Twenty:20

Firstly I must say it's a feat in itself to pull off a movie with the stellar star cast as that of this movie. Mammootty, Mohanlal, Dileep, Suresh Gopi and all others. The director and the producer have truly done a remarkable job in getting all these people together.

Now about the movie, which is a murder mystery of sorts, has enough twists and turns to keep you riveted. Arun, grandson of a famous retired judge is Implicated in murder of a student. Ramesh (Mammootty) is a famous advocate who comes to the rescue. Arun is declared innocent and released. But soon Arun is murdered and police arrests Devan (Mohanlal) for the murder. His mother and sister request Ramesh to take the case, pleading innocence.

Ramesh believes Devan to be innocent and agrees. Devan is released. But soon Ramesh realizes that something is amiss and starts investigating. Thus unravels a complicated story of revenge, deciet and murder.

While performances, given the star cast, are stellar, it is the story which lacks crispness. The initial builtup of the judge Vishwanathan is quite useless, similarly the revenge motive of the SP (Suresh Gopi) stressed at various points in the movie does not play any part in the plot.

Another weakness is the timing of the twists. Unlike an Agatha Christie novel, where the plot changes just when you guess the murderer, here the twists come a second too soon or too late taking the edge out of the story. Also the movie could have done with massive editing.

Overall an interesting plot and good performances.

Can watch.

7th Aum Arivu (7th Sense)

I am more or less a logical person. So, whatever I do has to more or less follow logical reasoning, even my creative side has to be coherent and follow a reasoning which is logical, even if it is slapstick and kitsch.

So after a long time I went to watch a Tamil flick in theater. 7th Aum Arivu (7th Sense) stars Surya (Bodhi Dharman, Arvind) and Shruti Haasan (Subha). The movie starts in 6th century India, with a clan of true Tamilians who are great warriors, can control the elements of nature and possess great knowledge of medicines that can cure any disease. There leader is Bodhi Dharman who is instructed by his Guru to go to China and disseminate this knowledge. Bodhi Dharman is also an expert in the art of hypnotism and can control minds. Thus, starts the journey of Bodhi Dharman. He reaches this plague infected village in China and cures the villagers with his medicine and also saves them from barbarians. The villagers take him as their leader and learn the arts from him. This is said to be the founding of the Shaolin temple. Years later, after his death, Bodhi Dharman is buried there.

From here the movie moves to the present day and the Chinese government has deployed a mercenary (who along with being an expert in martial arts can also hypnotize people) to kill a girl in India who is doing some research and to start Operation red. From there the movie moves to a couple of months earlier in India where Arvind is a circus artist and gets smitten by Subha who comes to borrow a monkey from the circus for her research in genetic engineering. We realize that this is the same girl that the mercenary has to kill. From there on Arvind and Subha become friends and Arvind falls in love with her. He doesn’t know that a deep secret about Subha and research which is later revealed in movie.

The movie is a sci-fi thriller bringing back to life an ancient super hero combining modern concepts like genetic engineering. The first half of the movie is absolutely fantastic. The director and the writer build up the characters of Arvind, Subha and the mercenary superbly. The quality of production and the effects are very powerful and a delight to watch. Surya first as the great warrior and then the circus artist is commendable. Shruti is also very believable as a young scientist.

After the first half movie deteriorates as quickly as it builds up in the first half. From being a logical super hero fantasy it goes onto become a bizarre, illogical and random plot in no time.

While what’s work well is, how the superhero character (Bodhi Dharman) is defined – his powers, how he gets his powers and why are they lost, which incidentally “Ra.One” completely forgets to do. You never know what is the special power of the superhero in that. I also think in 7th Aum Arivu the director who is also the writer has done a good job at combining history, mythology and modern science. Where it fails completely is, in telling how an ordinary guy (Arvind) learns of his heritage and regains his powers. Another count where is fails is the action sequence where the mercenary is trying to kill Subha and Arvind.

Music is nothing to write about.

Can Watch.

Arabikatha

‘Cuba’ Mukundan (Sreenivasan) is a leading member of the communist party in a village in Kerala. His whole life revolves around the party so much so that he is not married. To me the movie was almost like a cheap imitation of a work of V.S. Naipaul. The writer has made a caricature out of the main character. Mukundan has learnt his communism from ‘Marx’s book with red cover’ and from his dad and some songs. He is a simpleton with no real understanding of the world. But he is an honest man; you don’t even for a minute doubt his intentions. He is opposing the pollution caused due to a factory whose owner is a rich industrialist from Dubai. One of the party leaders, Karunan try to make him compromise but to no result. In the end the leader along with the industrialist falsely implicate Mukundan’s father and blame him for stealing 20 Lacs from the bank in the name of party funds. Meanwhile Mukundan’s father passes away.

To clear his debt Mukundan decides to go to Dubai. At every instant he is cheated. Finally back at home his close friend realizes that Mukundan was implicated falsely and he travels o dubai to find him. But for two years no one has heard of Mukundan. Finally they are able o trace him and also catch the party leader who is now a minister taking bribe and record it on camera. Mukundan settles score and returns home to serve his party and his people.

The film has its moments where the director tries to bring in the irony. Sreenivasan is passable as a simpleton. Nedumudi Venu is wasted in the role of Mukundan’s father.  But the biggest flaw for me is that the movie was pointless.

Useless script, mediocre performances.

Do skip.

Udayananu Tharam (Udaya is the Star)

Today I saw the movie which was later remade into Vellitherai in Tamil. Since it is an almost exact reproduction, for the story please see the review of Vellitherai - http://manymorewoods.blogspot.com/2010/05/vellitherai-silver-screen.html

Even though I knew the story of the movie I enjoyed watching it. Mohanlal plays Udayan and Sreenivasan plays Rajappan. Mohanlal gives a superbly restrained performance. Where Prithviraj (playing the same character in Vellitherai) comes across as an angry young man, Mohanlal is slightly more sophisticated and mature. Prakash Raj played a much more melodramatic form of Sreenivasan and I must say, I felt that Prakash Raj brought more color to the movie. After all the satire on cinema should be slightly exaggerated...

Again, Good direction, interesting script, superb performances.

(Do Watch)

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)

Nandanam

It’s a simple story. Balamani (Navya Nair) is a hired help in the rich household of Unni Amma who lives with three other old women who supposedly take care of her in the temple town of Guruvayur. Balamani ends up doing all the work but she is very effervescent and good natured and Unni Amma treats her like her own daughter. Balamani believes in Lord Guruvayur strongly and lights a lamp everyday though for some reason she doesn’t get to go to the temple. One night she dreams of her wedding and sees an unknown man as her groom. Next day Manu (Prithviraj), Unni amma’s grandson comes to stay with her for two weeks before leaving for US. Balamani is surprised to see that Manu is the man who came in her dreams.

Balamani and Manu come closer and Manu wants to marry her. Meanwhile Manu’s mother Thangam (Revathi) fixes his marriage with some other girl whose family resides in US. By the time Manu is able to tell his mother the truth it is too late and he is unable to say no to her.

Meanwhile Balamani is heartbroken but she can’t even leave the house as she owes Unni amma some money. One day she is contemplating jumping into a well when a young man stops her. She thinks he is Unni, the son of her neighbor who is visiting her. The two become friends and Unni who is always cheerful gives hope to Balamani. He believes that she will finally end up marrying Manu in spite of all obstacles.

Unni’s words bear fruit. On the eve of the marriage, the bride elopes with someone else. Though the family tries very hard to get Manu married to his cousin, that too doesn’t succeed. Finally in spite of brooding family members Unni Amma gets the two married. Balamani goes to her neighbor’s house to give the good news to Unni but discovers that he is not the guy she met in the woods. Balamani and Manu go to the temple to get the God’s blessings but are unable to enter as it is cordoned off for some VIP’s visit. Outside the temple Balamani catches the glimpse of her friend unni and realizes that Lord Guruvayur himself came to help her.

A simple and old tale with devotional background coupled with a pace which reflects the old times, could have made the movie uninteresting. But it doesn’t - the reason being Navya Nair, she has played this innocent, sweet, full of life, simple girl who steals your heart from the first scene. Prithviraj also plays his role of a young city boy who has fallen in love with a village belle to perfection.

The movie is slow paced but stills keeps you interested and the story moves forward fairly quickly. Renjith has done a brilliant job in capturing the life as it exists in the small towns. Though the scenes with Kumbidi (Jagathy Sreekumar) intended to bring some humor are dead and unnecessary.

Superb acting especially by Navya Nair, Commendable direction.

(Do watch)

Lollipop

I had picked up this movie for the actors especially Prithviraj and Roma who had amazing chemistry Chocolate.

The movie begins with Panji (Jayasurya) telling his story to another man while waiting for the ferry. Panji was a small time pick pocket committing petty crimes. One day he tried to steal Franco’s (Prithviraj) bag and gets beaten by him. Unfortunately both of them are caught by the police and later released on the insistence of a local priest who is also Franco’s godfather. Panji follows the priest and Franco and is ultimately given work in Franco’s garage so that he can mend his ways. Franco lives with his sister Jenifer (Roma) who is a tomboy. Their parents are no more. He is over protective of his sister and picks up fights with anyone who upsets her. One such person is Rose (Bhavana) who studies with Jeni who for some reason hates Rose. Though at the face of it Franco scolds Rose for picking a fight with Jeni, actually they are in love. They cannot acknowledge their love openly as Franco and Jeni have a pact that each will marry the person of other’s choice so that they can always live peacefully under one roof.

Meanwhile Panji falls in love with Jeni who is oblivious to his affections. Jeni ends up meeting a doctor, Dr. Aby (Kunchacko Boban) and the two like each other instantly. When Franco sees Dr. Aby, he instantly rejects him for some reason. As a result Jeni also breaks her association with him. Dr. Aby and Rose are coincidentally neighbors who parents are constantly fighting with each other.

One day Franco ends up beating a SP who was rude to Jeni, unaware of his actual identity. Hearing this Rose comes to tell him of the consequences when Jeni sees them. Brother and sister are about to have an altercation when the SP comes and arrests them. The local priest again comes to their rescue. Jeni is extremely upset with Franco who realizes his mistake and breaks up Rose. A little later Jeni realizes her mistake and talks to Rose and tells her to call Franco. Meanwhile we see Franco at a mental hospital meeting his mother who is in a very bad shape. He meets Dr. Aby there and acknowledges that he was the one who told Jeni to break up with Aby. He admits that the lady is only Jeni’s mom and in reality Jeni is not related to Franco. Franco found her on the road one day when she was a child and took care of her like a sister as her mom was not in well. Jeni knows nothing about it and he thought if she got together with Aby she will learn the truth which might upset her. Aby acknowledges Franco and promises never to reveal the truth. Meanwhile Rose calls up Franco to tell him about Jeni’s acceptance of their relation. Thus Franco and Rose; and Jeni and Aby get together and their parents throw a big party on their engagement.

Meanwhile Panji is heartbroken and is determined to marry Jeni. He creates a misunderstanding between Franco, Jeni and Rose and Aby where Franco and Jeni suspect them of having an affair and break off the engagement. After a while Franco unaware of Panji’s true nature gets Jeni and Panji engaged. Police catches an associate of Panji who confesses to everything, just in time before the wedding. In a fight Panji is killed and everyone gets back together and lives happily ever after.

Movie starts on a comical note and seems to have potential. But after an hour of running time, gets absolutely entangled and looses the plot completely. I actually couldn’t sit through the movie and fast forwarded the songs and fight sequences.

Shafi is extremely disappointing and the movie is a complete waste of time. Prithviraj is disappointing, Roma is her usual bubbly self and the rest of the actors are wasted.

(Do skip)

Rithu (Seasons)

One of my very first movies which captures the angst and aimlessness of the modern youth…not the rebel, doped out, high on everything kind…not the pseudo intellectual spouting Nietzsche and Kafka at the drop of a hat but the garden variety yuppie working in the IT city, travelling on projects to US, caught between the old and new…

And the director has done a fantastic job with it. A movie with which I can surely say 99% of my colleagues will relate to. And yet it’s not a run of the mill movie. It explores the basic believes and fundamentals of our lives, of parents forcing their children to become software engineers, of an entire generation forgetting how to think, how to feel, of the futility of the rat race we all have become a part of.

The movie begins with Sarat coming back from US after a stint of three years to his hometown in Kerala. He calls his two childhood friends Sunny and Varsha, both working in Bangalore, to come and join him to work for a start up. Together they form the core team of the company. Sarat is the team leader and popular for his stay in Silicon Valley. Sarat who still considers Sunny and Varsha as his closest friend thinks that the camaraderie between them is same as before. But Sunny and Varsha have moved on with their lives of which Sarat is no longer a part of.

Sarat is also a son of a famous writer who used to translate Bengali novels. Sarat too wanted to pursue literature but under pressure from his father had to do engineering and move to USA. You still feel the lingering tension when he interacts with his father.

Overtime Sarat realizes that though he and Varsha were seeing each other before he left, she is now with someone else. Also Sunny harbors a lot of ill will against Sarat for not helping him with his visa. A colleague, tips of Sarat that Sunny is trying to steal the software code they are working on and sell it.

Meanwhile Sarat’s dad passes away and the circumstances especially his disillusion with the rat race and the futility of his life, force him to do a lot of introspection. He ultimately leaves his job to pursue a career in writing. How his friendship with Varsha and Sunny morphs like changing seasons is the highlight of the film.

Shyamaprasad’s direction and Joshua Newton’s screenplay have come together beautifully to make the movie extremely realistic yet entertaining. There are melancholic undertones to the movie but what amazed me most is the cast. The three newcomers Nishan, Rima and Asif Ali have played their characters to perfection. The director has kept true to each of the three characters till the end.

A movie that will resonate with many in urban India.

(Do watch)

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)

Kannathil Muthamittal (A Peck on the Cheek)

After watching Raavanan I had to see an actual Mani Ratnam movie to remind myself how great his movies are. And I decided to watch Kannathil Muthamittal.

It’s a story of a young girl, Amudha (P.S. Keerthana) who on her ninth birthday learns that she is an adopted daughter. She was adopted by a popular Tamil writer Thiruchelvan (R. Madhavan) and Indira (Simran). For a child that shatters her entire sense of security, her identity and her world view. She feels herself alienated from the family and tries to run away from home to try and find her birth mother. Finally her father promises that he will help her find her birth mother.

Amudha was born to Shyama (Nandita Das) and Dileepan. While pregnant, due to the strife torn state of Sri Lanka, Shyama came to Rameshwaram to give birth to Amudha. After the baby is born Shyama however chose to go back. Thiruchelvan writes a story fictionalizing the inner turmoil of Shyama who left her new born to go back to a devastated homeland. While writing the story he sees the baby and wants to adopt her. However the law does not permit a single man to adopt and he asks his neighbor, Indira who also likes him to marry him and adopt Amudha.

Meanwhile Amudha runs away to Rameshwaram where she learns that that her mother was from Sri Lanka. Keeping his promise, her parents take her to Sri Lanka where Dr. Herold Vikramsinghe (Prakash Raj) helps them. Throughout this while Amudha refuses to listen to Indira, dreaming about her real mother. Mani Ratnam has beautifully depicted the chaos and pathos of the war torn Sri Lanka. The rest of the story moves with Amudha and her parent trying to get to the Tamil heartland to find Shyama.

A beautiful and poignant story exploring various facets of human relationships against the backdrop of war and strife… All aspects of the film are very sensitively handled. A child’s dilemma and resulting stubbornness, a mother’s helplessness and love, a father willing to go to any length for his child, a writer trying to make sense out of the world around him…the movie takes you on a journey and you identify in one way or the other with each character. The best thing about the movie is the way Mani Ratnam builds up the character so much so that the act of Thiru taking his wife and daughter to a place where war can erupt any minute seems natural. You know that this is his philosophy of life; to do what he believes is right. The honesty with which all characters are portrayed is what makes this movie a treat.

As far as performances go, every one of them is outstanding. Amudha tugs at your heart every time she comes on screen. You cry with Indira and her love for her child is palpable. Madhavan has outdone himself in his portrayal of the father and the writer. I loved the songs and the music especially the title track. Ravi Chandran’s cinematography is breathtaking and the editing of the movie is very crisp yet the movie flows.

(Must Watch)