REVIEW 639: VARATHAN

Release date:	September 21, 2018
Director:	Amal Neerad
Cast: Language:	Aishwarya Lekshmi, Fahadh Faasil, Dileesh Pothan, Sharafudheen, Arjun Ashokan Malayalam

Varathan (Outsider) is an instructive example of how a filmmaker may achieve feminist brilliance by largely yet not entirely understanding women’s concerns and then allow his narrative to spiral downwards into patriarchal clichés because, well, he does not entirely understand women’s concerns. I am willing myself to believe that lack of comprehension is the reason for the unravelling of Varathan, and that Amal Neerad is not just another one of those contemporary directors who woke up one morning and said, “Hmmm, women’s rights sell these days so let’s give it a shot.”

From the moment Varathan’s Priya (Aishwarya Lekshmi) and Abin (Fahadh Faasil) leave Dubai to make a family property in rural Kerala their home, a sense of foreboding grips Varathan. The roving eyes of the men in this remote place are fixed firmly on her who they well remember as the smart girl they lusted after even in her schooldays, the one they resented to the point of hate because she seemed beyond their reach, Priya The Unattainable One. Even as they salivate over her, as men might salivate over a delicious-looking leg of mutton, they also closely watch with animosity the man she finally chose for a partner.

As women with their antennae on high alert tend to do in real life, Priya notices their discomfiting stares long before Abin does, and senses a presence even when no one appears to be physically around. The first half of Varathan is chillingly beautiful in its grasp of stalking, voyeurism, intrusions on personal space, and how these can traumatise a woman.

DoP Littil Swayamp – whose genius was showcased just recently in Koode – is the star of this portion. His camera is a stalker and a palpable presence in Varathan, following Priya around as a spectre might even before the characters have become aware of it in a paranormal thriller, tracking her from afar, entering a room after her, hugging the ground and then swiftly rising up as she arrives at a distance, looking down at her from picture frames and wall fittings, never comfortably sauntering beside her, always haunting her instead.

I watched and I thought: Amal Neerad and his team really get it, they get what it feels to be a woman in the vicinity of a creepy man who is undressing her with a look, they get how a woman’s skin crawls when a strange man’s eyes bore through her clothes and drill right through her body, they get that there are men who resent a smart woman for no reason but their own inadequacies and insecurities.

Sure the film exaggerates the situation a bit in the sense that there seems to be only one man in the entire village who is not a leering, lecherous, sexually obsessed and repressed scumbag, but for the most part, all I could think was: this team has grasped this unfortunately overriding aspect of a woman’s life as flawlessly as Vikas Bahl displayed his understanding of a woman’s mind in the Hindi film Queen and the late Rituparno Ghosh struck the nail on the head in all his Bengali films but most especially in Dahan.

And then it all comes apart in the final half hour or so. Suhas-Sharfu’s screenplay is faultless until then. The chemistry between the lead pair is pleasant, their easy equation a contrast to the hypocrisy and gender segregation all around. The entire cast delivers spot-on performances. Aishwarya Lekshmi deserves to be singled out for praise though for her interpretation of a woman constantly on edge and frustrated because she does not know how to convey her instinctive fears to the man she loves, as does Sharafudheen for becoming  the embodiment of a repulsive fellow who occasionally fakes a harmless demeanour. Sushin Shyam’s unsettling, well-used musical score and Tapas Nayak’s clever sound design round off this impeccable mix.

But then, as I said, it all comes apart as Varathan abruptly relegates Priya to the background, switches from psychological drama to stereotypical action thriller mode, and is overtaken by patriarchal and cinematic clichés. Man-as-protector-of-his-woman and man-in-charge is combined with Indian cinema’s decades-old answer to sexual harassment and violence against a woman: the avenging angel going on a superhuman rampage.

(Spoiler alert) I briefly guessed that this is what it would boil down to in that early scene when Abin asks Priya not to crush a cockroach. I actually prayed that this is not how it would turn out when he discovers the uncommon gadgets and firearms in the house. Seriously, I did – I actually whispered from my seat, “Oh God, Amal Neerad please don’t be a disappointment.” What I feared in those passing moments is exactly what Varathan’s climax ends up being. It gets so literal and predictable at one point that Abin is actually finally shown stomping on a cockroach with his foot. Uff!  (Spoiler alert ends)

I should have known better than to hope. After all Amal Neerad does make his intentions very clear when the title page reads “Fahadh Faasil in and as Varathan”. Still, to lull us into optimism with so much sensitivity until that long-drawn-out, conventional-as-hell ending where it becomes evident that the fabulous, strong heroine was not a character in her own right, that she was created primarily to be the spark that drives the hero to get down to the business of becoming whatever it is people mean when they say “be a man”. The complete change in tack in the finale feels like such a betrayal. How could you do this, Amal Neerad?

Rating (out of five stars): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	131 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/varathan-movie-review-fahadh-faasil-aishwarya-lekshmi-are-cast-in-a-downward-spiral-from-feminist-brilliance-to-patriarchal-cliches-5244371.html

Posters courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/VarathanOfficial/

REVIEW 489: COMRADE IN AMERICA

Release date:	May 5, 2017
Director:	Amal Neerad
Cast: Language:	Dulquer Salmaan, Karthika Muralidharan, Chandini Sreedharan, Siddique, Soubin Shahir, Dileesh Pothan, Jinu Joseph Malayalam

Comrade In America (C.I.A.) is 5 parts Comrade, 5 parts the trip to America, all parts Dulquer Salmaan. Comical comrades and Salmaan are the USPs of this recipe, which is neither an all-out tribute to Communism (as the recent Oru Mexican Aparatha and Sakhavu were), nor an indictment of the ideology and its practice. Communism is for the most part a backdrop here, the setting against which the hero does his growing up.

Salmaan plays C.I.A.’s Aji Mathews a.k.a. Ajipan, a Left party member in Kerala at political loggerheads with his father Mathews (Siddique) who is with the Kerala Congress (KC). Aji is popular and for now, an unemployed layabout reluctant to let go of his college days when he walked tall among admiring fellow students. He now spends his time visiting the campus when he is not at the party office or playing football with friends, participating in protests against KC corruption and distributing Deshabhimani.

What we do not know about him at first is that he is as committed to his girlfriend Sarah Mary Kurian (Karthika Muralidharan) as he is to his ism.

(Possible spoilers ahead) And so one day he takes off on one of the world’s most arduous road trips, to the global headquarters of Capitalism where she lives. America is the antithesis of everything he believes in, which makes his decision to visit the place the ultimate proof of his love, arguably even more than that challenging journey where violence and death lurk at every turn. The people he meets on the way, the lessons he learns through them and at the end of that expedition have a life-changing impact on him. (Spoiler alert ends)

It is an intriguing concept, made all the more promising by the cast, each with a highly likeable screen presence. The distance from intriguing concept to wholesome film is a hard trek though. And despite physically crossing oceans and continents, Comrade In America (C.I.A.) does not make it.

Director Amal Neerad’s latest film is certainly not a write-off though. It is hard to write off any film featuring the incredibly charismatic Dulquer Salmaan, understated humour and such amusing, inventive, well-executed guest appearances. Still, there is only so much that boyish handsomeness, low-key laughter and the kernel of a good idea can do.

Travel is always educational. Imagine then the potential of a voyage through poverty-stricken lands where nature and human beings hold out equal threats. C.I.A. strides purposefully towards that excursion, brimming with possibilities and then fizzles out, a victim of reed-thin writing and flimsy characterisation.

When the going is good (mostly in the first half of the film), it is pretty good. And so you wait in the second half, initially buoyed by the atmospherics, and you wait and you wait and you wait to figure out where this is headed, until at last you resign yourself to the sad reality that this film is going nowhere.

So yes, Salmaan’s comic timing is on point as always – barring one fleeting yet distastefully comedified mention of male rape that panders to general audience ignorance on the subject. I do wish filmmakers would not take such issues lightly.

Salmaan’s heart-stopping good looks do not hurt. Aji’s equation with his father is supremely entertaining. The vapidity of his interactions with his young fellow Communists (played by the excellent Soubin Shahir and Dileesh Pothan) is hilarious, without any of the crassness that pervades films headlined by too many senior Malayalam stars these days. C.I.A.’s occasional swipes at the present establishment worldwide are well woven in – let us just say Modi and Trump bhakts will not be pleased. And the cinematography delivers striking, picturesque images without dwarfing the treachery of those landscapes.

The film scores high too with those three cameos that I am tempted to reveal to you but will not. One big salaam, Lal Salaam if you wish, to the person who found those three gentlemen actors who are such a perfect fit!

(Possible spoilers ahead) After a point though, it has to be asked: what is the point of it all? The writing completely fails to give life to Sarah and to the motley group who join Aji on his walk across America, with the exception of his Sri Lankan Tamil ally. The Indian woman in the bunch (Chandini Sreedharan) risks rape and death to make that journey for the stupidest reason you could imagine, with no pressing urgency unlike the others. Clearly she is there merely because a need was felt to insert a second attractive young woman into the story, yet little thought was given to her. The only thing less mindless than that is the discovery of what drives Sarah. With all its pretensions to gravitas and novelty, C.I.A. is just a reiteration of Mollywood’s view that all men are paavam potential victims of female betrayal. (Spoiler alert ends)

With almost the entire group reduced to sketchy clichés (example: the traitorous Pakistani, the Chinese man who, in C.I.A.’s tackiest moment, breaks into Gangnam Style because…well…because in Neerad’s stereotypical view, that is what Chinese people do?) it becomes impossible to invest in them. The result is that the film’s closing reference to the cause of refugees, comes across as almost flippant because the lead-up to there lacks depth.

Comrade In America is an interesting idea that needed a better writer to expand it into a full-fledged screenplay. Dulquer Salmaan’s charm, the Shahir-Pothan chemistry, their wit and all those picture-postcard settings cannot camouflage C.I.A.’s emptiness. These elements are sufficient compensation for the price of a ticket, I guess, but in the ultimate analysis they do not add up, making this an unmemorable film.

  

Rating (out of five stars): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	135 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/comrade-in-america-movie-review-dulquer-salmaans-charm-and-humour-on-a-road-to-nowhere-3427466.html

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/ComradeInAmerica/