Finally on a wild guess I played the DVD which said “No Subtitles” to discover that the movie actually has subtitles. And it was a movie I have wanted to watch for a long time, highly recommended by some.
The movie starts with the principal of a college announcing that to commemorate the death anniversary of a student, Murali (Narain) who had died 14 years ago, his batch mates were coming for a reunion of sorts. The dead boy’s parents also teach at the same school. It all begins with the old classmates coming back together. The first to arrive is Suku (Prithviraj) who is a diamond merchant in Mumbai and then the rest of the gang – Pious (Indrajith) who was Suku’s close friend, Tara Kurup (Kavya Madhavan) who is a famous dancer and the daughter of a MLA, Satheesan (Jayasurya) and Vasu (Vijeesh) amongst others.
From the first scene you can see that there is some tension between Suku, Satheesan and Tara. Suku is also upset because he is recently divorced. During the evening function Tara learns that Pious’s daughter has a severe throat infection and gets an appointment for them with a famous pediatrician for the same night. Pious suspects Tara’s motives for this. Another person to arrive is Raziya (Radhika) on the condition that no one will ask about her past.
After the function Suku is in his room drinking when Murali’s father, Professor Iyer (Balachandra Menon) comes to enquire about him. Late in the night after returning from doctor’s appointment, Pious goes to Suku’s room to check on him and finds him strangled. Police is called and Suku is admitted in the hospital where he is struggling for life and death. Police discovers Suku’s journal where he has written about ending his life. Police is not entirely convinced that it was an attempted suicide. Prof. Iyer is also not convinced since Suku seemed very happy when he talked to Suku just before this incident.
Prof. Iyer starts talking to Pious and they decide that the actual reason for this murder would be in the past and not the present. In the flashback we see that Suku was a communist leader during his college days and would get into tiffs with Tara for the strikes in the college. Satheesan was the DSU leader who had won the college election last and wanted to be a politician. He coveted Tara primarily because her father was a MLA. Tara and Suku are always at loggerheads and continuously playing tricks at each other. In a strike in college the situation gets out of hand and police beats up the students and shuts down the college. Suku saves Tara and both of them get locked in a room. There they acknowledge that they love each other. Suku goes to submit his and Tara’s certificates for some camp and forgets Tara’s certificates at his home enroute.
It’s time for college elections and Satheesan pressurizes his party to have Tara represent DSU. Seeing that this has no effect on Tara’s and Suku’s relationship he tries to create misunderstanding. He gets hold of a letter written by Tara for Suku and puts it in the ballot box. Pious sees him doing this. He and Suku try to get hold of the ballot box but are unsuccessful. The same night Murali, who is an asthma patient gets trapped in the generator room and dies. Tara leaves college and so does Suku as they are unable to reconcile their differences.
Coming back to the present Prof. Iyer quizzes Tara and she admits that she met Suku behind the generator room before his attempted suicide. She had realized that Satheesan was behind all the misunderstanding and she and Suku decide to get back together again.
Esthappanachan (Jagathy Sreekumar) who can’t see properly admits that he had heard a third person in the generator room besides Tara and Suku and identifies her as Raziya. Prof. Iyer confronts Raziya and she admits that Murali and she were in love during college days but her father learnt about it and got her transferred. She informed Murali and they were supposed to meet behind the generator room. He never turned up while Raziya waited for him. She only later realized that he had died inside. Due to the shock, she lost her mental balance, her father died as a worried man and she now lived alone as none of the relatives would take her. When Tara and Suku were talking she was there. She heard Suku reveal the truth of Murali’s death. Suku thinking that Murali was Satheesan’s goon in the dark had thrown chloroform on him due to which he lost consciousness. It was only in the morning he realized it was Murali.
However Suku regains consciousness and accepts the incident as a suicide attempt. Prof. Iyer and Raziya forgive him and all ends well.
Though the movie was successful at the box office, I found the movie quite boring and performances quite stale. It doesn’t have the chutzpah of “Chocolate” or the camaraderie of friends as in “Thirakatha or Mozhi”. Prithviraj, Jayasurya and Radhika have delivered average performances and music is seriously flawed so much so that I forwarded the tracks.
On the positive side, the movie is very realistic and I liked the way it moved between present and past. Also the story moves forward as the three characters – Pious, Tara and Raziya narrate their version of the events and we see the story emerge in bits. The story itself is quite weak and is not engaging.
(Can Skip)
