Movie Review – Mathilukal

When the masters unite

Adoor Gopalakrishnan is becoming my go to director. All his directional features are right up there, as the best in Indian cinema. I remember a phase where I was exploring Satyajit Ray and as soon as I set it up, I look at it in awe. I hardly remember any film of his that I didn’t like. Similarly, Adoor Gopalakrishnan works big time for me. And this is my final watch of Mammootty and Adoor’s combo and everything has been fabulous. My personal favorite would definitely be ‘Vidheyan’ but ‘Mathilukal’ too is nothing short of spectacle.

The major difference between ‘Vidheyan’ and ‘Mathilukal’, apart from Mammootty being bad guy in the former and good guy in the later is. ‘Vidheyan’ has a nagging premise, which gets on the edge right from the word go, whereas ‘Mathilukal’ takes time to ease. The jail entry scene where he writes novel reminded me of ‘Munnariyippu’. May be for people who had seen ‘Mathilukal’ before would have got reminded of it or would have been a nice nostalgic trip. Anyways he shows what a master he is, through both the films.

The beauty of Adoor’s film is its slowness, in fact in this movie, when Vaikom Muhammad Basheer (Mammootty) gets transferred to jail, he takes so much time to go to his cell, so slow that the policeman asks him to hurry up. It looks like a nice dig to his own filmmaking. Very few people could make these slow scenes look so organic. He makes it look like a work of art, yet its so soothing. Even though filmmakers like Bela Tarr and Kiarostami make slow scenes/films, there is a constant excitement even in its slowness. But with makers like Adoor, Ozu, Ray, we feel we are at ease, we feel as its okay to spend so much time seeing a child play, a man bathe or a porridge getting prepared. It’s the less glamorous things which these people make us watch as if it’s our duty. It’s such a nice feeling.

The main premise of the film takes place in fact very late, after about three fourth of the movie gets over when Basheer meets, sorry, hears Narayani (K. P. A. C. Lalitha), we wait for an impending disaster to happen when they both meet, but it doesn’t. The disaster happens in some other way, with the release of Basheer, but we feel relived for him as he gets cheated before it. That was another beautiful aspect of the film. A normally charming man gets excited on hearing that all political prisoners would get released but once he doesn’t see the name, he gets dejected. It takes a Narayani to cheer him back. When the same person gets released again, there isn’t that happiness which he has before. It’s a great human emotion which Adoor has played with Mammootty acted to perfection.

Generally, for a film involving jail, it would take a lot of extra’s, huge set and high production value but look how effortlessly Adoor gives Jail like feel with such minimal people. Also, his idea of jail is quieter and more relaxing. As if like an ayurvedic center in Kerala. May be because the film happens in pre independence era, it was made that way but its one of the set pieces that would linger in my mind for quite a while.