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Release
date:
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February 21, 2019
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Director:
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Unnikrishnan B.
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Cast:
Language:
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Dileep, Mamta Mohandas, Suraj
Venjaramoodu, Siddique, Renji Panicker, Lena, Priya Anand, Aju Varghese,
Saiju Kurup
Malayalam
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“It is not how something is said but what is said that matters,” Judge Vidhyadharan
played by Saiju Kurup declares towards the end of Kodathi Samaksham Balan Vakeel. This is the film’s attempt at
advocacy for persons with disabilities, which in other circumstances would have
been laudable. Here though it is far from convincing since Vidhyadharan has
spent the preceding couple of hours displaying a curious mix of sarcasm and
kindness towards a lawyer with a stammer appearing in his courtroom.
Dileep is cast as
the said lawyer, Balan Vakeel of the title a.k.a. S. Balakrishnan. And
Vidhyadharan is not the only one mocking him. The screenplay does too.
A disability may
well lead to misunderstandings and confusions that could be comical, but when
every character in a film is contemptuous of a protagonist with a speech
impairment, when even a person with empathy is shown pulling the fellow down,
when the writing draws almost entirely on that element for its comedy, then an effort
to appear sensitive in the finale is almost offensive.
This
desire to be a little bit of everything – hateful yet considerate, loud yet
genteel, crudely comedic yet backing a noble cause – is the hallmark of
writer-director Unnikrishnan B’s Kodathi
Samaksham Balan Vakeel (KSBV). It
tells the story of a lawyer who has fared poorly in his career so far due to
his stammer and lack of confidence. It does not help that his mother (Bindu
Panicker) nags him viciously, his father (Siddique) is usually intoxicated by a
cocktail of alcohol and drugs, and his brother-in-law (Suraj Venjaramoodu) is a
selfish, manipulative jerk. The latter is a cop who drags Balan into a
controversy that becomes a turning point in his life.
The
crux of the controversy is a false case of sexual harassment foisted on one of
the most high-profile men in Kerala. It cannot be a coincidence that the prime
sufferer in this “goodalochana”
(conspiracy) is Balan. This is not the first time since he got bail in the
ongoing woman actor rape case that Dileep (who is charged as a conspirator in
the crime) has used his on-screen avatar to promote the propaganda spread
globally by misogynists that gender-sensitive laws are widely misused by women.
In last year’s Kammara Sambhavam, his
character, a corrupt politician, went so far as to make a throwaway remark
about how his team would be free to go about their unscrupulous work if they
diverted the public’s attention by having a woman slap a fake charge of sexual
violence against any well-known man.
That
comment in Kammara Sambhavam was
unrelated to the rest of the plot, whereas in KSBV, the false allegation is the fulcrum of the storyline. This
latest attempt to build a case for Dileep in his real-life legal quagmire is
self-defeating though because – and this can be said without giving anything
away – KSBV ends up unwittingly
making the point that men use women to misuse women-related laws. Ha. So
the joke’s on you, Messrs Dileep and Unnikrishnan.
Even
if you view the film without any knowledge of the context to the casting, it is
laden with cinematic clichés and social stereotypes. The Common Man who
transforms into Superman at the click of a finger (literally, in this case), a
damsel in distress who is rescued by the aforesaid hero, a non-stop stream of
potshots directed at Balan’s stammer, slapstick comedy, a song and dance
centred around a semi-clothed woman that is completely unconnected to the
narrative – you will find it all in KSBV.
Balan
has trouble beginning sentences. When an associate called Anzar (Aju Varghese)
helpfully grabs the phone from Balan to say the first word the latter is
struggling to get out in one scene, it is funny since he does it without
malice. So is the second time he does it. But for the most part Balan’s stammer
is the subject of unfunny barbs and derision.
When
listeners mispredict a word Balan is about to say, their impatience with him is
unkind enough, but when they do it incessantly throughout the film, it just
gets worse each time. The cruelty of KSBV
lies in the fact that it is not merely portraying ableist characters,
Unnikrishnan is clearly himself tickled by their meanness towards Balan, as he
is tickled by the extreme misogyny in the hero’s Dad’s interactions with his
Mom and the old chap’s casual violence towards her.
Aju Varghese plays
the film’s most irritating character. Renji Panicker is very well used. Saiju
Kurup is good, as he always is – give this man larger roles, please Mollywood!
Venjaramoodu manages to pull off some, though not all, of the intentionally
over-the-top comedy plus his character’s sliminess. As for Priya Anand, I don’t
know why she even bothered to accept this blink-and-you-will-miss-her role.
Mamta Mohandas has it just marginally better.
Anuradha Sudarshan
(Mohandas) is a hapless woman also swept up by the imbroglio that has taken
over Balan’s existence. At one point we are told that her father, a sketchily
described random character, was confident that she would be able to crack a
puzzle he has left for her because he believes she is smart. Really, Sir? All
that we see is Anuradha hanging around Balan and hanging on to him while he
solves the mystery and saves her life. This is particularly upsetting because
it results in a waste of Mohandas’ strong screen presence.
Of course the two
also fall in love. It is, after all, an unwritten rule in commercial Indian
cinema across languages that at least one good-looking young woman, the younger
the better, must be attracted to the hero of a film especially if he is played
by a big male star, irrespective of the man’s age.
As in all such
situations, the almost two decades separating Mohandas and Dileep are treated
as an everyday phenomenon. What is far more amusing though is the important
flashback to Balan’s college days. Can you imagine a female actor in her 50s in
Mollywood being asked to play a college student for even a few seconds?
Lost in all this
triteness is a rather interesting mystery, the not-bad-at-all sub-plot
explaining how and why Balan began to stammer, and Dileep’s surprisingly
restrained portrayal of Balan’s disability. With juvenile humour and prejudice
dominating the screenplay, Team KSBV
has no one to blame but themselves.
Rating (out
of five stars): *1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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155 minutes
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A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy:
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