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.

Movie Review – Vidheyan

A Mammootty Masterclass

Mammootty does a ‘Ravanan’ here. Guess ‘Vidheyan’ for Mammooty is like how ‘Ravanan’ is for Vikram. Each in spite of being by big directors, whose films would generally be called by directors’ name, for a change, gets noticed for the actors more than the directors. But film wise definitely ‘Vidheyan’ is the better one, there is no comparison at all. Being a fan of Mammootty, it was a masterclass in acting. Pure negative role, not just a stylish negative role which heroes off late do, but an irritating cruel negative role. Something on the lines of what Vijayan did in ‘Uthiri Pookal’.

The films titles open up with a arm chair with one arm broken and a gun beside it. Being a Mammootty starrer I automatically assumed that he’d be like the Nattamai of the village, a do gooder masked by a layer of darkness but as soon as the film opens, we get the answer. Firstly, his looks, with moustache and upright posture, he looks menacing, he’s one of the few actors who looks terrific bare bodied, without having to have six packs. He’s naturally manly and could be a nice guy to bad guy just through the smile. Here his acting is quite heavy because he plays an unsympathetic bad man, he calls for the laborer who’s sitting opposite to him with a torn dhoti and ridicules him, excellent scene that one and one of the best scenes to establish a character.

When we think that it’d just be a one scene encounter between the migrant laborer Thommy (M. R. Gopakumar) and Bhaskara Patelar (Mammootty). It doesn’t stop there, in fact that’s what the film is about. It’s as much as about Thommy when compared to Bhaskara Patelar. The chemistry is something fascinating, not a usual worker and boss chemistry. There lies the beauty of the film. In the immediate next scene when he employs Thommy in the toddy shop and gives him and his wife a new dress, for a second, it makes us think whether the first scene was a one-off episode, but not, we get it cleared in the consequent scene. May be because we’ve got used to seeing Mammootty as a good guy in most of the films, we’re not able to accept the fact that he’s a bad guy, quite outrightly. Guess that’s where the beauty lies, it’s a masterstroke by Adoor to have casted Mammootty in such a role.

Thommy oozes with sincerity, the way by which he addresses his master, “enda ejamanae” and how elated he gets when his master calls him by his name instead of being called “Son of a Bitch”, is heartening. This is a story about a powerless man, as much as it’s about a powerful man. That’s why Thommy plays an integral part in defining Patelar’s character. Thommy is a man who has accepted the fate that he can’t revolt. It’s not even that he wants to revolt and he can’t but even that thought doesn’t come to his mind. He loses his self-respect, he loses his wife, he even gets wrongly hurt but at no point he revolts. He snugs up with Omana (Sabitha Anand) and tells her that in spite of her having his master’s scents she’s still his. That’s such a cruel scene but it shows how they’ve accepted the fate.

Patelar on the other hand is a man with no remorse. He doesn’t have any remorse when he plans to kill his wife and even when it misses the target and hits Thommy, still he’s only worried that he missed the target and not because someone else was hurt. That’s how lowly he thinks of other people. A true tyrannical zamindar. This connect is what gets missed when we see foreign movies like ’12 Years a Slave’

Towards the end there is a little bit of self-realization and as we see the film through Thommy’s eyes we feel a little sad to see Patelar powerless. That’s the beauty in both the direction department and acting. Mammootty with slightest twitch in muscles looks powerless in the last few scenes as opposed to how gigantic he looked till then. The film is a great study on individuals and the relationship between them, more than its about a landlord and a slave. The exploration is something beautiful.

Movie Review – Anantaram

Where Tyler Durton goes for Parottayum beefum

The last time I watched an Adoor Gopalakrishnan movie, it left a profound impact in me. It was the first film I watched in Malayalam so that led to such an impact for both Malayalam movies as well as his movies, so much so that, I did not put any effort in watching any of the Adoor’s movies. I wanted it to happen. He should be one of the directors whom I had read nothing of, will not put any effort to watch the movies and watch it only when it happens. And, that’s how ‘Anantaram’ happened.

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Luckily, the movie was available in YouTube and in such fine print so it was easily watchable at any moment. Just after a string of not so impressive movies, the very opening shot of a house with nurse got me so intrigued that even in such hectic time it got me interested to watch the movie. I remember the scene where the protagonist takes oil bath for such a long time in ‘Elippathayam’, which is so annoying but so intriguing. Because it is the act which is annoying, but the scene is so intriguing.

The movie has a ‘Forrest Gump’ kind of idea but shot in typical Malayalam setup. It also gives a ‘Malgudi Days’ feel. Even though I have no idea how Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s other movie would be, I was quite surprised to see such a feel good movie with a youngster who is good at everything he does. Ajayan (Ashokan) is a young orphan boy who was brought up by a doctor. Even though it starts of positively, at some point he says that, that talent leads to his problems. We see a PT teacher not giving him prize even though he wins by a marked distance. Things get interesting post that. Suddenly he becomes a grown up man and his mentor Balu (Mammootty) gets married to Suma (Shobhana) with whom we feel as if he has a connect, which was not shown in the movie. We are made to guess whether it is the same girl to whom he had helped receive letters in his childhood. Suma does not react as if she knows him, it is unclear whether she knows him or not. Movie as such, until that point, is intriguing enough to become one of the greatest movie but in the second half, it takes it to one notch higher.

Like how there was an abrupt cut between his childhood and adulthood, we see an abrupt cut where the narrator tells the story is not over yet. Again, we see a young Ajayan but different story. Now that got me confused. I was thinking, may be the movie was uploaded wrongly and was cut at some random place. Only during the climax, I understood why.

The childhood in the second half had more fantasy elements and reminded me of French New Wave cinema with the way the horror was shot without any graphics. He then gets smitten by Nalini (Shobana again) and that gets us even more confusing. During the climax, we see that again Balu is married to Nalini who acts as if she does not know him. Shobana looks effortless seductive in the second half. I have never been her fan but she looks so sexy in this film.

The climax does not out rightly give why he has been an unreliable narrator but only teases you with the subject. That is why the film is a world-class movie, which has all the elements like thriller, horror and romance. The film got by the end of first half but when it ended completely I was spellbound beyond words.