Movie Review – Manu

Kudos to the attempt!

‘Manu’ really is a bold attempt. The only factor that kept me away from watching the movie for so long was its length. I was severely disappointed watching ‘Shuddhi’, sometime back, so was really skeptical to watch ‘Manu’. ‘Manu’ somehow reminded of ‘Shuddhi’ but thankfully it was not at all related and ended up being a great exercise, even though, could have been greater. ‘Manu’ is not a masterful piece but something which tries to be really interesting. It used the aura which auteurs have used in the past and just about done decent justification too.

The film’s feel, may be because of the flat and the vacant space, resonates to ‘Inland Empire’. The director also tries to imply that feel through the movie. But masters are masters. Phanindra Narsetti is no David Lynch, but the very fact that such a feel gets resonated in the movie is a thing to be appreciated. Also, there is a single scene of a kid with bicycle in the same lobby. Is that a reference to ‘The Shining’, we can’t be sure. But it’s evident what the director was trying, he was trying for an unsettling feeling, which he majorly achieves.

The length is a crucial factor here. Nothing against lengthy films, in fact, I’m a fan of lengthy movies but for a thriller/horror to have three-hour time span there should be something solid in it. The slowness must attribute to something solid but here mostly slowness was about blankness, especially the opening portions. The second problem about the movie was the way it was too self-indulgent, too much of art talks and wanting to show glimpses of geniusness every now and then. That “you see I’m making a great film” rather than “see, it’s a great film” actually annoys a bit. It’s not as bad as the self-indulgence in ‘Birbal’ where it’s so very evident even cinematically. At least here it’s not so outright, it only happens in dialogues.

The film is abstract but not abstract enough to be called abstract art because many a time it tries to explain itself through one of the characters. If that has not been done and had been a little less self-indulgent it’d have come across as a more serious piece of art. The film follows a non-linear narrative and tries to keep the suspense throughout. It could be breaking into three phases. The initial phase where we don’t know anything is where we witness a couple of murders by Nila (Chandini Chowdary), the ghost. The second phase is the romantic one where we see both Nila and Manu (Raja Goutham) in flesh and blood. And the third phase where Manu, the ghost, does the killing.

The first phase feels really lengthy as it takes its own sweet time to unfold. The second phase or the romance is the most interesting one. As artistic as it was trying to be, giving a hair as gift and terming it as personal is highly unacceptable. Except for that one annoying factor, the scenes were fairly cute. Chandini was brilliant in both the phases. The way she shows the house was truly teasing and making Manu fall for him was equally interesting too. The third phase where we get to know everything was actually a disappointment. By that time, we lose interest.

In spite of a number of negatives, it was a film I looked up to. Right from the titles where all the people who were part of crowdfunding appeared in the title cards to the minimalistic nature of the film, it appeared like a truly special film. Not something I expected out of it. These are the films which give hope for budding filmmakers. Not only having a minimalistic setup but also making it look rich with those minimum setups, making it look like a proper feature film and not just something made for the sake of it. The film appears complete too with just few characters, something which Adoor Gopalakrishnan does with such artistry. What’s special with this kind of films is that, in spite of minimal characters it doesn’t feel like a movie which would need more people, unlike survival films where there is a constant reminder that only one person is on screen. That’s the beauty of the film. No matter how it turns out to be, I’m always game for such films.