolute atheists, right away.
We came out spitting and fuming alright, but not for the reason intended by the script, the story or the director - Jiyen Krishnakumar. The lofty ambition of the film has been marred by glaring mis-steps and outlandish lead characters incongruously propped up like towering, flimsy flex posters.
The dialog gives off the feel of an exaggerated play of shadow puppetry enacted by ginormous cut-outs of actors with stupendous names (e.g: Pattabhirama Giri, Aslan Mohammad, Mahashay Bhagwan) getting preachy in arcane tongues. So we the audience came out infuriated, searching for words. What the heck did we just watch? What was Murali Gopy thinking? Left, right, left, then straight down the garbage chute?
Tiyaan wants to make us socially aware and rally against pretenders of all kinds - religious, political, commercial or the one next door- your double crosser of a neighbor. But these messages are mutilated on delivery coming out of the mouths of characters with unconvincing back stories.
The film lost me at the moment Pattabhirama Giri (Indrajith) pulled out his brahmanical sacred thread as something more powerful than an AK 47 in the event of an attack by Hindu nationalists. Though in the very next scenes it was illustrated that Brahmanism is no superhero cape, even those couple of scenes could not escape the under currents of caste-ism and patriarchy omnipresent in the film. The movie breaks it back under the weight of heavy symbolism it is girdled by. The glue that was supposed to hold it together was Hindu - Muslim brotherly love, to the extent that real life brothers Indrajith and Prithviraj Sukumaran play the representatives of the two religions, a la brother from another mother.
Prithviraj's character Aslan Mohammad is the first born-again Hindu
in the history of Malayalam cinema. The character is permitted to keep
the religion he was born into (Islam) by his yogic baptizers. By now it is an
established fact in Malayalam cinema that even
those who have conquered all the senses go senseless in front of
Prithviraj's charisma.
The directors and cinematographers are no match for Prithviraj's universal allure. Jiyen Krishnakumar, a directorial newbie does not even stand a chance. Every once in a while, the protector Prithviraj playing Aslan is placed as an arresting subject in sweeping frames featuring high Himalayan passes. He is seen sending out his calming gaze over the landscape, while strictly observing the rule of thirds. Other than these frames, I could find nothing arresting about the film. I do not know how people who are not Prithviraj fans (unlike me) survived this movie ?!
One unintended comical scene that caught my attention was when Aslan parted ways with his semi-nude saviors in the high Himalayas (location: go to Rohtang Pass and hang a right) with a Nama Shivaya , his dread-locked yogi friends retorted with Aslam Alaikum! Then both groups drew crosses and went in separate directions to the save the world. That is the inter-religious super glue I am talking about - didn't work for me, maybe it worked at the box office? (Ok, I added that last part about the crosses, couldn't resist the temptation. Which brings to mind that Christians are notably absent in the film, maybe because it takes place in the Northern Indian heart land where there is not a significant population of Christians? Yet this being a message-laden film which even goes back to a 14th century battle for particularly no reason, adding a few Christians in the mix would have hardly been a noticeable offense.)
Murali Gopy must have started off with an honorable intention of exposing fake religious gurus and their charades in the name of religion. To that end, he even played the evil mastermind god man and wrote the story placing a mirror on the 1990s infamous Babri Masjid demolition.
The intended result after watching Tiyaan should have been an audience aroused from their complacent slumber, ready to let loose the winds of change. All of us movie-goers should have come out of that movie hall spitting and fuming at the religious charlatans who had been deceiving us for so long and the worst-hit (by the message of the movie) among us should have turned into resolute atheists, right away.
We came out spitting and fuming alright, but not for the reason intended by the script, the story or the director - Jiyen Krishnakumar. The lofty ambition of the film has been marred by glaring mis-steps and outlandish lead characters incongruously propped up like towering, flimsy flex posters.
The dialog gives off the feel of an exaggerated play of shadow puppetry enacted by ginormous cut-outs of actors with stupendous names (e.g: Pattabhirama Giri, Aslan Mohammad, Mahashay Bhagwan) getting preachy in arcane tongues. So we the audience came out infuriated, searching for words. What the heck did we just watch? What was Murali Gopy thinking? Left, right, left, then straight down the garbage chute?
Tiyaan wants to make us socially aware and rally against pretenders of all kinds - religious, political, commercial or the one next door- your double crosser of a neighbor. But these messages are mutilated on delivery coming out of the mouths of characters with unconvincing back stories.
The film lost me at the moment Pattabhirama Giri (Indrajith) pulled out his brahmanical sacred thread as something more powerful than an AK 47 in the event of an attack by Hindu nationalists. Though in the very next scenes it was illustrated that Brahmanism is no superhero cape, even those couple of scenes could not escape the under currents of caste-ism and patriarchy omnipresent in the film. The movie breaks it back under the weight of heavy symbolism it is girdled by. The glue that was supposed to hold it together was Hindu - Muslim brotherly love, to the extent that real life brothers Indrajith and Prithviraj Sukumaran play the representatives of the two religions, a la brother from another mother.
Prithviraj's character Aslan Mohammad is the first born-again Hindu
in the history of Malayalam cinema. The character is permitted to keep
the religion he was born into (Islam) by his yogic baptizers. By now it is an
established fact in Malayalam cinema that even
those who have conquered all the senses go senseless in front of
Prithviraj's charisma.The directors and cinematographers are no match for Prithviraj's universal allure. Jiyen Krishnakumar, a directorial newbie does not even stand a chance. Every once in a while, the protector Prithviraj playing Aslan is placed as an arresting subject in sweeping frames featuring high Himalayan passes. He is seen sending out his calming gaze over the landscape, while strictly observing the rule of thirds. Other than these frames, I could find nothing arresting about the film. I do not know how people who are not Prithviraj fans (unlike me) survived this movie ?!
One unintended comical scene that caught my attention was when Aslan parted ways with his semi-nude saviors in the high Himalayas (location: go to Rohtang Pass and hang a right) with a Nama Shivaya , his dread-locked yogi friends retorted with Aslam Alaikum! Then both groups drew crosses and went in separate directions to the save the world. That is the inter-religious super glue I am talking about - didn't work for me, maybe it worked at the box office? (Ok, I added that last part about the crosses, couldn't resist the temptation. Which brings to mind that Christians are notably absent in the film, maybe because it takes place in the Northern Indian heart land where there is not a significant population of Christians? Yet this being a message-laden film which even goes back to a 14th century battle for particularly no reason, adding a few Christians in the mix would have hardly been a noticeable offense.)
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