Ennum Eppozhum (Forever and Always)

Manju Warrier and Mohanlal are two of my favourite actors. Few can replicate their talent as well as versatility.

Ennum Eppozhum is a simple story of a journalist Vineeth N Pillai (Mohanlal). He is a senior journalist with a women’s magazine. While he appears to be lazy, unkempt and late for everything, he is respected journalist with many path breaking stories to his credit. There are references to his mother who is portrayed as a larger than life, principled and well respected lady. Now no more, she was apparently also a friend\colleague of the owner of the magazine. The publication is now being headed by Kalyani (Reenu Mathews), the daughter of the owner. She is London educated and has a lot of new ideas for the success of the magazine. She and Vineeth don’t get along.

One day there is a news about Advocate Deepa (Manju Warrier), who protested the bad state of roads after falling into a pothole which prompted the high court to question the government. She is applauded by all and Kalyani wants to do a cover story about Advocate Deepa. Against her wishes, her mother tasks Vineeth with this assignment.

Deepa is a conscientious lady who lives with her daughter, is a lawyer and dancer and stands up for what she believes is right. Her neighbour is retired postmaster Kariachan (Innocent) and his wife, who dote on her daughter and always look out for her. She is close to her friend Farah (Lena Abhilash) who visits her from Palakkad occasionally.

Vineeth tries to interview Deepa but she refuses repeatedly. This leads to a scuffle between Kalyani and Vineeth and he ends up resigning. Later he joins back after Kalyani’s mother intervenes. Meanwhile, Deepa and her daughter meet an accident while she is riding her scooter. Vineeth is near them at the moment and rushes them to the hospital. There Deepa receives a court notice from her ex-husband for being an irresponsible mother and the lawyer takes away her daughter.

Vineeth vows to help her. He by chance bumps into the taxi who had hit Deepa, and learns that this was all done at the behest of the ex-husband. Deepa takes it to court and regains the custody of her daughter.

Unfortunately, the movie hardly has any story. There is nothing wrong in telling the story of two ordinary people, but then for it to be worthwhile, they must be put in some extraordinary situation. Even though these roles are a forte of Manju Warrier, unfortunately here she fails to leave a mark mostly because there is no story. There are some comic moments but they are also half-hearted and fail to create an impact.

The director, Sathyan Anthikkad failed to utilize a stellar star cast and misses the mark completely. Music is good and there were a couple of songs I quite liked.

Not much to watch though except maybe for a feel-good time pass.

Can skip.

Classmates

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)

Thalappavu (The Headgear)

Every film maker has a specific reason to make a movie, just like a writer has a specific reason for telling a story.

This movie is a story in retrospect. An old man, a retired policeman, Ravindran Pillai (Lal) is finally confessing to a conspiracy in which he was forced to kill a naxalite leader, Joseph (Prithviraj) in police custody and file it as an encounter. This incident completely ruined his life as he takes to drinking unable to live with the guilt. His wife leaves him with his two kids and he lives at the mercy of his friendly neighbors.

The story alternates between past and present seamlessly much like “Thirakkatha”. The direction is crisp and creates impact. Lal has played the role of the repentant policeman perfectly and the expressions of Prithviraj stay with you even after the movie is over. There are two ways to look at the story - one is to stay that it is the story of a man repenting for killing someone and another way to look at it as a view of the bourgeois oppressing and suppressing the naxals. The director is not very clear on what view he wants to stress on and as a result its not as clear as "Thirakkatha" but much more ambiguous.

Now you need to ask, who were the intended audience for the movie? If it was the artsy types then the movie needed much more pathos and grotesqueness which brings forth the “undiluted in your face” incidents to make it critically acclaimed. If the intended viewer were the masses then the movie is way too serious and uninteresting. Compare to something like Thirakkatha which is also a serious movie albeit the theme of the movie is not so seriously socially relevant but in that case the movie is highly engaging with an element of mystery which keeps the viewer glued. Where as in Thalappavu you know the store from the first scene, there are minor surprises here and there (for me the moment when Ravindran’s daughter accepts that she was forced into prostitution at a very young age was hard hitting) but they fail to create an impact.

So while the direction, story and performances are all commendable, the movie failed for the want of a proper audience.

Watch it for the direction and performances.

(Can skip)

Thanmathra (Molecule)

Finally a Blessy movie which makes some sense...

After having watched Bhramaran and Calcutta news, I had lost faith in his direction but Thanmathra proves that it’s not a lose cause yet. The movie begins with the life of a simple man Ramesan Nair (Mohanlal). He lives with his wife Lekha (Meera Vaasudevan), son Manu (Arjun Lal) and daughter. He works at the secretariat. His aim is to make sure that his son becomes an IAS officer. He is absolutely involved in bringing up his kids, teaching them and is himself has a very gifted memory and even lectures at his son’s school on memory techniques.

His is a small and perfect family.

The first anomaly we see is when at his hometown he forgets the nickname of a childhood friend. Not much later he forgets the lyrics of one of his favorite songs. This really frustrates him and he rushes out of a bath without drying himself when he remembers the lyrics. Slowly after that his life starts unraveling and he forgets an important file in the freezer. He even goes to the doctor who initially attributes his forgetfulness to the stress caused due to his son being in class XII.

But then he turns up at office one day with vegetables and behaves as if he is at home. Soon the situation gets out of hand and his good friend Joseph takes him to the hospital. His father (Nedumudi Venu) also comes from the village. The doctor informs the family that Ramesh is suffering from Alzheimer’s and the family needs to be prepared for it. Throughout this the son Manu behaves very maturely and handles the entire crisis.

Ramesh’s father decides to move the family back to the ancestral home so that they can take care of Ramesh. Thereon we see slowly the degeneration of Ramesh while his family watches.

The movie is well directed especially because it tackles an issue like Alzheimer’s very sensitively. While watching the movie, initially I felt that the director is rambling aimlessly but after he starts showing the effects of memory loss on Ramesh you realize the importance of the initial background the director gave. In my personal opinion the technique of moving between past and present that Blessy later used in Bhramaran could have made this film a little crisp. Nevertheless he successfully tells the story of Ramesh in a very poignant manner.

What disappointed me in this movie are the performances. The fundamental reason for that could be that the actors and the director might not have done their background research in actually studying a patient of Alzheimer’s. To understand the nuances of their behavior, to see how the disease reduces a person to a vegetable, you actually have to spend some time with a person suffering from it and with the family taking care of the patient. But our Indian actors are above all this. They can just wake up and play any character. As a result Mohanlal’s performance is melodramatic and all Meera Vasudevan does on the screen is cry. Arjun Lal, looks extremely unnatural as the dutiful son.

The film has its moments but falls short of expectations.

(Can Skip)

Gramaphone

I recently saw this Malayalam movie starring Dileep, Meera Jasmine and Navya Nair. Sachi (Dileep) is the son of a great singer who is no more. Burdened by a legacy he never cared to inherit Sachi juggles between multiple jobs to make ends meet for his family. In addition he also takes care of his father’s friends who were a part of his orchestra. They are all friends with Jenny, a local Jew and one of the few families still living in Cochin. Jenny’s father wants her to marry a boy who will take all of them back to Israel. Jenny and Sachi like each other but are too stuck in their worlds to be able do something about it.

Pooja (Navya Nair) is the daughter of a singer whose importance in the movie I never really understood. Pooja becomes good friends with Jenny when she starts working at the same hotel Jenny works. Meanwhile there’s Jenny's Aunt Sarah (Revathy) who refuses to leave the room she has shut herself in. Though never explicitly mentioned we get to learn that Sarah was in love with Sachi’s father, the singer, but for her dad’s insistence on marrying a Jew, who could take them to Israel, could never get together with Sachi’s dad.

Another angle in the story is that though Sachi is a brilliant singer and musician, he refuses to acknowledge it because he believes that all musicians are corrupt and base.

So as you can already see there are too many angles in the movie. I don't quite understand the story that the director wants to tell. The thing in having too many characters is that you have to bring all of their stories, however unique or mundane, to a logical conclusion. And add to it they should all connect somehow. This is where the script writer and director fail miserably. The movie is all over the place.

I don’t think that whatever the actors did could have salvaged the movie.

(Can Skip)

Raavanan

As I keep on watching movies, I try to understand what makes these movies a success or a failure and I am not talking about commercial success. What makes a movie riveting and thought provoking?


Not all the movies I have liked have been directed well, or have had great cinematography or great music for that matter. What they have had is - thought out characters, well researched and connected storyline (the story may not be unique; it is the treatment that matters). I think somewhere in the successful movies the director was clear in his thoughts about the subject, characters and story. He was clear why he was making the movie. And he stayed true to the story and the characters. Be it Manichitratalzhu, Mozhi or Chocolate – movies from different genres and appealing to different generations. The potential of actors and their ability to understand the characters and act of course is primary requirement.

Unfortunately, looks like Mani Ratnam (who has directed good movies earlier) had no idea why he was making this movie. It was definitely not for the story for Ramayana is the most popular story in India; it was definitely not his interpretation either for only last five minutes make any impact on the audience; it was not for the music for A.R. Rahman has produced way better music then the score of Raavanan; it was not to show off the acting prowess of the actors for Aishwarya Rai in the end has all but two expressions on her face. Why then did he make the movie?

The story is simple, Veera (Vikram) believes that Dev (Prithviraj), a SP is responsible for the custodial rape and death of his sister Vennila (Priyamani). Veera decides to take revenge and kidnaps Dev’s beautiful wife Ragini (Aishwarya). Unexpectedly Ragini is a fierce woman and not afraid of Veera. This results in Veera being attracted towards her. This attraction should have brought out the shades in his character and should have been more subtle but throughout the movie you feel that the attraction is the reason for abducting Ragini and not really the revenge. Ragini on the other hand hates Veera but slowly learns of his reasons and sees different shades of his character (not apparent to the audience) and starts admiring him. The movie is a cat and mouse chase of Dev trying to find Veera, eliciting the help of the forest officer Gnanaprakasam (Karthik) who plays the proverbial Hanuman. Again the director missed an opportunity to bring the character of a messenger who believes the good in both the sides but instead reduces it to the mokeyish histrionics. The movie barely touches the shades of grey which should have been explored and dissected to give the movie the much required depth.

Mani Ratnam, who is a genius in exploring relationships, somehow missed some key relationships in the movie. For once he had such a powerful subject. The persona of Raavana itself is so multi faceted and full of contradictions. He could have explored that in greater detail. The character of Ragini symbolizing Sita again had a lot of potential. On one hand she has an honest, morally upright, larger than life husband who loves her and on the other hand this earthy abstraction of a seemingly demonic man who has a curious sense of justice. The confusion and temptation alone would have been mesmerizing.


No doubt, Santosh Sivan has done wonders with his camerawork and Vikram and Prithviraj stand out as Veera and Dev. There are a couple of dialogues and scenes - like when the villagers are describing Veera to Dev and each comes up with his own different version of the man, or when Ragini jumps off a cliff claiming that her life is her own; but these are too few and far too in between.

A subject that had a lot of potential and a cast that could have delivered – that’s what sums up Raavanan for me.

(Can Skip)

Pakal

Heart wrenching tale of how circumstances drive helpless farmers and their families to end their lives. Nandakumar (Prithviraj) is a reporter for a Kerala news channel assisted by cameraman Abu (Sudheesh). He covers a recent suicide by a farmer in Kerala. His editor decides to do a feature for which Nanda and Abu go to that village for a couple of months. There they meet a veteran Kunjappan (Thilakan) who has been fighting for justice against bank debt and money lenders for past 14 years. They also learn about Joseph (T.G.Ravi) and his family. Joseph is a poor farmer who has lost all his land to money lenders and bank and now all he is left is with a small piece of land and his house. His wife is no more and he lives with his four daughters. The eldest daughter, Merlin works in the city. Celine (Jyothirmayi), the second daughter is studying to be a doctor. The bank sends him a notice to seize his house. Meanwhile there is an evil moneylender who eyes the daughter in lieu of the loaned amount.

Learning of the bank notice and unable to arrange for the money, Merlin is forced towards prostitution but in a tragic twist she meets with an accident and is killed. Joseph unable to bear the grief also dies. Nanda meanwhile is trying his best to find a solution and also meets the collector of the region.

Celine after being advised by the father of the local church meets the bishop for help but to no avail. Finally she realizes that the solution lies not in begging for help but standing up and making things work. The villagers get together and get rid of the evil money lender and start small scale enterprise.

The movie is almost a documentary but that’s not the reason it sank without trace. It could have found critical acclaim but is too superficial and obvious while exploring the pathos in the lives of people. Its definitely not commercial.

Prithviraj, Jyothirmayi and T.G.Ravi have acted well for their parts and but I think the screenplay needed more research and a harder look at this social problem.

(Can Skip)

Nadodikattu… (Wandering Wind)

So the thing about movies in languages you don’t understand is that you either enjoy a brilliant storyline or superb performances or something that makes the movie worth watching in that language and not the one you actually can understand. So even if a movie might be entertaining, to a person who does not understand the language it will come across as very mediocre because it is like one of the million movies that one has already seen.



Nadodikattu is one such movie. Bringing Mohanlal and Sreenivasan pair to the screen, in their early days, the movie is no doubt a typical masala movie. It reminded me of the countless Manmohan Desai kind of films I have seen and enjoyed.

Ramdas aka Dasan (Mohanlal) and Vijayan (Sreenivasan) are two friends working in a company as peons and dreaming of steady government jobs. Dasan is slightly high and mighty on account of his being a B.Com. graduate while Vijayan has only done Pre degree. They eagerly wait for the new MD to join so that they can request him to give them appropriate jobs. By some quirk of fate instead they get thrown out of the office. Their landlord helps them get a loan from the bank to start selling cow’s milk and ends up selling them sub-standard cows so that they are unable to make ends meet. With loan sharks behind their backs they decide to bribe a boatman to take them to gulf. Instead the boatman tricks them and they end up in Chennai. On the beach a bunch of smuggles mistake them for smugglers and hand them a suitcase full of narcotics. Like any law abiding citizens they take it to the police and end up in police custody. What follows is cat and mouse chase where the don ends up thinking that Dasan and Vijayan are CID sleuths.

Meanwhile, in Chennai they take up a house for rent and their neighbor is Radha (Shobhana) and her mother. Dasan and Radha develop a special bond and Radha helps him start selling vegetables. A local politician tries to get them to vacate their houses so that he can build a hospital on that land. Dasan tries to stop him and his goon. Through all the confusion ultimately both the don and the politician want to kill Dasan and Vijayan. The final climax happens in an abandoned mill where the politician and the don are finally arrested by the police. Police, to award Dasan and Vijayan gives them jobs in the force. And all live happily ever after…

Like a said a typical eighties movie combining social problems (unemployment, crime and poverty) with right amount of lightheartedness, romance, fights and happy endings. You will appreciate the movie if you understand the local nuances.

For people who do not understand Malyalam,

(Can Skip)