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Release date:
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December 22, 2017
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Director:
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Pradeep M. Nair
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Cast:
Language:
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Prithviraj Sukumaran, Durga Krishna, Sudheer Karamana, Alencier Ley
Lopez, Saiju Kurup, Leena, Anarkali Marikar
Malayalam
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Imagine being in
love and being denied the right to choose the person you want to spend your
adult life with. Imagine the ache of a lifetime spent wondering what became of
her or him. Imagine your career taking flight sans the one you want to fly
with.
Director Pradeep M. Nair’s Vimaanam (Airplane) is a good,
old-fashioned (I mean that in a nice way) tale of friendship, romance and the
pain of separation in a conservative milieu where families resort to
politicking and even violence to keep young lovers apart. Prithviraj Sukumaran
here plays the renowned aeronautical engineer, Professor Venkateshwaran, who
receives a call one day from a girl identifying herself as “Janaki’s daughter”.
The mention of that name gets the lonely old man emotional and he decides to
head for his hometown in Kerala where this Janaki is waiting.
Much of his train journey is
spent in a flashback to a time decades earlier when Venkateshwaran was Janaki’s
Venkati. They grew up together and now spend their youth in each other’s
company, initially blissfully unaware of the prejudice and negativity that will
ultimately tear them apart.
Janaki (Durga Krishna) is a
pre-degree student from a well-off Hindu family, the daughter of a powerful
lawyer whose word is law in a home where his wife cowers before him and his child
is punished for not cowering. The hearing-impaired Venkati, on the other hand,
is the offspring of a Christian-Nair marriage who has grown up with financial
struggle and now, as a high-school pass-out, earns a living as an automobile
mechanic to support his widowed mother and sister while working on the side to
fulfill his dream of building a plane with his bare hands.
The structure of Vimaanam is such that we pretty much
know how the flashback will end from the moment it begins. The joy though is in
the treatment of Venkati and Janaki’s journey. Prithviraj and Durga imbue their
characters with innocence and clear-heartedness that is alluring. Despite the
anger, bias and scheming all around them, they somehow manage to remain pure
and clean. Their seeming incorruptibility makes them protagonists you root for
(even when they break the law at one point, in pursuit of his dream). I wanted
him to make that plane, I wanted her to have her freedom, I wanted them to be
together.
The story is told from Venkati’s
standpoint, but this is not a conventional male-centric romance. Janaki takes
centrestage with him and if I have a grouse it is that while we get to know
her, her family, Venkati and his allies, the screenplay neglects his mother and
barely shows us his sibling.
Comparisons are inevitable
between Vimaanam and the 2015
Parvathy-Prithviraj-starrer Ennu Ninte
Moideen about a Hindu woman and a Muslim man in love in 1960s Kerala. At
the risk of being reviled by fans, I confess that although ENM’s theme itself was gripping, I found the film inexorably
stretched to manipulate the audience. Vimaanam
gets its tone just right most of the time and its occasional descent into
maudlin, melodramatic territory (the airport scene, for one) is forgivable
because its drama and scale are at no point allowed to dwarf the intensely
personal portrait of the couple at its core.
The other inevitable comparison
would be with this year’s Vineeth Srinivasan-starrer Aby, the release of which
Vimaanam’s makers unsuccessfully tried to stop in court. Aby was about a mentally slow, socially
awkward young man without an aviation background who builds an aircraft in his
hometown. Both are reportedly inspired by the same true story. The thematic
similarity notwithstanding, Aby was
tedious whereas Vimaanam pulsates
with dreams and regret.
The film’s achievement is that
although it has been made on a lavish scale in spectacular locales with
eyecatching visuals by DoP Shehnad Jalal and top-line VFX (barring the clouds
in the final frame), it never diverts its gaze from Janaki and Venkati. Despite
the grand aerial views of cliffs and sands and the vast ocean, it remains from
start to finish an intimate saga of heartbreak.
One complaint: while Jalal shoots
his hero well, he is needlessly determined to emphasise his heroine’s looks.
Yes yes, we get that she has large, attractively droopy eyes, but there was no
need to give us so many close-ups of those eyes from so many angles, all with
the purpose of capturing her looks rather than her sentiments. Interestingly,
he pulls away and gives that lovely face space whenever his attention shifts
from the physical to the emotional.
Both actors bring their A game to
this film. They have a warm on-camera equation. Despite being a debutant, Durga
Krishna shares the weight of the film with Prithviraj and carries it on her
shoulders with confidence that is not intimidated by his experience. He
effectively alters his physicality to signify the advancing years. Although he
is too much of a man to look like the boy he is supposed to be in the
flashback, he gets halfway there through what appears to have been considerable
weight loss in addition to his body language.
In their later years, he gets
good ageing makeup, hers leaves her looking much younger than she could
possibly be when we meet her as an old woman. Considering the money that has
clearly been invested in this enterprise, it is also disappointing to see the
lack of detailing in this department.
Hands and the sides of necks age too, you know. The makeup team missed
that point.
Vimaanam’s supporting cast is led by the
always excellent Alencier Ley Lopez playing Roger, Venkati’s mentor and
co-conspirator in the business of making his first plane. Sudheer Karamana too
turns in a neat performance as the hero’s comrade in arms. It is particularly
nice to see the two let their hair down for the scene featuring the song Meghakanavinu. The usually dependable
Saiju Kurup though opts for overstatement in his role as one of the spokes in
the Janaki-Venkati romance.
Gopi Sundar’s songs work well
when they are woven into the narrative. Meghakanavinu
in particular is entertaining and unusual in the way it uses two female voices
and the sounds of the tools in Venkati’s workshop in its instrumental
arrangements. Here too, we get evidence of the director’s intent to stay
equally focused on his male and female leads. He is working, she is assisting
him and his team, but the song is hers with the others singing in chorus in the
background. It is an atypical musical choice that subtly reflects the
filmmaker’s mindset.
The song that should have been
dispensed with is Vaaniluyare,
melodic though it is. It is one of those stereotypical numbers to be found in
commercial films across Indian film industries where the hero and heroine sing
and dance at archaeological sites and locations of exquisite natural beauty.
Though Durga’s grace and considerable dancing skills are in evidence here,
Prithviraj’s personality is not a fit. Besides, while there is a certain kind
of film in which this kind of diversion works, Vimaanam is not that film.
What it is is a brooding depiction of great achievements overshadowed by
great sadness and a sense of emptiness, when your being remains forever chained
to a past not of your making. Prithviraj as Venkati and Durga Krishna as Janaki
embody yearning and heartache. Whatever the film’s missteps may be, I found
myself cheering as Venkati’s first plane took off, but most of all, I really
really wanted to see Janaki with him. Sweet simplicity is not easy to achieve
on screen. That’s what Pradeep M. Nair delivers
with Vimaanam.
Rating
(out of five stars): ***
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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147 minutes
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
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