S. R. Praveen

A minor act of revolt can be your undoing in the film industry, where power centres are not very tolerant of those who do not fall in line. Vineeth Madhavan (Naslen), the filmmaker protagonist of Mollywood Times, goes the whole hog in his attempt to make his first film without any compromises, a film he wants to be remembered forever. In the process, we see his worldview transform from optimistic to cynical. Scene after scene seethes with the anger and frustration of someone who experiences his dream slipping away from grasp for no fault of his, so much so that one begins to wonder how much of the events in the film have been drawn from the life of its filmmaker, Abhinav Sunder Nayak. At least, much of the cynicism of his superb debut film, Mukundan Unni Associates, is very much visible here too.

One can sit through something as intolerable as Kattalan only if one can invent some distraction. A possible diversion could be to keep a count of the humans and elephants killed during the film’s two-hour duration. But halfway through, you are bound to lose track as the killings are just too many, even in a single sequence, to get an accurate number. In the end, one realises that the biggest casualty of this relentless assault on the senses is neither humans nor elephants, but cinema itself. The dishonesty of it all is evident in how it treats its characters. To fill the emotional void at the centre of the film, one or two characters, like a physically challenged young girl, are introduced randomly and immediately turned into victims of some violent act, which would then set off some pathos-inducing background score. The writers are clearly not interested in these characters. They are deliberately using them for the film’s emotional impact and to underscore the need for revenge.

Georgekutty, the protagonist of the Drishyam franchise, has the kind of baggage that perhaps few other onscreen criminals have carried. He is no natural criminal. Rather, his criminality is built upon his image of a complete family man, someone who goes to any lengths to protect his family. He does not revel in crime, though one can read some pride in him for always being a step ahead of the police. In Drishyam 3, writer-director Jeethu Joseph firmly places him in family situations for much of the runtime. Georgekutty (Mohanlal) is busy arranging the marriage of his elder daughter, Anju (Ansiba Hassan). Brokers come and go, and promising proposals fall through, with the family’s dark past remaining as a barrier to many. Some anonymous souls in the neighbourhood are also trying to spoil the marriage plans. The marriage itself is integral to the plot development. So much so that the film could have come with the tagline - The Story of an Arranged Marriage.

An almost archaic communication method takes center stage when the characters played by Mammootty and Mohanlal first make contact in Mahesh Narayanan’s Patriot, well into the film’s second half. It would seem apt in a way, hinting at the vintage quality of their association while also fitting well inside the theme of the film on digital mass surveillance. For that matter, the last time the duo came together in a film, almost two decades ago, digital surveillance was just an emerging public concern. Now, it seems rather ubiquitous, and Mahesh Narayanan appears fully taken in by the urgency to convey these fears to a larger audience. The two superstars are thus tools for this socio-political endeavour rather than the screenplay being in service of their star aura, as often seen in such star-studded movies.

At the centre of director Vishnu Aravind’s Madhuvidhu is a house where three generations of men live in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather (1991), women aren’t banned here; they simply choose not to come. For the protagonist, Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), 28 marriage proposals came through but not a single moved to the next stage. When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear to change. However, some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them as they belong to different religions. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan don’t seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. But even with that, they end up hitting further lower.

Subtlety has never been one of filmmaker Dijo Jose Antony’s core strengths, but even by his standards, the choices he makes in his fourth film, Pallichattambi, are quite odd. Like, the idea to introduce a much-feared antagonist by having him kill his pet dog with a fork, just because it was barking a little too much. The act was also to send a message to two men who walked in with unfavourable information during his dinnertime. The film’s treatment of history also follows a similar pattern, of landing a sharp fork at pages of history. Set amid the tumultuous period of the Vimochana Samaram (Liberation Struggle), led by revanchist forces against the land and educational reforms brought in by Kerala’s first Communist government in the late 1950s, the film’s protagonist is Pothan (Tovino Thomas), a strongman chosen by the Church to lead the ‘Christopher Sena’ to resist the Communists.

A precise sense of rhythm courses through the best of Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval’s works. Like a raconteur in full flow, he packs the narrative with intriguing events and funny throwaway lines that hardly cause the attention to waver. Even when some of the jokes don’t land, we remain engrossed and go with the flow. Yet, when his rhythm falters, as it does in the last act of Oru Durooha Saahacharyathil, we sense it too. Then it is just a matter of waiting for the inevitable train wreck. One of the reasons perhaps for the film going off track is its shape-shifting narrative, with the sudden turn in character in the last act not fitting well with what had transpired. It almost feels like a copout rather than something that would evolve organically from the story.

A dead body in the house can be one of the most horrific situations or a source of mirth, depending on the tone and treatment that a movie adopts. Mohiniyattam, which gently spoofs Drishyam, turns the situation into a hilarious affair, with periodic reminders of the dead man’s deceitful nature, supposedly to make us laugh without any sense of guilt. Sequels often end up as pale imitations of the original. But in conceiving a sequel to the mildly funny Bharathanatyam (which incidentally was a spoof of Balettan), Krishnadas Murali reimagines the original’s basic theme, injecting it with loads of dark humour and turning it into a markedly better film, like Vaazha 2 last week.