REVIEW 714: MARCONI MATHAI

Release date:	July 12, 2019
Director:	Sanil Kalathil
Cast: Language:	Jayaram, Athmiya, Vijay Sethupathi, Mallika Sukumaran, Joy Mathew, Aju Varghese, Mammukoya Malayalam with Tamil and a bit of Hindi

It is a measure of how confused, confusing and amateurish this film is that the makers have failed to do something as basic as arrive at a single spelling for the hero’s name. The closing credits list him as Mathaai, the subtitles refer to him consistently as Mathayi or rather by his nickname Marconi Mathayi, and the film’s IMDB page, which I assume is managed by them, goes with Marconi Mathai. For the sake of order and my peace of mind, I am sticking with the latter.

Jayaram here plays a happy-go-lucky elderly bachelor called Mathai who is fond of the radio. He earned the monicker Marconi Mathai when he got an oddly old-fashioned tiny Kerala town hooked on the invention credited to Guglielmo Marconi. Mathai is a former Armyman who now works as a security guard at a local bank. His popularity does not shield him from the global obsession with marriage - the entire town is determined to alter his marital status, with one old lady going so far as to belittle him in public because of it.

Unmarried people are used to being trivialised and pestered, their privacy constantly invaded with even virtual strangers deeming it fit to ask why they have not hitched themselves to another human being.  There is a film worth making on how Indian singletons deal with the pressure and peskiness. Marconi Mathai is the opposite of being that film. The intrusiveness of Mathai’s community is cutesified and given the veneer of comedy, and it is clear that we are expected to consider it a mark of their affection that they are perennially on his case to get himself a wife. They coax and scold and scheme and prod and bully and badger and hound him so much and for such a large part of the running time that I swear I got so exhausted at one point, I felt like yanking Mathai off the screen, finding him a willing woman and forcing him to marry her, just so that the darned film would get over.

Many yawns later, a young spinster called Anna (Athmiya) joins the bank as a sweeper cum cook, and Mathai’s friends decide she is an ideal match for him. That she looks young enough to be his child does not deter them, and why would it? Since when has age been a hurdle in romance for Malayalam cinema’s star Daddy brigade?

Weirder still is Mathai’s reaction. There are spoilers coming up, but seriously this film is so bad, do you really care about niceties? So as I said, Mathai, who has persistently avoided marriage for decades because he was hurt in love as a child, suddenly falls for Anna. Yeah yeah, Athmiya is a beauty, but considering that there are millions of good-looking people in this world, and Anna is dull to boot, it is a mystery that Mathai is willing to give up his life-long commitment to bachelorhood for her.

The bigger mystery of course is why Tamil cinema stalwart Vijay Sethupathi picked this vacuous, pointless film for his Malayalam debut. Cineastes are still reeling under the impact of his stupendous performance in Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Super Deluxe earlier this year, and Mollywood has so much quality to offer an actor of his calibre, so why on earth did he opt for this empty vessel?

Sethupathi plays himself, a major Kollywood star who lands in Kerala to promote his new Tamil film for what seems like weeks or maybe even months via a call-in radio show. It takes a particularly infertile imagination to come up with such an implausible, ridiculous ruse to write Vijay Sethupathi into a screenplay. The role has been positioned in the promotions as being substantial, but it is really nothing more than a stretched-out cameo in which the actor is saddled with terribly written dialogues in what amounts to an extended ad for Red FM.

You know of course the two threads will intersect at some point, but never mind how the twain meet. Just know that Mathai, when rejected by Anna, acts with less maturity than a five year old and – get this – the entire village shames her for breaking his heart, which causes her to promptly fall in love with him.

When the action shifts to Goa (don’t ask why), Marconi Mathai becomes even more slapdash, dull and purposeless than it was in Kerala. Oh, the trauma!

Someone actually wrote this script. A bunch of talented someones actually agreed to come on board. And someone actually agreed to finance it.

It makes no sense to analyse the acting because the greatest thespians in the world would struggle to rise above a story and screenplay this bad. If there is a bright spot on this very dismal landscape, it comes in the form of Sajan Kalathil’s pretty aerial shots of the story’s water-bound location, and Sameera Saneesh’s eye-catching outfits for Anna. And then there were those moments when I allowed my exasperation at the limp narrative to recede into the background and simply gaped at Vijay Sethupathi. Thus do hapless viewers stuck in a movie hall find ways to extract the price of a ticket off the screen.

Director Sanil Kalathil shares the blame in the credits for the abysmal writing. In the tradition of many Malayalam filmmakers who seem to think Hindi is the ultimate sign of coolth, he tosses a couple of Hindi lines into the background score as Mathai cycles around the town square in a love-lorn daze, borrowing heavily from the Bollywood classic, ‘Yeh kya hua, kaise hua, kab hua’, though with a different tune: What is this that has happened? How did it happen? When did it happen?

The reference of course is to the feeling of lurrrrrvvve that is washing over Mathai’s being during that scene, “pyaar” as one of his Hindi-fixated buddies insists on calling it. The words of the song unwittingly echo my thoughts about Marconi Mathai: What is it? How did it happen? When? And why oh why?

Marconi Mathai has the air of being a film that thinks it is addressing crucial existential questions. Let me assure you, Mr Kalathil, it is not.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):

U

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/marconi-mathai-movie-review-why-oh-why-are-vijay-sethupathi-and-jayaram-in-this-ridiculous-ode-to-marriage-6986481.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/marconimathaioffical/

REVIEW 594: UNCLE – MY DAD’S FRIEND

Release date:	April 27, 2018
Director:	Girish Damodar
Cast: Language:	Mammootty, Karthika Muralidharan, Joy Mathew, Muthumani, Kailash, Ganapathi, K.P.A.C. Lalitha, Suresh Krishna    Malayalam

In so many respects, the conception, writing and execution of Uncle: My Dad’s Friend is brilliant. Director Girish Damodar’s film is startlingly honest in the way it grabs men in the audience by the collar and demands that they introspect about their hypocritical attitude towards women – protective of and fearful for the safety of the ones they love; casually disrespectful and lascivious, if not contemptuous towards the rest.

Joy Mathew’s writing is brutally frank in its assessment of ugly notions of masculinity that pervade our society and nurture these double standards. Considering that misogyny is intrinsic to so many contemporary mainstream Malayalam films, especially those headlined by Uncle’s star, this is a refreshing surprise.

Uncle stumbles repeatedly though by strewing bizarre red herrings around to cause us to make certain assumptions about Krishnakumar, the story’s Uncle played by Mammootty.

In the opening shots, as the credits roll, a violent mob vandalises property in a picturesque hill town. Soon, we see Shruthi (Karthika Muralidharan) standing on the street with a backpack. She is waiting for transport, perhaps a bus, and we can sense her unease when men sidle up to her with questions.

Already the air is thick with foreboding. Already as an audience member, I am worried for her. As a woman, I am doubly distressed, because I have been there a zillion times. The manner in which Damodar conjures up these feelings in just seconds is remarkable.

A car stops. The heart stops. But no, this time it is not a creepy stranger, it is Shruthi’s Dad’s buddy. Krishnakumar Uncle offers to drop her from Ooty where they are to her home in Kozhikode. And so the film’s journey begins.

Most of Uncle’s running time is spent cutting between Shruthi and Krishnakumar’s road trip through mountainous forest terrain on the one hand, and on the other hand, her parents back home. The mother (Muthumani) feels reassured of her girl’s safety since she knows KK to be her husband’s friend. Yet the husband Vijayan (Joy Mathew himself) appears inexplicably troubled by the news of the company his daughter finds herself in.

We soon figure out why. When the film dwells on him, it also repeatedly cuts to a group of men somewhere nearby, drinking, discussing women loosely, speculating in crude terms about the woman KK is with at that moment.

They are a disgusting lot and those early scenes are designed to other them, giving women viewers a sense of comfort in the conviction that they are not the kind of men we would spend time with – not my husband, my father, my boyfriend, my brother, my pal, not any man I love. Or are they?

(Spoilers ahead)

The mind freezes over when the narrative switches to a flashback and the painful awareness dawns that these are, in fact, men who move among us. Shameer Muhammed’s editing of this portion is so unfussy, the shift so discreetly done, that we do not detect it until we spot Vijayan and Krishnakumar on screen in that same repulsive gang, and Vijayan – gentleman, gentle husband, Shruthi’s darling Daddy – is the one using the most vulgar language to describe KK’s sexual partners, as the men all appear to live vicariously through their bachelor friend’s promiscuous ways and his particular talent for hooking much younger women.

These passages are unnerving because of their everydayness. These men are not killing or raping women, they are not indulging in any form of physical violence, yet their lightly spoken words – reminiscent of the sexist, casteist sport in Sanal Kumar Sashidharan’s Ozhivudivasathe Kali (An Off-Day Game) – mirror the visceral hate harboured by men who do. And they are people like us. They are our husband, father, boyfriend, brother, pal. They are the men we love.

Vijayan cannot tell his wife or child why he distrusts KK, because it will mean revealing a side of himself he has hidden from these women whose love and respect he values.

(Spoiler alert ends)

When it is with Shruthi’s parents and her father’s gang, and in the horrifying realness of a crowd scene later on, Uncle is an extraordinary film. The quality dips when it is on the road with Shruthi and KK though, because that is when we get transparent efforts, too clever by half, to heighten the suspense around their fate.

Shruthi’s achingly youthful innocence, the reactions of people they encounter, Vijayan’s unspoken fears and the audience’s own preconceptions are enough to underline the issues Uncle obviously wishes to highlight: social biases towards single people, the conjectures made about any man and woman seen together unless they are married, and more.

Mammootty’s track record of incessantly romancing female actors young enough to be his daughters and granddaughters in film after film since the 1990s, contributes too to the red flag that goes up as soon as we realise that the Krishnakumar Uncle who stops to give Shruthi a lift is played by him. In that sense, he is an on-point casting choice. Nothing more was required to keep the audience on tenterhooks on her behalf.

Yet in KK’s presence, Uncle tries to be more of a thriller than it needs to be. In its bid to build up our (the audience’s) suspicions of KK, it has him indulging in inappropriate behaviour which it ends up normalising when the denouement guilts us for reacting negatively to him in these parts.

The writing and Mammootty’s acting are both intentionally misleading here. In shots dotting their drive together, we catch KK looking oddly at Shruthi, who is still a minor. He has a decidedly lackadaisical attitude towards the security of this child in his charge, which results in them being out late at night despite her parents’ expressed misgivings and in unsafe places without her parents’ explicit consent. We are also acutely aware of his tendency to invade her personal space when there is no need to do so, such as when he insists on reaching across and buckling her seatbelt for her in spite of her protestations.

Any discomfort audience members may feel towards him here is natural and acceptable. It makes no sense to equate that response with the other condemnable prejudices he faces.

It is hard to understand why Messrs Damodar and Mathew would spoil their film by getting this crucial element so wrong, when they get so much else right in Uncle.

DoP Alagappan N. uses spectacular aerial shots to emphasise the remoteness of the locations where Shruthi finds herself with KK, while at one point he resorts to a distorted close-up of their vehicle’s interior and elsewhere to a fish-eye view of the outside. His camerawork, the understated sound design and Bijibal’s background score are crucial to the ominous air that blankets the film throughout. Even the unnecessary full-length song with Shruthi dancing in the woods fails to kill the mood, though it does act as an irritating distraction. The number in Mammootty’s voice though (the old Entha Johnsa Kallille revived), is well slotted and lots of fun.

All the artistes other than Mammootty are exceptional. Young Karthika Muralidharan perfectly conveys guilelessness without consciously trying to be cute, with a confidence undented by the presence of her veteran superstar colleague. Mathew, who has one of the film’s most challenging roles, strikes a flawless balance between Vijayan’s good and awful side. And Muthumani is outstanding in the climax.

In that scene and in the one preceding it, Mammootty metamorphoses into the actor that cinephiles have reason to adore. Shrugging off his trademark swagger, with the screenplay no longer requiring him to pretend to be anything other than what KK is, he gives us a slight droop of the shoulder and a fleeting pain in his eyes that remind us of why he is an acting legend. That we do not see more of that artiste on screen these days is one of the saddest realities of our time.

When it is at its best, Uncle: My Dad’s Friend is an excellent psychological drama bordering on a work of genius. By making needless overt attempts to manipulate the audience though, it robs itself of its potential greatness.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	145 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/uncle-movie-review-gripping-theme-dragged-down-by-mammoottys-misleading-performance-and-other-red-herrings-4449241.html

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