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Release
date:
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July 13, 2018
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Director:
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Ajoy Varma
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Cast:
Language:
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Mohanlal, Nadhiya
Moidu, Parvatii Nair, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Nassar, Dileesh Pothan, Megha
Mathew
Malayalam
|
Survival tales are great
material for cinema. A courier service employee marooned on an uninhabited
island after a plane crash, a truck driver consigned to a coffin while alive,
an adventurer trapped by a boulder in a deserted canyon – each of their stories
has been turned into a compelling film, in a genre that has often paid solid
box-office dividends worldwide. Following in the footsteps of the likes of Cast Away (US/2000), Buried (Spain/2010) and 127 Hours (UK-US/2010) comes Malayalam
cinema’s Neerali.
Mohanlal here plays
Sunny George, an incorrigible womaniser who is juggling a couple of affairs
when his pregnant wife goes into labour in another city. To reach Molykkutty
(Nadhiya Moidu) before the birth of their twins, he takes a lift from Veerappan
(Suraj Venjaramoodu) who is headed in the same direction in a sturdy pick-up
truck. Somewhere along the way Sunny wakes up bleeding as their vehicle sits
precariously balanced at the edge of a mountainside with a sheer drop of
hundreds, if not a few thousand, feet below them.
Director Ajoy
Varma’s Neerali – also spelt Nieraali in the trailer – is filled to
the brim with tension on behalf of its beleaguered protagonists. I could feel
fingers of fear closing around my heart as I watched Sunny struggle to figure
out a means of escape.
The film’s first
half is marked by confident writing and execution. Neerali’s weak spot surfaces in the second half. The best survival
films inspire admiration with the ingenuity their central characters display
while getting themselves out of seemingly hopeless situations. Sunny has not a
single brainwave that works. The excitement offered by the circumstances in
which he finds himself would have been elevated by multiple levels with at
least one stroke of genius or incredible feat of human endurance that gets him
out of there, but it never comes. So, there is plenty of reason to be terrified
along with Sunny throughout Neerali,
but no particular reason to be awe-struck by him in the end.
This is
particularly disappointing because Saju Thomas’ screenplay is imaginative in
the way it builds up curiosity around the manner in which Sunny and Veerappan
got stuck in this quagmire and creates suspense around their potential
predators. It weaves in interesting insights into human behaviour and some
asides on Kerala society, such as the reference to inter-faith romance and the
voice of the sermonising Charismatic Christian preacher floating in from the
distance. However, the insertion of Sunny’s father (Nassar) into the story
seems forced, as does the philosophical significance of the title (which means
“octopus”). The early mention of Sunny’s vertigo is later left unexplored.
Above all, Neerali fails to come up
with an inventive clincher, the sort of wow moment that would have made Sunny a
worthwhile hero.
Neerali is also afflicted by the same ailment that has
dogged most Mohanlal films for too long: the tendency to trivialise women.
Women, we are told, are like salt shakers: sometimes you get no love at all out
of them and sometimes too much comes pouring out. Like scores of other commercial
Indian films, in this one too marital infidelity is portrayed as a charming –
and normal – trait in a male character, excusable as long as he always returns
to his socially sanctioned companion, his wife.
That one of the
women Sunny fools around with (Parvatii Nair) is pointedly described as a Bombayite
underlines another prejudice evident in some Malayalam films (and in Kerala
society): that the urban woman who is an outsider is fair game.
This being a
Mohanlal film, of course each of the actresses with whom he is shown to have a
relationship looks eons younger. The women he has flings with are both played
by artistes who are, characteristically, three decades his junior.
Usually in the
superstar’s films, despite all these problematic areas, his acting shines
through. Mohanlal the actor in Neerali though
comes bearing a massive distraction. His face seems somewhat frozen and
obviously altered, but it is hard for an inexpert eye to be sure whether the
reason is excessive under-eye make-up or badly executed prosthetics or
inexplicable lighting or some other “enhancing tool” (to borrow a phrase
Bollywood’s Anushka Sharma used a few years back when she was lampooned for a
glaring lip job). Whatever it is, it subtracts from a great thespian’s
performance.
Mohanlal being
Mohanlal, when his eyes do speak at Sunny’s lowest point, the world stands
still in Neerali. For the most part
though, his performance here is overshadowed by Venjaramoodu although the
latter is given far less to do by the script.
While the maudlin
song in the end needlessly stretches Neerali,
the rest are placed such that they enhance rather than obstruct the narrative.
A couple of shots inside the car while it is on the move appear to have been
taken within a studio and look tacky, but for the most part, Santosh
Thundiyil’s clever camerawork contributes to the ominous air of the film and in
establishing the magnificent vastness of the landscape on which these two
minuscule beings are stuck. This and some sure-footed direction are the reasons
why Neerali, for all its flaws, is
gripping through every second that it remains with Sunny and Veerappan in and
around that ill-fated vehicle.
Rating
(out of five stars): **1/4
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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2 hours 8 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Visuals
courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neerali
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