Mayakazhcha Malayalam Movie
Something was dead wrong with the power system while they screened Mayakazhcha yesterday. For once, I am eternally thankful for those short, but immensely relieving bouts of silence and darkness amidst two and a half hours of total insanity, unbelievable chaos and absolute crudeness.
There isn't going to be even a mention about the story in this review, precisely because it's embarrassing to invent one. Two minutes into the movie, and you get it all. You brace yourself up for the trauma that's to follow and watch with utter disbelief as the movie unfolds one grossness after another and splashes about in the filth all around.
Its indeed a heinous crime to even mention the film in the same breath as a timeless classic as Manichitrathazhu. And yet, the unthinkable has to be done, since apart from the first two letters that the two films share, Mayakazhcha draws heavily on the yesteryear blockbuster to recreate the Fazil magic. It doesn't help much though, that the palace in the film looks like a dilapidated barn. The royal family in the film acts suspiciously like a bunch of pawn brokers, what with the soiled brass swords and grimy antiques that the art director has come up with. Thankfully we are spared the agony of having to watch Kiran do a Nagavalli; each of her attempts at histrionics is equally terrifying though.
I am yet to see another film in which almost everyone in the supporting cast look as cold as dead ducks. The leads lend plentiful support as well in playing dead; I don't remember a single instance in the entire length of the film, when I could see something that even resembles naturalness. They really ought to institute the Raspberry and Turkey awards here as well; the Mayakazhcha cast would win hands down.
Mayakazhcha is a bad-movie-lover's delight; it has almost everything that the masochist could dream of. Actor-hamsters, horrendous music, unspeakable set designs, shoddy camerawork, jerky editing, and to top it all a dreadfully flimsy narrative that would have been best left locked up somewhere deep and dark. It's the best instance of clumsiest filmmaking that you can catch in theatres right now, possibly all year long, and in all probability for a few years to come.
Mayakazhcha, I presume, suggests magic. As in the case of anything that has got something magical to it, there are a few unexplained mysteries associated with this film as well. The mystery of the disappearing script for instance. Or the mystery of vanishing sanity, with regard to the viewer. And how they have managed to scrape together enough money to craft this type of an exaggerated, amateurish, sloppy and wholly incompetent gibberish would forever remain the biggest mystery in the universe.
