Tiyaan

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.)

Read More

Ee Adutha Kalathu

Ee Adutha Kalathu (Recently or In recent time) is one of the best movies which has come out in Malayalam recently. In the years to come it will be heralded as one of the key players who introduced a paradigm shift in Malayalam cinema that started in the second decade of twenty first century.

The old power house institutions of Malayalam cinema like the mighty M&Ms, the stories guaranteed to unleash a deluge of tears(sthreejanangale onnadakkam kanneeraniyikkunna katha), the scripts which pamper to the whims of the State's morality police and the teetotaler women are all on their way out. Thank goodness we are finally ready for a dose of reality and there are people bold enough to show us just that.  

 

Its posters by OldMonk were the talk of the town before the movie was released. There was also quite a buzz about the story by Murali Gopi – a journalist in his own right and the son of the late actor Bharath Gopi, lately trying his luck in acting. Then there was the interview the actor Nishan, who plays a significant character in the movie, where he was quoted saying, 'this movie will surprise you'. Since we Malayalis have been running really low on the above mentioned element in our films, this film with the tagline – the familiar becomes strange and the strange familiar was looked forward with anticipation.

Ee Adutha Kalathu doesn’t fail us. From detailed characterization, even for the smallest of the roles to the suspenseful hook that the movie hangs us all by till the very end, the team under Murali Gopi(story & script) and Arun Kumar Aravind(direction) has produced a winner par excellence. The strange and the familiar blend with an interesting background score to create a concoction, the tastes of which makes the audience come back for more.
 

The casting that can screw up even the movies made with the best of intentions(don't get me started on the heroine in Thattathin Marayathu) is just perfect. The movie has a couple of non Malayalis in key roles but the roles themselves justify their need and they have turned out better than if film makers had used local products. Strategically placed paperbacks with ominous titles, Rubik’s cube and Thiruvananthapuram city play important parts in this movie which also stars talented actors such as Indrajith, Tanushree Ghosh, Nishan, Murali Gopy, Lena, Anoop Menon, Baiju, Jagathy and Mythili.

Ee Adutha Kalathu is a movie that gives us hope that all is not lost yet. We, Malayalis, don’t always have to lament about the bygone golden age of Padmarajan or the endearing youthful days of Mohanlal or the humorous all perceiving pen that Sreenivasan used in the eighties and early nineties. Some of life’s truths remain - the old gives way to the new and if we are lucky the new kids on the block might turn out to be better than the old.

Read More

City of God (Malayalam movie)

The end is the beginning is the end as Smashing Pumpkins had it figured out, on behalf of Batman. City of God, the newest movie from Lijo Jose Pellissery lives by this rule. I have decided to craft this review in the same vein – results first, facts later. I liked City of God, one of the better movies to come out of Malayalam in the recent past, Prithviraj’s superman act could’ve been toned down a bit. Well, you can’t have it all, right?

Multi narrative tracks are the flavor of the season in Malluwood. City of God joins Traffic, The Train and The Metro in an ever lengthening list, which I am sure is only in its infancy. I am expecting to see the list mature into a full-fledged Godzilla at the end of this decade. 

City of God is comparable to its Brazilian namesake in that the favelas of Rio are replaced by the cheris (slums) of Kochi and both are multi narrative films portraying the chaotic lives of a bustling, breathing third world metropolis. But I find the story structure more similar to another multi narrative film – Crash, where everything begins and ends with a road accident and the viewers are taken down different threads at the same time to be led back to the beginning in the backdrop of the City of Angels (LA.)

Prithviraj as Jyothilal, a high profile bodyguard/hitman/buddy of young industrialist Sony(model turned actor Vinod Pillai) has been bestowed with a fist and physique to deliver dialog, so he broods a lot and talks less. Reema Kallingal has juicy role as an actress under duress. She delivers a good performance talking in her own voice, literally without any dubbing artists to share her success. So does Shweta Menon  in a short but strong role. Indrajith lands a winner again with Swarnavelu,  a happy go lucky Tamil laborer and we get to see a very different Parvathy (debutante in Notebook) in her comeback to Malayalam as a migrant laborer with a lot of dark grease makeup.

Lijo Jose Pellissery, the director has created an interesting, true-to-life movie, esp. when compared to other movies of the same genre, maybe that's why it didn't set the box office ablaze. Despite its obvious Hollywood and international 'inspirations', it is one of watchable new movies(not for kids though.)

Read More

Three Kings

If there is a category called self depracating comedy movies or what I’d call a contemporary version of slapstick humor, Three Kings will fall into that group.  When a movie knows it is not trying to sell a moral but only some cheap laughs and the audience knows that the movie knows, all that its creators have to do to make it successful is to bring on the laughter. 

Three Kings is a happy go lucky movie with characters to match. Indrajith, Kunchako Boban and Jayasurya are three kings without a kingdom, in search of a lost treasure. To help them in this quest we have three damsels – Samvruta Sunil, Ann Augustin and Sandhya. The movie tries to be funny and nothing else and succeeds for the most part, except when the humor becomes too slapsticky.

Just make sure not exercise your brain at any time while watching the movie.

Read More

Karayilekoru Kadal Dooram

An Ocean to traverse before reaching shore - is the most literal translation of this movie's title. I cannot be more poetic than that because I am still at sea after watching the movie. By the way the official English title is 'A Sea Away to the Shore.' It has one of those Kafka-esque themes that Malayalam movie intelligentsia is obsessed with, where a thoroughly perplexed audience is taken as the sign of movie's complexity and therefore its superior art quotient. BS.

The actors have performed their parts the best they can. Indrajith, Mamta Mohandas, Sarayu, Dhanya Mary, Lakshmi Sharma all try to guide you through the maze, but to no avail. Will Vinod Mankara pleae stand up and own this? Yes, that is our director right there, a national and state award winner for numerous documentaries he directed, he also won the the best directorial debut award with this feature film. Well, in a way you cannot blame the award committee, it is a world better than what is offered by commercial Malayalam cinema these days.

Read More

Happy Husbands

Happy Husbands is a bearable comedy movie of the recent past. I had higher expectations after seeing Krishna Poojappura’s name as script writer and with the movie being a hit in Kerala, I was looking forward for two hours of non-stop laughter or something similar. But I was disappointed, not very sorely though, because my senses go on automatic lowering of expectancy threshold these days if film is comes with a prefix ‘Malayalam’. 

The most atrocious eye sore(save the good things for last) was the set design and costumes. The color palette of the sets would have made KPAC of the 1950s proud, but this is 60 years hence and we are supposed to have done away with cardboard cut-outs and red curtains for every window, at least the art guys should have photo-shopped those out, right? Costumes, the kind that made Reema Kallingal look ugly, thought that was an impossible feat, but no, the costume designer accomplishes it with ease. 

The movie got more bearable for me after the first half hour. All of the actors are good with whatever role they’ve been given. Bhavana looked a little bit too made up for a housewife or my information could be a bit dated when it comes to Kerala housewives these days. I last had a glimpse of a Malayalam mega serial in the pre-2000 era when ‘Sthree’ had just taken Malayalakkara by storm, house-wives had mutated beyond recognition ever since. 

Happy Husbands also takes us to Malaysia, just in case the Kochi traffic was getting on your nerves. I am running out of steam to do a proper review, after all it is a time-pass movie, doesn’t need any serious surgery to cure its ills. Considering other products available in the market, I’d seriously consider buying a ticket(had I been in Kerala) and going to watch this movie just for the colors and actors.Saji Surendran scores with the Kerala movie-goer.

Read More

Seeta Kalyanam

Seetha Kalyanam or holy (cinematic) wedding (the term owes it origin to the wedding of Sita and Rama in Ramayana) of Jayaram and Jyothika lay in the cans longer than most films awaiting release. When it did finally come out during last Onam(2009) Jyothika had already left movies for a blissful family life, Jayaram – lesser said the better. What ever happened to the tall fresh-faced youth who was presented to us by Padmarajan in Aparan(1988.)

All that said, Seeta Kalyanam is a tad more bearable than Rajasenan’s farce of movie where Jayaram had paired with Urvashi called MadhuChandralekha (2006). In Seeta Kalyanam director T.K.Rajeev Kumar borrows the legendry theme on which Bharjatya School of Movies survives on – multi-day long wedding in a traditional Indian joint family. Since Tamil Brahmin community is perhaps the only community in Kerala where such weddings still take place, we have Jayaram as a Brahmin bride-groom going thru’ these rituals to wed Geetu Mohandas.

Jyothika’s character is Jayaram’s friend from work. They both don’t realize till very end of the wedding celebrations that they love each other. Geetu conveniently has another man in waiting, Indrajith, - a character necessitated for a potential happy ending. A wigless Siddique provides sufficient villainy as is required for a movie taking place in a placid agraharam. Other actors include Oduvil Unnikrishnan, Sukumar, Manorama, Devi Ajith, Baiju, Kalpana, Jagdish, Janardhanan and a host of others.

Read More

Nammal Thammil

Nammal Thammil is youthful eye candy movie with the reigning youth icon of Kerala, Prithviraj in the lead with Geetu Mohandas and his real life brother Indrajith in a supporting role. The film is a campus flick, set in Govt. Engineering College, Thiruvananthapuram (my alma mater) The main building and the entrance area are  featured in the scenes, but nothing much else.

It is a film geared for commercial success, I wonder how it fared at the box-office. In addition to the three young stars, there is also veteran actors Balachandra Menon, Revathy and Suhasini in prominent roles.

Read More

Minnaminnikkoottam

Minnaminnikkoottam is director Kamal's 2008 offering to Malayalam cinema. Having seen a few of his previous works like Goal, Perumazhakkaalam, Gramaphone, Nammal, Niram etc I don't expect cinematic gems from Kamal but bearable movies that click well at the box-office. Most of his movies have a young theme, which means struggling youngsters(struggling against the titans of Malluwood - Mohanlal and Mammootty, who thanks to their physical and 'political' clout wouldn't budge an inch) will get some much needed screen time.

Whenever Kamal strayed from the 'new-blood' subject, he invariably landed with Mammootty or Mohanlal like all the other Malayalam directors. Karuthapakshikal and Ayal Katha Aezhuthukayaanu comes to mind. What impresses me about Minnaminnikkoottam is that Malayalam finally seems to have gotten a grasp of modernity and stylistic sophistication, that Tamil movies display with effortless ease. The film opens in Singapore, with the lead actress Meera Jasmine playing the role of Charulatha, a software employee ruminating about her past friendships. Meera's Singapore wardrobe and the picturization of the scenes are elegant.

 I am totally bowled over by the browser Charulatha uses - Firefox! Agreed the subjects of the film are some 'just-arrived-in-the-scenes' IT workers - hot, hep and in tune with the times. But even in situations like these since the movies are produced and directed by people twice the age of their subjects and therefore totally out of tune with the current times, there is always some pretty serious botch-ups. Not with this one. They use Firefox, IMs, order take-out fastfood and live in stylistically furnished apartments in Cochin - which thankfully are not furnished with polychromatic curtains whisked away from a Priyadarshan set. Set, art direction and costumes of Minnaminnikkoottam justify the money spent on this film.

The story and the actors are not path breakers in any sense, but I can live with that for it is not over the top chocolatey like Lollipop (West Side Story gone bad.) It is filled with young faces to my heart's content - Indrajith, Samvruta Sunil, Jayasurya, Roma, Meera Jasmine, Naren, Radhika and Anoop, in addition to tried and tested old-timers like Sai Kumar, T.G.Ravi, Mammukkoya, Janardhanan etc. Review - ***/5

Read More

Malabar Wedding

When Kathakali started getting old, the tourism industry of Kerala discovered Theyyam - the popular ritual dance of North Kerala, lesser known in the tourism circles but culturally much more alive than Kathakali. North Kerala or Malabar comes to the rescue once more when Malayalam movie industry has started running out of genuine Malayali cultural events as themes for their movies. This time around it is the custom of "sorakalyanam" which often accompanies weddings in North Malabar.

I do not know whether the tradition of sora-kalyanam is still going strong or not, but it was when 10-20 years ago when my cousin-brothers were getting married one by one. Sorakalyanam is an elaborate set of pranks and jokes played by the groom's friends on the newly wedded couple on their wedding day. Sometimes the jokes might get too harsh and end up in something serious, although this didn't happen very often.

Indrajith is the hero, Manukuttan - the local youth leader and organizer of several sorakalyanams. Unlike his brother Prithviraj, Indrajit has shown a wider range in his acting. Whether he is a villian, the comedian or the hero, I am yet to see him in a role that doesn't look natural on him. His team of friends in the film include Mamukkoya, Suraaj Venjarmoodu and others. The film-maker duo of Rajesh-Faisal have tried to tell a simple tale. It is one of the bearable Malayalam films of the recent times without the presence of over-bearing superstars. If not for the totally out-of-place climax and the introduction of a new character, which could have been avoided, it is an ok movie.

Read More

ArabiKatha

There is hope, still. All is not dead and ready to be written off in Malayalam film industry. There might still come a day of liberation for the natives from the Taliban rule of M&Ms. As long as the rebel forces under the command of Northern Alliance led by Sreenivasan don't let their pens lie silent, I will still believe in the promise of a new dawn. Arabikatha(An Arabian Tale), directed by Lal Jose is awash with shades of that hope.

Personally this movie resonates with my concept of Kerala's communist system, its evolution, ideologies and the people devoted to the cause. Being born in the heartland of Kerala's revolutionaries, it feels to me as if many of the characters in the movie were my real life neighbors and relatives. If you had lived in North Malabar, you'd realize that every aspect of the a die-hard Communist reflected in Cuba Mukundan(the main character portrayed by Sreenivasan)'s character, be it Coca-Cola or China is true and exact in its description. The way the Iqbal Kuttipuram's screenplay brings it out is laudable. There could have been no one else but Sreenivasan to fit this role.

Lal Jose is a director to watch. The choice of his stories gives the impression of being fresh and different without trying too hard. His selection of actors is commendable, everyone molding perfectly in to their roles. The supporting cast includes Jayasurya(in one of his rare negative roles), Indrajith, Nedumudi Venu, Salim Kumar, Samvrutha Sunil and a Chinese actress Chang Shumin. Cinematography is another praiseworthy aspect of the film. Manoj Pillai, the cinematographer comes from Sivan's Studio, the school which has given Malayalam and the Indian film industry some of the best in the field including Santosh Sivan.

The movie has bowled me over. The way things are going with Malayalam film industry, if another review of this kind is going to happen in this blog, looks like I might have to wait for a long time.

Read More