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Release date:
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August 11, 2017
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Director:
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Harikumar
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Cast:
Language:
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Master Alok, Rima
Kallingal, Unni Mukundan, Vinay Forrt, Renji Panicker, Joy Mathew, K.P.A.C.
Lalitha, Salim Kumar
Malayalam
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Don’t know about
you, but I read about him as a kid in Children’s World magazine: Edmund
Thomas Clint, a child prodigy who died just short of his seventh birthday,
leaving behind about 25,000 paintings and sketches of age-defying maturity and
confidence. During his life, tragically curtailed by renal failure, Clint
attracted the attention of the media and cultural icons in his home state
Kerala and across India, in addition to some experts who wondered whether his
parents were passing off the works of an older person as their son’s art.
Director
Harikumar’s film is about this wonderkid. As the end nears, the boy tells his
parents one day: this world has so many colours, there is still so much left to
see, and to think that I have to leave before I do. And to think we will
never know the full extent of what he had to offer the world. The thought is
heart wrenching, especially because by then we have spent nearly two hours
watching his imagination run free with his paintbrush on paper.
Oddly enough
though, the film itself does not possess a fraction of the colour that Clint
filled his life with. Harikumar clearly has his heart in the right place, and a
bunch of solid actors to back him, but his direction is bland and the writing
limited, bereft of the shading that filled the young artist’s paintings.
And so, for
instance, when a journalist comes to interview little Clint for the first time,
and the chap turns out to be an insensitive, pompous ass, what we get is a
caricature rather than a believably sketched individual. No doubt there are
plenty of such journalists around, but this one is presented in deliberately
exaggerated fashion for effect, and over-acted by Salim Kumar, even given a
limp like old-school villains, such that I was surprised they did not also
bestow on him an eye patch or a hook in place of an arm. Likewise, a barber who
is called in to shave Clint’s head is a large, intimidating fellow with a scary
face and the disconcerting habit of spewing paan
thhook (spit) on garden plants. We know that Clint hates anyone touching
his hair, but did Harikumar have to be literal in his representation of the
child’s fears?
Clint’s existential
musings and innocent questions are as fascinating as children’s conversations
usually are, though perhaps more acutely observed. Where do we go when we die?
If I die and become a star in the sky, how will you distinguish me from the
other stars? What is the mind? Can you tell me what it looks like so that I can
paint it? Kids, as the American country song goes, say the darnedest things.
The boy’s baby talk is endearing and reminded me of that old toothpaste ad on
Indian television in which a father asks his tiny daughter to cover her
toothbrush with “aadha brush toothpaste” (a half-brush full of
toothpaste) to which she replies, “Daddy, aadha kya hai?” (Dad, what’s
half?)
What the film
needed perhaps, was more of that. Because it dips each time it shifts away from
Clint’s chatter.
The dull narrative
suffers further because of poor production quality and amateurish
cinematography. The frames are exasperatingly unprofessional – I say exasperating
because the subject is begging to be turned into a good film and the setting is
begging to be well shot. Clint’s home sits in the lap of nature and the camera
team’s failure to fully exploit its potential is a constant reminder of the
averageness of this film.
The SFX work too is
of a low standard, right from those so obviously fake kites flying in the sky
in the opening frame. That shot is no doubt designed for a watercolour effect,
but it just does not work. What does work later in the film though is a song in
which Clint and his Mom walk in and out of settings that metamorphose from
paintings to real life and back, with the paintings ranging from impressionist
works to more realistic styles. This is the only passage in the film in which
Harikumar shows some imagination.
Master Alok is
sweet and has a charmingly staid way of delivering dialogues steeped in
child-like wisdom. His diction too is impressive for one so young. Little
Akshara Kishor playing Clint’s friend Ammu is a darling as usual, though the
insinuation of a potential romance between them if he had lived is silly, to
say the least.
The rest of the
cast is effective enough, but Rima Kallingal stands out for trying her best but
being too good for this film. So much could have been discussed during the
course of the story: the meaning of mortality, the question of what constitutes
art, who decides what art is and so on. Let us be clear: Clint does have some interesting portions, but just some. At the
end of the day, it is an ordinary account of what was, from so many accounts,
an extraordinary life.
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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138 minutes
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
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