Aakashagopuram Malayalam Movie
'They sat there, the two, in so cosy a house, through autumn and winter days. Then the house burned down. Everything lies in ruins. The two must grope among the ashes. For among them is hidden a jewel--a jewel that never can burn.'
In the prelude to the Master Builder, Ibsen thus plays around with a masterly precision to lay down the shadowy setting for his expressionist play, destined to be discussed for years to come. A century and a few more years later, an adaptation of the play on the Indian screen, Akashagopuram, wholly falls short of the original and conveys none of the psychological tumult that propelled the play to be ranked among the playwright's best.
The substance of the film no doubt concerns a reflective character study of Albert Samson (Mohanlal), a celebrated architect with a fantastic penchant to build magnificent churches with their incredible spires towering head-high on to the sky. Albert is a self-made man who is paranoid about the younger generation, and dreads them for their glorious youth. Sterilely married to Alice (Shweta Menon), who has never been able to get over a tragedy that befell their lives, he is a man who badly wants to seek refuge from his past in a castle in the air. On a stormy night, Hilda (Nithya) an impassioned admirer walks into his life and decides to stay on for a while, thereby prompting him to fatefully climb his doom.
It has been accepted that the play is replete with symoblism; most of which is chiefly autobiographic. Numerous symbolic motives are interwoven into the sparkling structure of the play. Fundamentally it is an invigorating account of a pale conscience. However the film has a different story to tell. The extraordinary play about individuality, integrity and identity sadly transforms into a one-dimensional version repeatedly disfigured by the lethargy of the proceedings. Significantly, the play has often been considered as an extensive discourse between Albert and Hilda; but the silliness that has cropped into the whole affair as the master's work traverses across cultures and genres of art ruins the impact altogether.
Very little in the film conveys what Ibsenesque writing is all about. It does not possess the spectacular liveliness that is so much essential to make it anything more than the delicate melodrama that it is. The linguistic structure and syntax of the 19th century remolded to fit into the cultural context, appear awkward and jaded. Almost the entirety of the dialogues, end up being quite affected and overly pretentious.
There is indeed a universality to the theme that has been considerably lost in translation. Alice's "nine lovely dolls" for instance almost becomes a mockery in the Malayalam version, while the world has presented amazing interpretations for them over the years. Often considered a representation of the unfulfilled passion of maternity in her heart, they leave no impact on the viewer's mind in the film, and nearly turn out to appear as the random ramblings of an almost schizophrenic mind.
There is a whole lot of illogicality in the way in which the scenes merge together, leaving massive breaks on the screen time, when there is not an occurrence other than an absolutely non-natural motion or a few frames that successively suggest an event. The pace of proceedings is so exceedingly sluggish, that it requires a truly gigantic endeavor to actually get the audience drawn into the film.
A lot of visual dazzle is left unaccompanied by any scriptural wizardry. Splendidly captured (Santhosh Thundiyil) and meticulously designed (Sabu Cyril), Akashagopuram is as scenically polished as it can get.
Mohanlal appears strangely claustrophobic; having had to mouth the most synthetic lines seems to have left him almost immobile. There is an obvious ennui in Albert Samson that perhaps wasn't deliberate. Nithya isn't the muse that you expect Hilda to be either; there is very little of the awe and marvel in her eyes, that's almost mandatory. Shweta Menon as Alice is subtly silhouetted to derive the exact effect however. Just a couple of scenes, and she still manages to work up a few wonders to competently render the torment that has been shredding Alice apart.
The intuitive inspection of the insatiable desire for power and authority that time and again makes the Master Builder a subject for stimulating discussions is nowhere in sight in Akashagopuram. At best, it's a plastic production that lost its passion somewhere between its journey from Norway to India.
OTHER REVIEWS
