Bhoothakalam

Shane Nigam knows his strengths and chose the right story, location and director for his production house - Shane Nigam Film's maiden(?) venture. - Bhoothakalam. The angst ridden, depressed, down on his luck, angry and scared young man from Kochi is a role tailor-made for Shane. He is not going to lose his Kochi accent anytime, why even take a risk when he has a stake in production?

Bhoothakalam (transl. The Past,) Rahul Sadasivan's second directorial outing after Red Rain (2013) is a slow burn psychological horror/ghost story.  Shane and veteran actor Revathy play the leads as a depressed mother and an equally depressed son who got handed a load of generational trauma on top of his helplessness. They both have outdid themselves in the acting department, although when it comes to Shane I felt that he just had to act as himself on a bad hair day. For her role in Bhoothakalam Revathy won the Kerala state award for the best actor (female) in a lead role for the first time in her career, which has spanned almost four decades. 

Bhoothakalam (2022) is one of the serious ghost stories I have watched in Malayalam after long, along the lines of Sixth Sense or The Others, but on a much lighter budget. There are no cheap tricks like jump scares or odd camera angles as it moves steadfastly towards a satisfying climax.

Just like Rahul Sadasivan's next film, BramaYugam (2024), Bhoothakalam too is plenty open to interpretation. Armchair psychoanalysts and hidden meaning seekers have the opportunity for the metaphorical peeling of a few psychological onions. This is considering both the lead characters have issues which need intervention by mental health professionals. Under those circumstances it is easy to explain away the supernatural as tricks of the mind, shared psychotic disorder, drug induced hallucinations and the like. 

But I would rather watch Bhoothakalam as a ghost story it is. We have not had a good one for long and Bhoothakalam builds up slowly but surely towards a flash-freeze spine-chilling end.

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A Ghost Story

There is the cycle of life as Mafusa had revealed in his hard knocks school sermon to his son in the famed Disney entertainer, The Lion King and then there is the cycle of after-life, a rather long and lonely affair as revealed in the film A Ghost Story written and directed by David Lowery.

It is a slow gliding film, almost a eulogy to ghosts whose physical form in the movie is appropriated from the home-made cheese cloth and ping pong ball figures hung on trees on Halloween. Several times while watching the movie, despite being a fan of eulogies and poetry in general, I fell prey to the convenience of the fast forward button.

No, don’t misunderstand, it is a good movie, worth watching and well made on a shoe-string budget. Writing, editing and direction have stepped in to make up for the dollar deficit. All that lack of action and lifelessness you can only expect from Casey Affleck has been realized in the lead role which puts these specific traits of Affleck to good use. Rooney Mara has an exceptionally powerful scene with a vegan chocolate pie. There are no other actors worth mentioning other than a couple of bed sheets.

It is a haunting movie in a literal as well as in a figurative sense. I couldn’t fall asleep after finishing the movie. Not because I started hallucinating imaginary shapes in the dark of my bedroom or kept getting startled by creaky settling noises our floor boards love making after midnight (in other news English is a funny language 😉) but because the movie essentially gave me the message, “You think life sucks, eh? Wait till you get a dose of after-life.” Such a downer. I have been an ardent researcher and reader of Sam Parnia, the Scole Experiment, Raymond Moody and the like. David Lowery has single-handedly snuffed out the romance of after-life from my mind.

As an easterner (from eastern hemisphere) by birth, the cycle of after-life is not an alien concept to me. What kept me awake at night after ‘A Ghost Story” is the absence of an escape door, which all the Eastern philosophies comfortingly provide us – whether it is moksha in Hinduism or nirvana in Buddhism. That one phone call to your lawyer in the sky, where is it David Lowery?

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Ezra (Malayalam) & Dora (Tamil)

It has been a week of paranormal movies for me. I watched Malayalam movie Ezra followed by Tamil's contribution to the week - Dora. First let's see how Ezra fared.

Ezra is a well-put together movie. Is it a great horror film? It is not a horror film; it is a ghost story, you earth bound being. It did not work for me as a horror movie at all because horror means I am looking for something that would bring on the chills like The Shining or The Silence of the Lambs or The Vanishing.

I could easily watch Ezra in the dead of the night without any one around. Even with the menacingly dark shapes of trees moving outside the window it miserably failed to create even a flinch in my ghost film meter needle. Movies with paranormal perpetrators do not make much of an impression on me, so that is not a huge minus. I could even predict who the ghost was trying to take a shot at. *SPOILER* Even ghosts cannot resist the handsome and intelligent Prithviraj, just like us girls. You cannot blame the ghost for choosing wisely 😉

For a first time director, directing experienced actors like Prithviraj is a commendable achievement. Good job, Jay K. Now do not ask the question whether Prithviraj swapped seats with the director anytime during the shooting of this film. When Prithviraj is acting in a new director’s movie I have a feeling that he gets possessed by the director persona quite often – ghost flick or not.

Prithviraj has controlled and contained himself, maturing further as an actor. I can see he had nursed a secret wish to play a 'nukular' scientist and he got to do it in this film. Soon as he donned the 'nukular' outfit it was obvious who would be irresistible (more irresistible than usual I mean) to the paranormal (and normal folks.) Priya Anand - good to see the Fukrey actress after a long time, although she has nothing much to do as a stand-in temp.

The Jewish backstory is the real hidden gem in this whole movie. Don’t go looking for other gems, there aren’t any. Beautifully filmed with great cast and production design it is almost like a self-contained short film within the main movie.

My general impression about Ezra is it is an effort in the right direction to introduce exotic spirits to Malayalis who are all round ‘spiritual’ people. But there is nothing really scary in there. If you want a real scary movie I just remembered a better one from our next door neighbors from not too long ago - Yavarum Nalam or 13B.

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1408

Had I known it was a Stephen King story, I'd not have taken it. Nothing against the author, just not my style. It is an interesting movie if you are in the mood for some horror. With money, motivation and talent at its disposal nobody does CGI better than Hollywood, so 1408 is riveting, although the premise of a haunted hotel room is as old as bed bugs. The story recognizes this and shows our hero, horror writer Mike Enslin (John Cusack) tracking haunted rooms across the country finally finding the real McCoy at Dolphin Hotel, Room 1408.

This can easily be transformed into a one act play because most of the action takes place inside one hotel room. In addition to John Cusack, Samuel L.Jackson appears in a small but significant part.

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Bhargavi Nilayam

Bhargavi Nilayam is one of the best ghost stories to come out of Malayalam ever. Vaikom Muhammad Basheer's literary gem was transformed for screen by director A.Vincent. It was probably a high grossing film of those days with two dashing young heroes and a beautiful heroine at the helm of a haunting and popular story.

I saw this movie a long time back. The reason I am writing a review now when my memories of the movie is almost unreadable is because today I read an article about Madhu, one of the heroes of the movie. Madhu is perhaps 'the' unsung hero of Malayalam film industry. He was a mainstream actor, had done considerable number of hero roles during his heyday and is perhaps the only remaining member from the old school of Malayalam cinema who is still acting. He indeed did have an incredibly long innings, I hope he continues to prosper.

In Bhargavi Nilayam Madhu plays the character of the novelist(Mr.Basheer himself) who rents a house inhabited by a young female ghost(Vijaya Nirmala). He befriends the ghost and thereby comes to know the story behind her untimely demise. In true Basheer fashion, even though it is a ghost story, it is a light-hearted romantic flick. Prem Nazir plays the ghost lady's love interest in her life before death.

The movie has some incredibly melodious and yet simple songs, which became a part of Malayali's musical heritage once they were released in 1964. The hit song machine team was composed of P.Bhaskaran, Baburaj, Yesudas and Janaki.

I read some interesting trivia about Madhu(of course that is why I wrote this post.) Madhu's original name was P. Madhavan Nair. He began his career as a Hindi lecturer, quit it to pursue his dream of acting. He had acted in a Bollywood movie in a major role before acting in Bollywood movies had become a fashion or news. It was Saat Hindustani, which was also Amitabh Bachchan's debut vehicle. Madhu got several Bollywood offers after this to be cast as a handsome villain which he rejected because of longer shooting schedules of Hindi movies and also to avoid being typecast a tall handsome villain who didn't do much else than kidnap the heroine and get beaten up by the hero in the climax scene.

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