Malayali Malayalam Movie
There are two ways to go about slicing up a film like Malayali. You could be besieged by the corny puree that it offers and sit back resignedly, nodding your head in agreement every now and then. Or you could take up a scalpel and carve out the emotional drivel and take a good look at what lies beneath. I prefer to do it the latter way.
Kalabhavan Mani gets to play Madhavan in the film, who has freshly slid out of the Xerox machine. An exact copy of the passé hero who suffers from EBS (Elder Brother Syndrome), Madhavan is the gullible man who is wronged by all whom he dearly loves, until there aren't any wrongs left on earth.
Sudhesh's film abounds in Malayali motifs. For starters, there's the sambharam. Once you have settled down in the tharavaadu, there's more to come - aksharashlokam, pai, pinnakku and kaali theetta, kalari, koothu, theyyam and mudiyaatu, punchapaadam, koithu paatu and velichapaadu. I had to stick to those originals, so that you get an abstract image as to how things stand.
With all the emblems in tact, the film sets about telling a story that's as old as our good ol' state. There are a few culprits behind the crafting of this drama where seeking freshness would be akin to finding that lost needle in the desert. Or in the current context, hunting for it in the haystack might be more appropriate.
Regionalism finds too fierce an expression often in the film. There's a verbal tirade against the advent of foreign languages and even pasteurized milk isn't spared. A disdain for anything that doesn't smell of the Kerala soil is so uncharacteristically Mallu. But that's there as well, and for someone who doesn't share the contempt, it's likely to come across as plain impolite.
Malayali seems compromised in every way no matter what perspective you view it from. People say they don't make such movies anymore, but they keep on churning them out, year after year. The most unfortunate thing is that a film as this cannot bank on the Why's and How's for everything has been prewritten to perfection.
So how do Mani's aspirations to flaunt his Madambi-ness fare? He does pretty well, and the tears are in tact as well, at that proverbial halfway point when he gets chucked out of his house. All said and done, the mantle of the super sufferer bro should pass on now to somebody younger, what with almost every other actor having wrestled with it.
As the camera cuts down to one long view of Madhavan being welcomed back home, by those errant prodigal siblings in the very last frame, I could hear Valyettan, Balettan and all other Ettans joining their hands together in bliss. There goes another one; now that's our boy, they say.
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