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Release
date:
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Kerala: July 27. Delhi: August 3, 2018.
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Director:
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Vishnu Narayan
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Cast:
Language:
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Tovino Thomas,
Tito Wilson, Sharanya R. Nair, Chemban Vinod Jose, Leona Lishoy, Jins Baskar,
Shalu Rahim
Malayalam
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It’s not what you
are thinking. Maradona is not a
sports flick. The title comes from the name of the small-time criminal played by Tovino Thomas
in this new Malayalam film release.
Maradona and his friend Sudhi
(Tito Wilson) are on the run from a bunch of brutal hitmen led by a fellow
called Martin (Chemban Vinod Jose). While one of them holes himself up in
a hotel room, the other finds refuge in the Bengaluru home of distant relatives
(Leona Lishoy and Jins Baskar). Stuck in that flat in a high-rise building in a
massive housing complex, Maradona at first experiences intense loneliness, a
foreign feeling that drives this callous man to seek out fresh relationships in
an alien world.
Hundreds of
kilometres away, in Kerala a senior politician is preparing for a crucial
election. His son Aravind (Shalu Rahim) lies in a hospital with a life-altering
head injury, and silence around the boy’s condition is of essence for the neta’s career. He is, however,
determined to find the people who reduced his child to this state.
As debutant
director Vishnu Narayan takes his time to unveil the events that brought
matters to this pass, he centres his screenplay around Maradona’s coming of
age.
The story of Maradona by Krishna Moorthy has been
modelled somewhat on the lines of Aashiq Abu’s Mayaanadhi (2017), which also starred Thomas. That film was about a
gangster on the run who is desperate to convince the woman he loves to remain
in her relationship with him. It was soulful, poetic and convincing.
Narayan and Moorthy
manage to marginally replicate Mayaanadhi’s
tonal quality, but their plot is not as credible. They operate on the premise
that human warmth can change the worst of men for the better. Fair enough.
However, for one to believe that Maradona evolves because of the friendships he
finds unexpectedly in that impersonal ocean of apartments, it was essential for
the film to establish that his earlier life was bereft of all such bonds. But
it is not. It is clear from the start that Maradona and Sudhi are joined at the
hip and willing to risk life and limb for each other. What then is the
difference between that equation and the ones that develop in the present day
in that housing compound? The answer: nothing apparent.
Maradona expects us to buy into the hero’s conversion
simply because it tells us he is converted. But why should we? He was a jerk a
moment before he metamorphosed into a non-jerk, good co-existed with evil
within him (read: his great love for Sudhi versus his nastiness towards the
rest of humanity) a moment before he became an all-round Mr Nice Guy, but with
an unconvincing in-between the metamorphosis is just not believable.
What works in Maradona is the protagonist’s chilling
behaviour in his before story filled with acts of meanness and violence that,
significantly, do not involve bloodletting. Nothing betrays the hardness of a
human heart better than harshness towards kids and harmless house pets –
through Maradona’s behaviour towards child and beast, Messrs Narayan and
Moorthy establish the man’s utter amorality.
Thomas is wonderful
in those scenes. He is also a good casting choice because his urbane outward
appearance and natural charm make you want to like his character until the
narrative reveals how unlikeable he is.
(Spoiler alert) Aside: that said, unless
Team Maradona is intentionally taking
a pro-vegetarian stand, you have to wonder what they were thinking, or if they
were thinking at all, while equating Maradona’s other acts of cruelty with a
scene in which he captures a bird for food. Is eating meat the same as
physically hurting a child or tying a dog’s mouth shut because it is disturbing
your phone conversation? Really? (Spoiler
alert ends)
When Maradona’s
transformation to selfless goodness does happen, it is signalled by another scene
involving birds that is melodramatic and in-your-face to the point of being
silly. This is one of only two instances of overstatement in the film and a
needless break from the otherwise subdued tone that is its most attractive feature. The other instance comes
when a person the leading man has grown to love simply disappears. There is a
heightening of tension when this occurs. (Possible spoiler ahead) The person offers no excuse when she
resurfaces, making her disappearance an obvious contrivance intended to
manipulate the viewer, unless Narayan and Moorthy are deliberately resorting to
the women-are-teases stereotype. (Spoiler
alert ends)
All is not lost
though. I loved Sushin Shyam’s ominous background score for Maradona, and Sabu Mohan’s art direction,
especially the film’s colour scheme. Conventional cinema tends to equate the
big city with inhumanity while painting the countryside as an idyll where
innocence and decency dwell. Narayan turns that trope on its head by setting Maradona’s goriest scenes in thickly
vegetated seemingly remote locations while placing the central character in an
urban jungle as he journeys towards self-discovery. The forest where men are
seen being beaten to pulp is a delicious deep green, the brick-and-cement
cluster where Maradona becomes a better man is a soothing, ice-cream-like lime
green.
Often in that urban
agglomeration, Maradona is shown standing on a balcony or a terrace rooftop
from where cinematographer Deepak D. Menon pulls out further and further and
further, until the man is a disappearing dot on the camerascape. It is a
captivating device that elevates Maradona’s
atmospherics and thoughtful air – until it gets repetitive.
As the titular
character, Thomas is the fulcrum of Maradona
and justifies every second of screen time given to him. The young actor is
growing with each film. Tito Wilson is excellent but gets too little space
here. Hopefully it will not take long for Mollywood to realise that U-Clamp
Rajan from Angamaly Diaries is hero
material.
Sharanya R. Nair
who plays Maradona’s
neighbour Asha has an interesting screen presence,
but it is worth asking why film after film in Mollywood persists in casting
newcomers as female leads instead of seeking out established names as they do
for male leads. Leona Lishoy – who appears as Nadiya, in whose house Maradona
takes shelter – is an example of a woman actor with an impressive on-screen
persona who is repeatedly given character roles and supporting parts because
for decades now, Mollywood has rarely allowed women to build up substantial
filmographies as leads.
That is a separate
discussion and one worth having. For the moment though, let’s talk about Maradona, a gangster flick with a
difference that is mildly engaging but fails to live up to its own promise.
Rating
(out of five stars): **
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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2 hours 28 minutes
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A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:
Visuals
courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/MaradonaTheMovie/
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