A three layered film which talks about a film made in the 1970's, the reel actors real life, the making of that film and the present, where the director's son accidently retrieves the film reel and strives for a current release.
The story begins when Manikunju (Indrajith), a film buff, comes to Gemini studio, Chennai, in search of a job in the film industry. He is hired as the keeper of the 'ghost room', where all the movies- released, canned, and shelved- are stored. From this huge stack area he unearths his father's dream project, a movie called 'Vellariparavinte Changathi' which never got released. Due to financial burdens his father, the director Augustine Joseph (Ramu), commits suicide. Forty years later the son manages to convince yet another director (Lal) to screen the movie commercially to rave reviews. Manikunj also sets out to find out the main characters in the movie and an unfolding of their story forms the third layer in the film. The first segment is the 1970 cinema 'Vellaripravinte Changathi', the second being the present day and a son's relentless attempt to do justice to his father.
This Meta film begins with the director's notion about the sense of time. The first few minutes of the movie is a commentary on the kind of half baked films churned out in recent times which doesn't even require a plot but depends on fast cuts, jarring music and exotic locales to sustain the audience's attention for two and a half hours, never letting him/her think and by the time
they get time to reflect the widely released movies would have done with the harvest. This is contrasted with the old movies where the entire unit was concerned about the totality of the film and not about each ones image. The notion that in this fast paced world of sms and mms, where one doesn't even bother to spell a word correctly, what the audience require
is fast paced action is proved false during the screening of 'Vellariprav', the slow paced 'old' film, which was enjoyed even by the new generation kids. This is again contrasted with Suraj Venjaramood spurting out dialogues for a current production.
Every era has its heroes, heroines and villains; its own cinematic grammar; its own colors and sound and its own recipe for success. If it's just not the use of old properties and costumes that creates sense of time recreating the ways images were made in a certain era, that may easily and directly transport the spectators to that period. Time travel becomes
easier. 'Vellaripravinte Changathi' captures a bygone age convincingly and realistically, never falling into ridicule and not doing mimicry of the yester year stars. In a way, we always glorify our past and stay nostalgic about it. The film within the film might have made the people who have seen the cinemas of that time really nostalgic. This could not be said of the latest releases
which had a period setting, Jayaraj's 'Nayika', Shafi's 'Venice le Vyapari' or even 'Dirty Picture', the big budget bollywood film by Milan Luthria, which fails in convincingly portraying the essence of that age. In Venice le Vyapari and Dirty Picture the question arise as to why this has to be the setting of the movie for this story could be set in any period and Nayika ended up as a ludicrous mimicry of an evergreen hero.
Many of the earlier films had stories based on Muslim background where either they were the protagonists or the loving, helping neighbor unlike the terrorist/villain caricature in present day movies. This film too depicts one such story. Certain rituals that were part and parcel of Muslim culture like circumcision and ear piercing which were celebrated as major events (known
as 'sunnath kalyanam, and 'kaathu kuthu kalyanam) find a place in the movie. Such cultural references are missing in today's times. The film narrates the love between a Muslim girl and a Hindu boy, a love beyond the concerns of manmade laws, breaking the barriers of all parochial considerations, which again is hard to find in new generation movies. The song 'Pathinezhinte' has an old world charm to it (Vayalar Sharathchandra Varma- Mohan Sitara).
If only the director (Akku Akbar) and scenarist (G.S Anil) had done their homework a bit more diligently they could have produced a wonderful movie. The three stories running parallel in the filmic time has been deftly handled, especially in the first half of the movie, but later on the director loses his grip on the narration and rushes to the conclusion with some elements
hard to swallow. Rather than trying to give a message the director should have left the movie unfold on its own and should have restrained from making a statement. Many of the scenes in the second half are easily predictable. As Abbas Kiarostami said, 'If I want to deliver messages, I would rather be a postman', something should be left to the viewers imagination. Giving grey
hair and a youthful face to Dileep and Kavya Madhavan destroy the final scene, where Dileep after a convincing performance as Ravi/Shajahan falters in the climax whereas Manoj K Jayan steals the show with a sterling performance. There are some memorable moments in the movie like the one where Indrajit for the first time enters the 'ghost room'; it seems to him that the
room resounds with songs from movies across ages. Canned in the boxes are the dreams of thousands who come to the tinsel town enchanted by cinema. Caught in its vortex only very few make it to the top, others fate are sealed in the boxes that may not have seen the light of the day or bombed at the box office.
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