Through
Manorathangal,
M
T
Vasudevan
Nair
makes
himself
available
to
a
whole
new
generation
of
uninitiated
viewers,
who
can
familiarise
themselves
with
his
rich
body
of
work
and
hope
to
learn
a
thing
or
two
about
life
in
all
its
messy
grandeur
and
flawed
imperfections,
notes
Arjun
Menon.
M
T
Vasudevan
Nair
has
been
wrestling
with
the
evils
underlying
the
Malayalee
identity
for
most
of
his
career,
building
up
and
breaking
down
the
quintessential
romanticism
and
aloofness
associated
with
a
particular
subset
of
Kerala
society.
The
anthology
series
Manorathangal
(Mindscapes),
celebrating
the
legacy
of
the
literary
giant,
is
a
tribute
to
his
prolific
body
of
work
dedicated
to
the
complex
human
behavior
and
ever-changing
Malayalee
psyche
plagued
by
urbanisation.
The
nine
feature
films
are
based
on
short
stories
written
by
Nair,
who
has
also
penned
the
screenplays.
‘Naatinpuram
Nanmakalal
Samvrudham‘,
which
roughly
translates
to
‘Villages
embody
the
spirit
of
kindness
galore’
—
a
phrase
penned
by
poet
Kuttipuram
Keshavan
Nair
—
has
come
to
define
a
particular
kind
of
obsessive
affection
and
nostalgia
attached
to
the
rural
way
of
life
in
Kerala.
But
this
catchy
adage
does
not
hold
much
weight
in
Nair’s
oeuvre.
The
writer
has
based
his
career
on
rebuking
the
fairy
tale
look
at
life
in
a
village
through
his
seething
portrayals
of
the
inadequacies
and
debauchery,
hidden
underneath
the
seemingly
well-meaning
conservatism
of
the
people
boxed
in
rural
societies.
This
project
is
a
fascinating
breakdown
of
this
concept
through
nine
unique
stories
examining
the
core
frailties
and
psychological
conflicts
underlying
the
human
experience.
Priyadarshan’s
Shilalikhitham
(Inscriptions),
the
first
film
in
the
anthology,
like
all
other
entries
in
the
series,
is
presented
by
Kamal
Haasan.
The
film
takes
us
into
the
life
of
an
archeology
professor
P
K
G
Nair
(Biju
Menon),
who
has
been
tasked
with
his
wife
Sarala
(Shivada)
to
seek
the
approval
of
his
aging
mother
back
in
his
village,
to
sell
off
their
ancestral
home
and
land
to
fund
their
ongoing
house
construction
in
the
city.
The
plot
is
pretty
basic
for
any
reader
of
Nair’s
usual
protagonists
who
are
forced
to
return
to
their
ancestral
homes
for
a
reckoning
with
their
past.
But
Shilalikhitham
is
not
an
easy,
breezy
throwback
by
any
means
and
is
a
painfully
critical
portrait
of
a
society
blinded
by
a
sense
of
feudal
entitlement.
PKG
finds
himself
in
a
moral
dilemma
when
he
finds
out
that
his
former
lover
has
been
found
poisoned
lying
in
a
stream,
with
no
one
caring
enough
to
even
check
if
she
is
alive.
Biju
Menon
is
cleverly
cast
in
the
lead
role
as
the
actor’s
innate
charm
and
humanity
directly
contrasts
with
the
stoic,
almost
unrelenting,
cruelty
exhibited
by
the
character
in
the
course
of
the
film,
and
that
constant
friction
makes
things
ambiguous.
Shilalikhitham
untangles
a
complex
truth
about
the
futility
of
generalised
notions
of
good
and
bad,
suited
to
human
convenience.
Swargam
Turakkuna
Samayam
(When
the
Doors
of
Heaven
Open)
deals
with
death
as
its
central
motif
to
examine
the
gradual
falling
apart
of
a
family.
Bedridden
father
Madhavan
Mash
(Nedumudi
Venu)
stands
in
the
way
of
his
self-centered
children’s
busy
lives.
Kuttinarayanan
(Indrans)
is
a
purveyor
of
death
in
a
village,
a
simpleton
who
is
called
upon
to
escort
aged
people
to
a
peaceful
demise.
Director
Jayaraj
is
heavy-handed
in
his
approach
to
the
story
and
Ramesh
Narayanan’s
overbearing
score
aligns
with
the
film’s
melodramatic
tone.
The
anticipation
surrounding
death
and
the
unreal
aloofness
of
the
family
is
drawn
out
ever
so
delicately
by
the
use
of
repetitions
and
monotonous,
insensitive
conversations
circling
the
bedridden
father
like
vultures
around
its
prey,
waiting
for
the
inevitable.
Death
is
inconvenient,
but
nothing
is
more
inconvenient
than
the
never-ending
wait
for
it.
Shyamaprasad’s
Kazcha
(Vision)
follows
the
life
of
Sudha
(Parvathy
Thiruvothu),
a
middle-aged
bank
employee
torn
between
a
life
of
conformity
and
individuality,
within
the
confines
of
a
loveless
marriage.
Juxtaposed
with
the
bleakness
and
awry
mood
of
the
first
two
films
in
the
anthology,
this
one
is
more
hopeful
in
its
storytelling
and
has
M
T
examining
the
themes
of
toxic
relationships
and
patriarchal
conditioning
through
the
lens
of
a
woman’s
psyche.
The
film
opens
with
a
strange
phone
call
from
Sudha
to
her
alcoholic
husband
Prabhakaran
(Narain)
and
we
sense
the
uneasiness
of
their
relationship
right
from
the
onset.
The
screenplay
echoes
this
once
again
at
the
very
end,
with
another
phone
call
with
another
man
in
another
context.
By
then,
Sudha
has
finally
realised
her
place
in
the
world
and
it
works
due
to
Parvathy’s
empathetic
performance.
Sudha’s
concealed
taste
in
music
and
other
passions
find
an
outlet
in
an
artist,
who
opens
her
up
to
a
new
way
of
looking
at
life.
After
all,
in
the
words
of
Virginia
Woolf
herself,
the
only
thing
a
woman
truly
needs
is
a
‘room
of
one’s
own’
and
nothing
more.
Santosh
Sivan’s
Abhayam
Thedi
Veendum
(Once
Again,
In
Search
of
Refuge)
features
Siddique
as
a
nameless
wanderer,
who
happens
to
move
into
an
isolated
home
in
a
wasteland-like
village.
The
ecological
horror
novella-like
structure
of
the
short
never
makes
it
directly
approachable
like
the
other
films
in
the
entry.
Sivan
uses
abstract
musings
and
associative
imagery
in
its
visual
design,
charting
the
descent
into
madness
of
a
vagabond-like
figure,
who
equates
his
lack
of
permanency
as
a
means
to
tackle
his
painful
past.
We
get
ghostly
apparitions
of
a
young
woman
haunting
the
protagonist
and
other
symbolic
gestures
in
this
otherworldly
tale
about
a
man
who
loved
nature
as
a
balm
to
his
bruised
soul.
The
assured
film-making
debut
of
Ashwathy
Nair,
M
T
Vasudevan
Nair’s
daughter
,
is
the
fifth
short
film,
Vilpana
(The
Sale),
a
profoundly
sad
story
of
a
woman,
haunted
by
loneliness
and
a
feeling
of
worthlessness
in
her
middle
age.
Vilpana
starts
with
a
random
furniture
advertisement
in
a
newspaper,
connecting
a
recently
divorced
journalist
Sunil
Das
(Asif
Ali)
with
Githa
Parekh
(Madhoo),
the
lonely
wife
of
an
industrialist
living
in
the
heart
of
old
Madras.
The
film
is
structured
around
various
prospective
customers
breaking
off
the
brief
weird
conversations
between
Githa
and
Sunil
at
regular
intervals,
till
they
are
interrupted
by
one
final
guest.
We
get
a
glimpse
of
the
loneliness
hovering
above
the
woman,
forced
to
live
an
empty
life,
distant
from
her
inattentive
husband
and
estranged
daughter.
The
poignancy
of
the
film’s
lead
pair’s
on-screen
chemistry
is
undercut
drastically
by
the
painfully
inert
and
baffling
dubbing
work
by
Bagyalakshmi,
who
voices
Madhoo
in
the
film.
The
subtextual
weight
of
the
conversations
is
lost
in
misjudged
dubbing
choices
that
call
too
much
attention
to
the
literal
nature
of
the
dialogues.
Many
wonderfully
staged
sequences
and
stories
may
be
better
served
in
literature
than
in
the
film
medium,
owing
to
their
literalness,
and
this
one
lands
somewhere
in
the
middle.
Kadalkkaatu
(Sea
Breeze)
again
stands
out
for
its
literal
quality.
The
film
continues
the
running
theme
of
adultery
and
sneaky
relationships
in
MT’s
most
popular
fiction
but
this
time,
foregrounds
it
in
a
more
meaningful
way.
Keshav
(Indrajith
Sukumaran)
is
caught
between
two
women
in
his
life:
His
pregnant
wife
Bharathi
(Aparna
Balamurali)
and
his
more
hip
lady
partner
Margaret
(Ann
Augustine).
Kadalkkaatu
heavily
leans
into
the
artifice
of
dialogues,
written
in
a
different
context
for
a
different
medium.
The
words
coming
out
of
the
characters
feel
like
cursory
line
readings
and
the
wonderfully
exuberant
performance
from
Indrajith
is
marred
by
Director
Rathish
Ambati’s
loyalty
to
the
original
text.
Some
of
the
supporting
performances
feel
wooden.
But
the
film
is
not
straightforward
in
its
approach
to
such
a
common
storyline
and
introduces
some
genuine
tension
and
strange
dissonance
through
clever
character
beats
and
story
devices
sprinkled
throughout.
Mahesh
Narayanan
joins
hands
with
Fahadh
Faasil
for
Sherlock.
Their
film
is
the
most
morose,
contemplative
of
the
stories
that
rely
on
procedural-like
repetitions
of
actions
to
capture
a
moment
in
the
life
of
a
turbulent
young
man
and
his
biggest
foe:
A
cat
named
Sherlock.
Balakrishnan
(Fahadh
Faasil)
is
a
jobless
man
who
is
brought
on
to
Alberta,
Canada,
by
his
elder
sister
(played
wonderfully
by
Nadia
Moidhu)
in
hope
of
getting
him
into
a
worthwhile
job.
Fahadh
is
perfectly
cast
as
the
passive
yet
cipher-like
figure
with
a
shoddy
past
and
alcohol
problems.
A
deviation
involving
his
sister’s
disastrous
marriage
and
racist
street
brawls
is
sprinkled
into
the
main
narrative
alongside
his
interaction
with
the
nosy
cat
Sherlock,
which
follows
him
around,
much
to
his
chagrin.
His
gradual
descent
into
a
manic
state
of
numbness
is
also
shown.
But
the
film
feels
like
an
abstract
and
impenetrable
character
study
but
works
for
the
moody
atmosphere
it
conjures.
Ranjith’s
Kadugannawa
Oru
Yathra
Kurippu
(Kadugannawa:
A
Travel
Note),
starring
Mammootty,
is
the
most
personal
of
the
nine
stories,
with
some
elements
of
the
author’s
own
experiences
during
a
trip
to
Sri
Lanka.
It
is
the
story
of
a
senior
journalist
Venu
Gopal
(Mammotty),
who
on
a
professional
visit
to
Sri
Lanka,
decides
to
look
for
his
long-lost
illegitimate
step
sister,
who,
he
believes
to
be
living
a
hard
life
after
his
family
disowned
her
years
ago.
Kadugannawa
Oru
Yathra
Kurippu
looks
at
an
emotional
moment
in
the
life
of
a
man
trying
to
grapple
with
the
guilt
of
living
a
better
life
when
the
person
who
meant
a
great
deal
to
him
for
a
brief
stint
in
his
life
is
struggling
in
a
godforsaken
wasteland.
Mammootty’s
internalised
sensitivity
and
pathos
add
to
this
heartbreaking
journey,
albeit
it
lacks
any
stylistic
flourishes.
The
final
film
is
a
reworking
of
the
classic
P
N
Menon
directed
Olavum
Theeravum
(1970),
also
penned
by
M
T
Vasudevan
Nair,
based
on
his
short
story.
Mohanlal
reprises
the
role
of
the
timber
trader
Baputty
in
the
new
version
of
Olavum
Theeravum
(Ripples
and
the
River
Bank)
alongside
Nabeesa
(Durga
Krishna).
Death
unites
two
unlikely
souls
in
this
story
of
broken
dreams
and
freewheeling
romanticism.
Mohanlal
steers
the
narrative
with
his
effortless
charm
as
the
doomed
lover.
The
film,
shot
in
beautiful
black
and
white
by
Santhosh
Sivan,
boasts
some
of
the
more
carefully
considered
images
to
have
come
out
from
a
Priyadarshan
film.
The
director
makes
judicious
use
of
the
layered
compositions,
utilising
each
corner
of
the
screen
to
direct
our
attention,
reminiscent
of
his
earlier
works.
Through
the
umpteen
men
and
women
characters
caught
in
the
crossfire
of
the
emotional
catastrophe
spread
across
this
anthology,
M
T
Vasudevan
Nair
makes
himself
available
to
a
whole
new
generation
of
uninitiated
viewers,
who
can
familiarise
themselves
with
his
rich
body
of
work
and
hope
to
learn
a
thing
or
two
about
life
in
all
its
messy
grandeur
and
flawed
imperfections.
Manorathangal
streams
on
ZEE5.
Manorathangal
Review
Rediff
Rating:
