REVIEW 784: SUFIYUM SUJATAYUM

Release date:	July 3, 2020
Director:	Naranipuzha Shanavas
Cast:	Aditi Rao Hydari, Dev Mohan, Jayasurya, Siddique, Kalaranjini, Valsala Menon, Hareesh Kanaran, Mammukoya
Language:	Malayalam

This is not the first time star-obsessed India has witnessed such an occurrence, and it is unlikely to be the last. Back in 2008, Kuselan – a Tamil remake of Mollywood’s Katha Parayumpol – was heavily marketed as a Rajinikanth-starrer though the iconic actor only had a cameo in it. Now in 2020, the promotions of Sufiyum Sujatayum have created the impression that Jayasurya, one of the leading lights of contemporary Mollywood, is the film’s male protagonist. Fact: Jayasurya plays a supporting part. He is not the lead. 

Such deceptive marketing might have been partly forgiven if Sufiyum Sujatayum had something worthwhile to offer. It does not. This story of a dance teacher called Sujata in love with a young Sufi at a Muslim shrine in her town is not just superficial in its treatment of inter-community romance and tensions, it is also pretentious and dull. 

Aditi Rao Hydari plays Sujata who happens to be mute. Jayasurya plays the man her father forces her to marry. And first-timer Dev Mohan has been cast as the Sufi. 

Writer-director Naranipuzha Shanavas uses silences, close-ups of Sujata’s delicate face and feet, religious chants and mood cinematography as a substitute for writing depth. The first half of Sufiyum Sujatayum takes too long to establish the heroine’s love story. The second half wanders too long before taking us to an interesting twist involving a graveyard in the final half hour, but Shanavas squanders that plot development when he immediately circles back to the unexciting relationship between Sujata and the Sufi.

Frankly, that pre-climactic twist by itself had the potential to be expanded into a brilliant socio-political satire on Hindu-Muslim strife in today’s India, but Shanavas clearly failed to recognise his own clever idea. What he gives us then is a listless, unremarkable film.

Although the credits feature a bunch of respected character artistes, no one stands out since no one’s talent is put to great use. Dev Mohan is given little to do beyond look pretty and occasionally, briefly whirl as dervishes do. It is a measure of Jayasurya’s charisma that although his character is mostly confined to the second half, he still manages to leave a stronger impression than the lead pair. 

As for Rao Hydari, she fails to live up to the hype generated around her in the run-up to this release. The marketing team’s decision to tomtom Sufiyum Sujatayum as her “return to Malayalam cinema after 14 years” is almost embarrassing for two reasons: first, because her role (on debut) in the Mammootty-starrer Prajapathi in 2006 was minuscule, clichéd, unmemorable and insignificant; and second, because since then she has spent most of her career in Bollywood where she has struggled to make an impact. Despite the promise she showed in Yeh Saali Zindagi (2011) and London, Paris, New York (2012), she has packed her CV largely with Hindi films in which she has barely had anything to do beyond look sweet and fragile on the sidelines while men go about their business. 

Don’t get me wrong: Rao Hydari is good-looking, moves with dancerly grace, and if the aforementioned Hindi films are a barometer, is a capable actor. But the problematic marketing of Sufiyum Sujatayum has ended up drawing attention to the faults in her filmography that make it hard to assess this performance. You see, her characters in most of her Hindi films have hardly had any spoken lines (for one, watch Wazir); as a result – and this is the harsh truth – when she plays a mute woman in Sufiyum Sujatayum, in terms of acting she is not actually doing anything vastly different from her earlier work. Yes, Sujata sometimes resorts to sign language, but Shanavas uses that aspect of her more for the visual appeal of the actor’s attractive, fluid hand movements than as a building block in what could have been a complex character.

Apart from its soulful music and overall prettiness, one of the nice touches in Sufiyum Sujatayum is the way languages other than Malayalam are woven into stray dialogues to indicate the somewhat cosmopolitan nature of the town in which the story is set; it is also nice that the subtitler lets us know when a character has spoken a non-Malayalam tongue. However, considering that the main characters all converse with each other in Malayalam, there is something odd about the way a couple of lines from a Hindi song run in the background out of the blue when Sujata experiences heartbreak, and Hindi lyrics pop up again with the end credits – the switch in language makes no sense here, it has no contextual relevance, but it places Shanavas in an expanding club of Malayalam filmmakers who seem to think Hindi is a signifier of coolth, in the way Hindi filmmakers once viewed English. The only contemporary Malayalam director who has been able to pull this off without any logic to support his choice is Lijo Jose Pellissery when he slipped Do Naina into Angamaly Diaries – it worked perhaps because the scene in question was overall so beautifully constructed. Not so in Sufiyum Sujatayum. 

Kerala may seem like an idyll of communal harmony when compared to the tattered social fabric of north India in 2020, but the troubling reality is that all is not well between communities in the state popularly described as God’s Own Country. Sufiyum Sujatayum was an opportunity to dwell on the opposition to Hindu-Muslim marriages in Malayali society, a theme that was so sensitively handled by another Shanavas – director Shanavas K. Bavakutty – in the terrific Kismath in 2016. Instead, Naranipuzha Shanavas devotes himself to the spectacle he is trying to create in Sufiyum Sujatayum, and just about skims the surface of his chosen theme. 

Rating (out of 5 stars): 1.5

Sufiyum Sujatayum is streaming on Amazon Prime Video India.

Running time:

122 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/sufiyum-sujatayum-movie-review-jayasurya-is-more-effective-in-his-supporting-role-than-the-leads-of-this-listless-film-8555331.html

Poster courtesy: IMDB

REVIEW 765: SHYLOCK

Release date: Kerala: January 23, 2020 Kerala: January 24, 2020 Director: Ajai Vasudev Cast: Language: Mammootty, Siddique, Kalabhavan Shajohn, Rajkiran, Meena, Baiju Santhosh, Hareesh Kanaran, Hareesh Peradi, Bibin George, Arthana, John Kaippallil Malayalam with Tamil

He is known simply as Boss or Shylock to the film industry. He has held producers in a vice-like grip since 2016. This nameless moneylender (hence the nickname, in a mindless nod to Shakespeare) is played by Mammootty, whose sole goal through the insufferable Shylock seems to be to emphasise his conviction that his stature remains intact and that he is a pan-generational star.

No really, I am not talking about subliminal messaging – he literally says so here.

Actually, scratch out that paragraph. Because “subliminal” is a word that should not even be whispered in the vicinity of this film directed by Ajai Vasudev who earlier made the Mammootty-starrers Rajadhiraja and Masterpiece. Every point here is stressed ad nauseam, the background score is loud enough to make a hole in the ozone layer and Mammootty’s character actually says in the closing minutes, “This is a game that will be a massive hit of the year,” in response to Villain No. 1 telling him that his game is up. This exchange is followed by the same bad guy (the Ernakulam Police Commissioner Felix John, played by Siddique) telling Shylock that the era of heroes like him is over, we have entered the age of villains and so he needs to look for secondary roles. To this, Shylock – who does not pretend to be anything but Mammukka’s alter ego – replies after bashing up a bunch of men: across generations, Boss is still the hero.

Okay okaaaay okaaaayyyy, got it: Mammootty rules.

This conversation in the middle of the bloody climactic fight follows about two hours of a singer screeching out a signature refrain for Mammootty every time he, in his avatar as Shylock, wallops a villain or spouts a grandiloquent line.

The music of Shylock is so painful and the narrative so clichéd, that if this were an Easter week release, Jesus might have raced back into his tomb begging never to be resurrected. And don’t get my imagination started on paavam William Shakespeare’s reaction to the appropriation of one of his most famous characters for this story’s protagonist.

About that ‘story’... So Shylock is a guy with a swagger, fancy-schmancy sunglasses, shoes that the camera loves, expensive cars and a misplaced sense of humour that he employs to lighten the mood in the bloodiest of scenes. The only few seconds of fun in Shylock come in its opening minutes, but are soon lost to repetitiveness. The first half of the film sets up a clash between the hero, along with his non-descript sidekicks played by Baiju Santhosh and Hareesh Kanaran, and the slimy film producer Prathapa Varma (Kalabhavan Shajohn) whose partner in crime is Felix John.

When one of Shylock’s flunkeys questions him about his uncharacteristic brutality towards Team Varma, our man launches into a loooong generic flashback brimming with generic sunshine and song, generic flowers, generic family, generic friendship, two generic pretty women and generic romance that all add up to two generic enmities, generic tears and ultimately, a generic quest for vendetta. Tamil actor Rajkiran plays Ayyanar, the generic motivation for Shylock seeking generic revenge against Varma, John and their generic murderous gang. In this portion, Shylock has little curls and is known as Vaal (meaning: tail), a nickname explained by some pseudo-philosophising about a serpent. Never mind what.

Ho hum.

To compensate perhaps for the absolute lack of novelty in the script, camerawork and all else here, multiple references are made to other films and their Tamil superstars, human beings are killed by the dozen and we are treated to numerous close-ups of various types of knives slashing various parts of various bodies. Since a certain kind of formulaic Malayalam film can only be explained by comparison, here are a whole bunch to help you fully understand this one: Shylock is as boring as the Mohanlal starrer Big Brother released last week, the violence in this blood-spattered film is of a lesser degree than Kalki, women are microscopic sidelights in the plot but it is not misogynistic in the manner of Kasaba and Ittymaani: Made In China, and though Mammootty struts about here too, his preening is not offensive as it was in The Great Father.

Here is the saddest comparison of all though: Shylock is a reminder that Mammootty’s soul-searching performances in brilliant films like Peranbu and Unda are an exception to his current norm that is exemplified by Shylock.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 0.25

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

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/shylock-movie-review-mammootty-uses-this-insufferable-film-to-announce-that-hes-still-the-boss-7952101.html

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

REVIEW 663: ENTE UMMANTE PERU

Release date:	Kerala: December 21, 2018.  Delhi: December 28, 2018.
Director:	Jose Sebastian
Cast: Language:	Urvashi, Tovino Thomas, Mammukoya, Hareesh Kanaran, Dileesh Pothan, Siddique Malayalam with some Hindi

Tovino Thomas as the leading man, Urvashi playing a woman who may be his mother, pretty shots of the Kerala countryside, and glimpses of parts of Lucknow that even Hindi cinema rarely visits – what’s not to like? Answer: the lack of substance.

Jose Sebastian’s Ente Ummante Peru is interesting only to the extent that here, unlike in most Indian films where kids go in search of a parent, this kid is not looking for his Dad from whose existence he hopes to gain respectability or from whom he intends to demand to know why the man abandoned his wife/girlfriend and child, nor is he longing for maternal love (like, say, Vineeth Sreenivasan’s character in Aravindante Athidhikal). Here, instead, he hopes to re-acquire respectability by adding a mother figure to his life. That’s a change for the better...I guess?

But wait, let me not get ahead of myself. This is the story of Hameed who discovers, upon his father’s death, that Papa was married to two women, one of whom, he assumes, is his Mum. He sets off to find her, because his worth as a potential groom has fallen, it seems, since he is now an orphan. It feels odd to have that word applied persistently to a full-grown adult played by the strapping, muscular Tovino Thomas, but the writers (Sebastian himself and Sarath R. Nath) must have had something in mind when they sent Hameed off on his Mommy quest.

Whatever that something was, it is still within the confines of their minds. There is an atom of an idea somewhere in there that could perhaps be expanded into a good screenplay someday, but that day has not yet arrived.

Senior women film artistes struggle to find substantial roles and strong scripts, so I can kinda understand why an actor of Urvashi’s superstar stature signed up for this project, but men of all ages, especially of Thomas’ age, face no such drought, so I wonder what this sought-after youngster – with films like Oru Mexican Aparatha and Mayaanadhi under his belt – saw in this directionless writing.

Ente Ummante Peru does have some things going for it though. There is, for instance, some humour in the banter between Hameed and his close buddy played by Hareesh Kanaran a.k.a. Hareesh Perumanna. And Mammukoya as Hameed’s other arch ally is a dear because, well, he is Mammukoya.

I also enjoyed the sights and sounds of Lucknow, especially the imposing mansion and the decaying old-style haveli Hameed visits. For a part of this stretch, Sebastian also manages to conjure up an air of mystery around Urvashi’s character Aishu, another woman who is introduced late into the plot and an intriguing youth we see only from a distance.

Somewhere around this time Hameed asks Aishu, “Who are you?” The answer never comes, and we never quite get to figure out why Hameed or Aishu do any of what they do, or why Hameed becomes so desperate to find his mother (even his desperation to be married not being a believable explanation). The screenplay also offers little reason to feel invested in their relationship, or the story of Hameed’s late father, the son’s relationship with the old man, or even his equation with the young woman who is the reason why he goes off looking for his mother in the first place.

The narrative is lifted up by several notches with the entry of Urvashi who has more charisma per fingernail than most people can summon up with their entire personality. It is particularly commendable that she makes Aishu so striking considering that the woman is curt and unappealing.

Thomas is always easy on the eye and a pleasant presence, but the lack of chemistry between him and Urvashi is a reminder of how dependent good acting is on good writing.

There is, after all, only so much that even the great Urvashi and sweet Tovino Thomas can achieve with a clueless script.

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

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

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/ente-ummante-peru-movie-review-urvashi-is-irrepressible-tovino-is-nice-enough-but-the-script-lacks-substance-5813151.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ente_Ummante_Peru