REVIEW 736: MANOHARAM

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. In a nice little touch in Manoharam though, when Sreeja’s friend does what most Malayalis in Kerala do, that is, when she spots a migrant worker and struggles to ask him for directions in her broken Hindi without even checking to see whether he might know Malayalam, he replies in Malayalam with evident irritation at her assumption that he does not know the local language. 

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:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/manoharam-movie-review-vineeth-sreenivasan-plays-a-struggling-artist-in-a-nice-though-tame-film-7490881.html

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

REVIEW 494: GODHA

Release date:	Kerala: May 19, 2017. Delhi: May 26, 2017.
Director:	Basil Joseph
Cast: Language:	Tovino Thomas, Renji Panicker, Wamiqa Gabbi, Aju Varghese, Parvathy   Malayalam

A village playground in Kerala was director Ranjan Pramod’s playing field in the sweetly evocative Rakshadhikari Baiju Oppu released this April. The action shifts to a mud wrestling pit in small-town Kerala in Basil Joseph’s Godha starring Renji Panicker as a veteran gatta gusthi coach whose sport is losing to cricket in the popular psyche.

Captain, as Panicker’s character is called, is struggling not just with growing indifference within the community, but within his home too. His own son Das (Tovino Thomas) was a promising wrestler but gave it up. Dad sends the boy off to Punjab for higher studies, where he meets ace wrestler Aditi Singh (endearingly spelt “Adithi” in the English subtitles, as most Malayalis would). Aditi is played by Wamiqa Gabbi. Through a series of circumstances, the two end up back in Das’ village where each goes through a coming-of-age journey.

The most telling moment in Godha comes when the embattled heroine, who is being bullied by her family to give up her passion in favour of marriage, tells the hero: “Nobody wants a Sakshi Malik in their own house until and unless she wins an Olympic medal.” It is a remark that ought to shake us up and shame us, considering that we come from a society where successful women are often toasted by people who do not acknowledge the discrimination against women in their own homes. Unfortunately, the screenplay never rises above its many promising parts. What should have been a powerful sports film remains pleasant and entertaining throughout, but fails to be the gripping, compelling saga it could have been.

The concept is brimming with potentially explosive elements: a young south Indian man moving to north India for an education and a young north Indian woman heading off to the south to escape oppression, in a nation where the north-south divide is far deeper than we would like to admit; gender bias; politics in sports...each is touched upon in an interesting fashion at first. As the movie moves on though, charming as it is in so many ways, it becomes evident that it lacks heft.

Comparisons with Aamir Khan’s Dangal are inevitable, although that was a non-Malayalam film, because it too dealt with women in wrestling and it captured the imagination of audiences outside the Hindi belt too. Unfortunately for Godha, although Basil Joseph appears to be a confident director, the film’s screenplay needed to be much more than what it is. For instance, Aditi’s battles with her family’s conservatism and in the wrestling arena are too easily won. Das’ self-discovery is not explored with any depth once his father takes the girl under his wing. And Captain too remains more an idea than a fully fleshed out person.

It is largely a measure of the natural charisma of all three artistes and the supporting cast that they manage to keep the narrative engaging despite the shortcomings in the writing. Thomas – fresh from the recent success of Oru Mexican Aparatha – is likeable here. He must also be complimented on the well-chiselled physique he reveals (without the camera making a song and dance of it) when we see him wrestling. Gabbi is luminous, but what is far more striking is the way she gets the body and body language of a wrestler right. Panicker infuses warmth into the proceedings in a way only he can. And Aju Varghese as Das’ friend is a hoot, as he always is (barring a couple of instances of creepy behaviour by the character, which are presented as comedy).

It is particularly good to see the way Hindi, Punjabi and English are used by the dialogue writer, and the way languages flow in conversations in Godha as they would in real life if an open-minded north Indian were to travel to Kerala. The Malayalis in the film are shown trying to communicate as best as they can with her in the languages she knows, and after she spends some time in Kerala, she reciprocates the effort with Malayalam.

This, along with the strength of the assembled cast, the convincing realistic tone and the humour in the interactions between the characters keep this film going. If the script had half as much muscle as the average wrestler’s body, Godha could have been something special. As it is, Basil Joseph’s film stops at being nice. He is obviously a director with promise, so hopefully in his next venture he will pay more attention to the writing department (which, in any case, is the cornerstone of any good film) before assembling other impressive parts. Here’s looking at you, Mr Joseph!

  

Rating (out of five stars): **1/4

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	120 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/godha-movie-review-a-malayalam-dangal-filled-with-warmth-but-lacking-muscle-3489607.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godha_(film)