I have been watching quite a few malayalam movies recently. This is the one that has shaken me the most emotionally. The movie has great depth of character and has so many things to say. Everything feels in place in the movie and the movie exudes excellent integrity.
The movie captures the subdued emotional lives of people and how the subduedness can lead to deeply engrained misunderstandings. The complexities that these lead to can be quite unnerving. Human lives are unfortunately challenging in nature.
The commitment to the period and location of the movie has been impressive and complete. The detailing in the usage of dialects in travancore and the mix of tamil and malayalam is striking. The social fabric of the times has been presented.The atmosphere of the movie has been set very purposefully and with great attention to all the details and the story of the movie unfolds against this fabric.
The threads of various complex relationships gives the viewer a lot to learn/reflect on. I have felt that incorrect social norms can often lead to unnecessary complexities.The situations in the movie can also be perceived as the never-ending consequences of the disarray caused by skewness allowed by the social setup of the particular time. If the current social setup allows you a skewness that is unfair, you will be better off not allowing yourself the unfair advantage. Here , we have a time when the wife is allowed to throw out the husband whim-based. Wife throws the husband out. The son is vehement at his mother. The son tries to rule his wife , fearful of her having seen the plight his father faced. This further leads to the distraught in the son's family life. Angsts of various characters presented so very well that it should be tough to go through the movie untouched.
All the actors have done great work. Mallika as the wife/mother has done excellent natural acting. Asif has fit well into the movie as the son. Bhavana has been great as the chirpy current generation girl. Romance between Bhavana and Asif has been convincingly presented. Makeup work for Swetha Menon and Lal has been good as have been their renditions.
Movie presents some incisive insights that flashes in beams of understanding. This is a textbook with lot of room for introspection and reflection.The movie is so completely honest and sincere.Hope for a time when such movies can run well in theatres.
