Release
date:
|
Kerala: September 27, 2019
Delhi: October 11, 2019
|
Director:
|
Anvar Sadik
|
Cast:
Language: |
Vineeth
Sreenivasan, Aparna Das, Indrans, Basil Joseph, Deepak Parambol, Delhi
Ganesh, Sree Lakshmy, Hareesh Peradi, Nandini Sree
Malayalam
|
Writer-director
Anvar Sadik’s Manoharam clearly
aspires to belong to the category of Malayalam films earning nationwide acclaim
in recent years for the realistic, clean fun they offer and their ability to
draw profound social insights from both mundane and extraordinary
circumstances. Manoharam ain’t no Kumbalangi Nights, Thanneermathan Dinangal or Uyare,
but it is, in its own way, nice.
Nice – now that is
a word that heroes in romance novels have often feared, interpreting it to
mean: “you are sweet but there is no spark between us.” Like the men their
heroines have described as “nice”, Manoharam
is likeable, entertaining and harmless, but also unremarkable and unmemorable.
Vineeth Sreenivasan
plays Manoharan a.k.a. Manu, an artist in the village of Chittilancherry in
Kerala’s Palakkad district. Manu is gifted but lacks self-belief. He earns a
living painting hoardings and wall adverts, and is floundering when this film
kicks off as digital printing threatens to kill his traditional craft. In a
misguided attempt to stay relevant and to simultaneously exact revenge on a
local guy called Rahul (Deepak Parambol) for an insult, Manu decides to launch
a flex printing unit.
His friend Prabhu
(Basil Joseph) backs him in this enterprise, as does Varghesechettan
(Indrans) although the latter is not convinced of the efficacy of their plan.
The situation gets complicated when the computer software professional
Sreeja (Aparna Das) enters the picture.
Vineeth Sreenivasan
is aptly cast and convincing here as an under-confident Everyman. It helps that
unlike several of his films, Manoharam does
not try to build him up as a hottie that girls are falling for left, right and
centre. His Manu is surrounded by a motley crew of colourful characters, all
played by dependable actors.
Basil Joseph is
sweet as Prabhu. It is always a pleasure to see the wonderful Indrans in a
substantial role because there is never a role to which he does not do justice.
Deepak Parambol as Manu’s long-time bete noir Rahul transitions smoothly from
jerk to not-a-bad-guy-after-all in a small part that proves to be a good
showcase for his talent.
Aparna Das gets a
comparatively weakly written role but looks and plays Sreeja effectively. And
Sree Lakshmy with the teeniest amount of screen time as Manu’s mother
walks away with the film in that one brief passage in which she tries to
convince her son to have faith in himself. “Ninte kazhivaa ninte vazhi. Athu
ninne chadikyilla (Your ability is your way forward, it will not let you
down),” she tells him in Manoharam’s
best executed scene.
Sadik, who earlier
made Ormayunde Ee Mukham, does a good
job here of creating this typical Kerala village of busybodies, well-wishers and
doomsayers. The film is simple but thoroughly entertaining up to a point, and
occasional glimpses of Manu’s artwork are worth the price of a
ticket. Once Sadik has established his protagonist, the supporting
characters and the setting though, he fails to inject his narrative with the
zest and depth that could have taken it to another level.
The somewhat
clichéd treatment of the leading lady by the screenplay exemplifies Manoharam’s hesitation (or is it
incapability?) to stray too far from the beaten track. In this universe
occupied by so many commercial Malayalam films, women are viewed by the hero
and his supporters not as human beings who fall in love, but as unemotional creatures
who cruise the world until they find a man whose prosperity impresses them
enough to drop anchor beside him. As a result, Sreeja is never seen as “one
of us” but always a “them”, a member of the half of the human species that Manu
considers desirable but will not fully understand and can never fully trust at
least until that thaalimala is tied.
In another area
though, Sadik proves to be different from most of his colleagues. Contemporary
Malayalam cinema tends to place Hindi on a pedestal above Malayalam (as does
the average Malayali, whether consciously or sub-consciously is hard to tell)
and to behave as if Malayalam is a language a non-Malayali would not possibly
speak or want to speak.
It is these
observations that Manoharam needed
more of to elevate itself beyond what it already is. That said, I could think
of far worse ways to spend two hours of my life. Manoharam is nice albeit tame. Nice is good. Nice
is pleasant and likeable. Nice is, well, nice.
Rating (out
of five stars): **1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
|
U
|
Running time:
|
122 minutes
|
A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/Manoharammovie/
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