Four Friends

Four Friends is Aashayein, Malayalam style. Both are based on the same theme - friendships at the end of life. It is even more unbearable than its Hindi cousin.Jayaram, Kunchako Boban, Jayasurya and Meera Jasmin play the title characters. The film exploits every cliche associated with a terrible disease which does the villain's role, thus saving production cost and saving us viewers from fake stunts and related audio visual effects. It reaches a point when we'd realize that a real human villain would have been more bearable. Lots of sacrifices and money flow through the story line, which finally comes to a screeching halt a top a bridge in Malaysia (brought to you by budget airlines and cheap international air fares.) This movie forgot to include this statutory warning, "Friends don't let friends watch Four Friends, if they really care about their friends."

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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

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Calcutta News

Blessy has a whole lot to say within the confines of one film. That's not a fault if he knows how to package it within 2-2.5 hours. In Calcutta News he fails trying to shoot too many birds with one stone. A small sampling of the subjects he dabbles with in the film are as follows, prostitution, sex-racket, mental issues, ghosts, seances and mediums, growth of media, increased use of mobile technology and underworld kidnappings. It feels like the film didn't want to spare any smoking gun issues plaguing contemporary Indian society.

Bringing in Dileep as the ace news-reporter of the TV channel Calcutta News didn't save the movie either. The new improved version of Dileep with intellectual glasses and santoku sideburns could not make a media-brain out of the actor who is more comfortable playing himself - in films like Meesha Madhavan, Kalyanaraman etc. Infact that plus the use of English in Blessy's script is enough to drive a sane person away from the screen.

Blessy's English might make the British regret ever to have colonized India. I wish he had kept the dialogs to Malayalam, instead of making the characters speak in broken bits of English now and then to reiterate their socio-educational status. The diction of actors and the dubbing artists add injury to the insult. Please, it is Malayalam movie, lets the actors speak in their mother tongue. I wonder how the Bengali in the script (ample opportunities to squeeze it in since the story takes place in Calcutta) would sound to a native Bengali person?

Contemporary issues are Blessy's strong point from his film # 1 - Kaazcha, which he followed thru' with Thanmatra and Palunku. For me, of the above mentioned three films Palunku was the bearable one, even good in places. Calcutta News is riveting at the start, you have to give credit where it is due, but it becomes embarrassing to watch in the second half with mis-information, mis-interpretations and misuse of English.

Too many shortcomings to list, but it had not-so-bad camera work, songs were ok and so was Meera Jasmine and Indrajit in the roles given to them. Review: 2.5 stars
 

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Ore Kadal

Despite Mammootty, Ore Kadal was a rare treat to watch. Based on Bengali author Sunil Gangopadhyay’s novel Hirak Deepti, director Shyamaprasad tells a story of human relationships in a big city. Mammotty plays a middle-aged economist-author, Nathan who tries to stay clear of meaningful relationships which might burden him emotionally. Although it becomes the burden of the audience to watch him play a romantically involved role with heroine, Meera Jasmine who is younger than his real-life daughter.

Meera Jasmine,won State Award for Best Actress for her role as Deepti, a middle class house-wife trapped without any avenues for self-advancement in a faceless skyscraper. Narain plays her husband and Ramya Krishnan acts as Nathan's female confidante. Shyamaprasad's films has a mature and unique way of treating human interactions and relationships. His earlier films like Agnisakshi and Akale were testament to his creative abilities. Ore Kadal doesn't disappoint either.

The story of Ore Kadal is contemporary, self-centric where the focus moves away from people as pawns in a joint family (like in Agnisakshi) to the people themselves. Many of Deepti's actions reminds me of the role of an individual in a westernized society more than the one in the traditional Indian society that she resides in. The screenplay has been meaningfully translated into the context, no wonder when the director himself is the writer, the quality is reflected in the final product.

I hear that this movie barely ran for a week in cities like Thiruvananthapuram, supposedly this is an award film not fit for consumption by general public. I think more than anyone else it is the public who is responsible for abysmal fate of the current Malayalam movie industry.

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Vinodayathra

Sathyan Anthikad tackles the picnic that is life in his 2007 movie, Vinodayatra. The literal translation of the title means 'Picnic' or 'Excursion'. It also means the 'journey of Vinod', the central character of the movie, Vinod played by Dileep. Somehow this reminds me of Benigni's Life is Beautiful, who made an imprisonment at a concentration camp in to picnic. This is a far less harmless situation, but the idea of life as a picnic is common to both.

Director(in the center), with two lead actors - Dileep and Mukesh
It looks like lately I tend to like every alternate Sathyan Anthikad movie. Gone are the days when all them were equally appealing. Narendran Makan Jayajanthan Vaka was interesting, but Yathrakkarude Shradykku and Manassinnakkare were so-so. Achuvinte Amma was good, but I stayed away from Rasathantram. Now in Vinodayatra, I could glimpse the shades of old Sathyan Anthikkad magic.

Dileep, contrary to what has been stated in the popular reviews of the film, I think has acted well. He has showed restraint and maturity in a role where he could have gone easily overboard. The first half, which has a 'larger' presence of Mukesh(who is getting rounder by day) is rife with comical situations, which thankfully doesn't fall in to the lows of forced rib-tickling fare. Thanks to the director and the script.

The second half gets more serious and focus is shifted to from Mukesh-Dileep duo to Meera Jasmine and Dileep. Murali, Vijayaraghavan, Sabitha are some of the faces who comes in to the movie in this changed scenario. Mamukaya and Innocent also has some subdued but natural roles. The songs are commendable in the sense that the lyrics are meaningful yet melodious. Probably won't be great hits, but they are hummable. That itself is a lot to ask from a Malayalam movie these days.

The bottom paragraph is the movie is a light, good entertainer. Although not in a class of Sathyan Anthikkad movies of the 80s or early 90s, it is a breath of fresh air in the current suffocating climate that exists in Malayalam cinema.

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Dor or Perumazhakkalam

What I watched yesterday was Dor(a thread, a connection in Hindi), from the NRI turned RI director Nagesh Kukunoor. If Hyderabad Blues - his path breaking first film was a true original in Indian 'movie-wood', Dor cannot be called so. The story is based on a real life event and first time it hit the screens was in 2004, away from the Bollywood spotlight, when Malayalam director Kamal, made a movie out of it by the name Perumazhakkalam. Perumazhakkalam went on to win the National Award for the Best Film on Social Issues in 2004 and numerous awards for its two leading protagonists played by Kavya Madhavan and Meera Jasmine. Kukkonoor supposedly bought the story from the Malayalam film makers. There is still a lot of controversy surrounding it.(Read Here.) I'd say better he than anyone else, Priyadarshan might have cast Akshay Kumar and Suniel Shetty as the two leading female protagonists who happen to be behroopiyas(person who takes on different roles/costumes to make a living aka an actor) and gotten away with it under the cover of a few kaleidoscopic dance numbers.


What Dor has going for it is the finesse, Kukonoor has certainly evolved as a director since the amateurish Hyderabad Blues(despite being a big hit of the times.) Technically Dor is a cut above the usual Bollywood films. Then again I am wrong in two counts. First, Kukunoor is not a usual Bombay masala movie-maker, he is from the contemporary alternate cinema in India, he just happens to be successful(which is a quality that sometimes evades parallel cinema makers.)Second, Bollywood is not what it used to be. Most of the Bollywood movies now have a certain level of perfection which places them far above the majority of mediocre regional flicks. Money could be an element here, but whatever it is the grade of the Bollywood end-product is commendable these days.

Gul Panag and Ayesha Takia have the leading roles in Dor. Gul has the more stronger character and she is the right actress for it. Ayesha Takia is ok, but something is amiss, I cannot point my fingers on to it, but it is there. Shreyas Talpade is funny, a very likeable guy, although he falls a little short of the Rajasthani behroopiya. He'd have been great if he was a Maharashtrian or a Hyderabadi. It looks like he had immigrated to Rajasthan in his teens and could never quite cut-off his central Indian roots. Oh..and the cameo by Kukonoor, is a total misfit. I couldn't take the clean-shaven, too well-mannered to be corrupt Nagesh as the scheming lecherous Chopra Saheb. I mean Nagesh Kukonoor could be a lot of things but he cannot yet copy the flitting evil glint of Gulshan Grover.


Perumazhakkalam on the other hand had an excellent choice of actors. I saw it a couple of years back and my memory is getting rusty befitting my age. So I'll start off with what is easiest to recollect, the title. To captivate the Kerala audience who feast on tears, the title of the movie aptly means the Season of Incessant Rain. The rain is one of the important characters in the film, so much so that it is over-used and you can really make out that most of the rain is coming straight off a fire hose. Kavya Madhavan won the State Award for the Best Actress of the year(2004) for her restrained and teary-eyed performance. Same award cannot be given to Ayesha Takia who plays her role in the Hindi version.

There are no beharoopiyas or Chopra Sahebs in the Malayalam version which is truer to real life. Cannot blame Kukonoor for making Dor a li'l vibrant because the film should be packaged to suit the tastes of the audience. Where Keralites pride in their work horse tear glands and prefer the exact portrayal of the grittiness of real life on screen, Northern Indians fancy fantasy and colorful scenes. Dor is set in two of the most touristy destinations in India - the green snow capped mountains of Himachal Pradesh and the stark, sandy and colorful Rajasthan. Had Kukunoor gotten this 'original story idea' from T.A.Razak(the story and script writer of Perumazhakkalam) before Kamal got hold of it, he might have won the Best Picture award for National Integration, bringing together the Muslims of northern-most Northern India and the Hindus of the cow-belt - Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP region. Alas, original happens only once!

The story of Perumazhakkalam is about a death(or a murder?) which happens in Saudi Arabia and involves two young-men(one is murdered and the other one ends up accused) from India who had gone there to work. Saudi court rules death penalty for the accused and the only way the sentence can be reduced is if the wife of the victim forgives the accused. With the males in the story killed or imprisoned, the film takes on a feministic edge, because the females has to do all the work, like in real life. Gul Panag(Dor) / Meera Jasmine(Perumazhakkalam) is the wife of the imprisoned man. Ayesha Takia(Dor) / Kavya Madhavan(Perumazhakkalam) is the Hindu widow. The untimely demise of her husband has the widow in charge of a super power - the power to give or take the life of a human being(one particular human being, her husband's supposed killer.) After that it is the power play between two women of two contrasting cultures - Hindu and Muslim, translated by two different film makers(Kamal in Malayalam and Kukonoor in Hindi) for two widely differing sets of audience.

Perumazhakkalam is a mature take on the subject for a grown-up gallery who doesn't know or care much about Shah Rukh Khan. Dor is for a congregation of devotees who had just finished watching a King Khan movie, on bended knees and have worked up enough courage to watch a 'really serious' Hindi movie. Both movies, I believe, hit the right spot with their target audience.

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Padam Onnu Oru Vilapam

Padam Onnu: Oru Vilapam is the malayalam title of the film directed by T.V.Chandran. A thought provoking movie about the travails of young Muslim girls in rural Kerala, Padam Onnu centers around the life of Shahina, the fifteen year old protagonist played to perfection by Meera Jasmine.

This is one of those movies that will exhort you to take action against the unjustices of society, the under-age marriage of young Muslim girls to men twice or thrice their age who already have a bevy of legal wives at home. This film has won a many national(India) and international awards and for a pretty good reason too.

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