REVIEW 698: ISHQ

Release date:	Kerala: May 17, 2019 Delhi: May 24, 2019
Director:	Anuraj Manohar
Cast: Language:	Shane Nigam, Ann Sheetal, Shine Tom Chacko, Leona Lishoy, Jaffer Idukki Malayalam

If you are a young person just figuring out your views on rights issues, Ishq is a great case study of what we are likely to get when feminism is a fad, a formula or a superficial pursuit for a filmmaker, not a sincere commitment and a deeply understood, carefully-thought-out ideological stance.

Director Anuraj Manohar’s debut feature begins with a knife-like indictment of what has come to be called “moral policing”. This part of the film is brilliant in its interpretation of the social dynamic that causes a woman to stay on in a dangerous, potentially fatal situation because the option – which would mean her family finding out that she was making out with her boyfriend in the backseat of a car in a darkened parking lot – is, to her mind, far worse.

Ishq stars Ann Sheetal as the woman in question, Vasudha. She is an MA student spending the day with her boyfriend Sachidanandan (Shane Nigam) when two creepy strangers accost them, threatening to report them to the police for public indecency. This is a hostage scenario not because the intruders are carrying firearms (they are not) nor because they physically attack (they do not), instead their hold over Vasu and Sachi comes from a thorough grasp of the couple’s psychology and the sociology of that setting.

Sachi is the sort of young man who tends to get aggressive with anyone behaving inappropriately, in his opinion, with Vasu. He is not, however, a hyper-masculine ass. There in that lonely parking lot, he knows that any mindless aggression from him could put both of them, her in particular, at risk. He also knows that if their rendezvous becomes public knowledge, it is she who will be maligned more than he in their conservative patriarchal society. He therefore defers to her decision about how they must conduct themselves in those chilling circumstances.

Like the creeps in the car in director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s S. Durga a.k.a. Sexy Durga, the two men in this film – Alwin (Shine Tom Chacko) and Mukunthan (Jaffer Idukki) – simultaneously play good-cop-bad-cop and a cat and mouse game with their prey, intimidating them even while pretending to be concerned about their security. The characterisation of these four and the writing of the events that unfold in the pre-interval segment of Ishq are impeccable and insightful.

Writer Ratheesh Ravi’s acute observation powers are on display here, and Anuraj Manohar handles the scenes with sensitivity. Vasu’s tension and Sachi’s frustration over his forced inaction are palpable. As frightening as the awareness that she might be raped or that matters might escalate resulting in death for both is the realisation that what Alwin lusts after is the woman’s fear far more than physical contact with her. This is the most illuminating aspect of Ishq because it points to what feminist experts on sexual crimes have forever been telling us: that sexual violence is not about sex but about power.

Without giving away any spoilers, I can say that even the scene right before the interval is spot on. The way Vasu lashes out at Sachi is believable although she is being unfair to him and contradicting a position she took earlier – after all, human beings do tend to be illogical and even unreasonable while under extreme stress. Sachi’s reaction is just as believable – this world is full of men whose liberalism towards women is only skin deep, but it is just as possible that she misconstrued a question he asked her. The writer’s comprehension of Malayali society and human nature, which are evident up to here, gave me goosebumps.

Then, it all unravels. A film that is at first a condemnation of patriarchal conservatism spends almost its entire remaining 50% celebrating machismo, before a twist in the end brings it back on track by which time it is too late.

Ishq is a manifestation of our society’s disinterest in regular folk who react in a regular fashion to sexual violence aimed at them or their loved ones. This is why we as a nation bestowed the offensive title Nirbhaya (The Fearless One) on a woman who died after being gangraped on a bus in Delhi in December 2012 – it was as if she was not worth fighting for unless we could envision her as a Rani of Jhansi cum Joan of Arc. This is why vigilante justice in response to rape is popular in mainstream cinema. Films such as 22 Female Kottayam and Puthiya Niyamam stopped at romanticising revenge though. Ishq goes several steps further in its highly condemnable, self-contradictory second half.

(SPOILER ALERT, please skip this paragraph. Repeat: Spoiler Alert)

If feminism is not a mere gimmick for Messrs Ravi and Manohar, if they are genuinely well intentioned, then they should introspect about the sub-conscious misogyny that caused them to think it is okay to normalise and hero-ise a man who decides to molest a woman as revenge for her husband’s assault on his girlfriend. No excuses please, gentlemen, that scene is designed to elicit audience empathy for him, the drummed-up triumphant background score as he walks away is laudatory in its tone, and no, the turn of events in the climax is not compensation – it simply underlines your confusion and inconsistency.

(Spoiler Alert Ends)

Ishq’s bizarre post-interval proceedings overshadow everything else in it. That is a pity because the film features an incredible cast including Shine Tom Chacko at his best. It beats me why we do not get to see him and the lovely Leona Lishoy more often and in more large roles on screen.

Oh wait, I do know why Ms Lishoy does not get her due. Because few producers are willing to bet their money on women like her and her equally remarkable co-star in this film, Ann Sheetal, both memorable women with acting talent and a solid screen presence, while they invest repeatedly in men who are equally or even less gifted, thus giving these men a chance to evolve as artistes and grow as stars over time.

At least Shane Nigam deserves the space Mollywood gives him. Fresh from the success of Kumbalangi Nights, Nigam gets to up the cuteness quotient of his personality with braces for his teeth in Ishq. As if those dimples were not irresistible enough! He does a commendable job of playing Sachi to the extent that it is possible to be good when yours is the largest role in a film but the only victim of its uneven politics.

Seriously, Ratheesh Ravi and Anuraj Manohar, before waxing eloquent about the moral police, some self-policing of your ideals would be in order.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	134 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/ishq-movie-review-50-feminist-and-brilliantly-observant-50-sub-consciously-misogynist-and-bizarre-6701821.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/ishqthemovie/

REVIEW 690: ATHIRAN

Release date:	Kerala: April 12, 2019 Delhi: April 19, 2019
Director:	Vivek
Cast: Language:	Fahadh Faasil, Sai Pallavi, Atul Kulkarni, Leena, Surabhi Lakshmi, Sudev Nair, Leona Lishoy, Renji Panicker, Shanthi Krishna, Prakash Raj Malayalam with English

So Fahadh Faasil is human after all. Anyone thinking that New Malayalam Cinema’s poster boy could do no wrong after his dream run with the back-to-back arrival of Varathan, Njan Prakashan and KumbalangiNights in theatres in recent months is likely to be given pause by Athiran. Writer-director Vivek’s film does have a promising premise, but it struggles to stay afloat in the writing of the screenplay, the direction and even some of the acting. It coulda been a contender, as On The Waterfront’s Terry Malloy might have said, but what it ends up being instead is tepid fare. 

Athiran opens with an eerie scene in which a character played by Shanthi Krishna sees a bunch of unexplained bodies lying around her house. Fast forward to a few years later, and Fahadh Faasil’s character is headed to a home for the mentally ill in the Kerala countryside where he introduces himself as Dr M.K. Nair to the doctor-in-charge, Dr Benjamin Diaz (Atul Kulkarni). Nair reveals that he has been sent by medical authorities in Thiruvananthapuram to check on what are suspected to be questionable practices by Diaz.  

We gradually meet the inmates at the centre: a girl who dresses in a nun’s habit (Leona Lishoy), a dashing and loquacious young fellow (Sudev Nair), an oddly protective lady (Surabhi Lakshmi), an elderly professor who speaks repeatedly of schadenfreude (Vijay Menon), and others.

Dr Diaz and his suspicious Woman Friday, Renuka (played by Leena), resist Nair every step of the way, but soon he comes face to face with their most closely guarded patient: Nithya (Sai Pallavi). She is the present-day link to the dead people shown in the opening.

The best part of Athiran comes towards the beginning when Nair is on the road to Diaz’s place. Director of Photography Anu Moothedath’s camera wanders unfettered across the thickly green landscape, pulling up up and away to give us extreme high angle aerial shots, returning quietly to take a closer look at the ground, staying with Dr Nair and his fellow travellers as we listen to their chatter for a bit, wandering silently among and over trees, zooming out again and then coming back. Quite remarkably, it does all this without moving in a dizzying fashion, instead pacing itself slowly and giving those scenes a watchful air. The natural splendour of the region is inescapable as is the grandeur of the British colonial-era mansion from which Dr Diaz operates, but the overriding impression is of a land and a residence holding secrets that must be feared.

At first, Vivek’s collaboration with Moothedath and background score composer Ghibran succeeds in creating a sense of foreboding. But as time passes, the camera gets somewhat manipulative in a clichéd fashion (such as with that shot of just one of Fahadh Faasil’s eyes), and combined with an increasingly insistent score, starts chipping away at the ominous atmosphere rather than exacerbating it.

Considering the megaton wattage of the names in the credits, the acting is, surprisingly, a mixed bag. On the one hand there is Fahadh Faasil’s very intelligent performance, with some of its confusing aspects making absolute sense once the big reveal comes around in the end. On the other hand there is the usually dependable and remarkable Atul Kulkarni who over-acts throughout Athiran.

Sai Pallavi can perhaps be partly excused for her inconsistent performance, because her Nithya is meant to be autistic but Vivek (who wrote the story) and his co-writer P.F. Mathews (who did the screenplay and dialogues) don’t seem to have a well-rounded understanding of this developmental disorder, which is used in Athiran as nothing more than a tool to intimidate and confuse audiences. That said, actors have a responsibility to do their own research too, and the sharpness of Nithya’s gaze in the action scenes suggests insufficient homework done for this role. After having left a lasting impression as Malar Miss from Premam and the terrified Anjali from Kali, the solitary plus for this charismatic young Tamil-Telugu-Malayalam actor here is that Athiran shows her desire to experiment.

With the film floundering on the writing front right from the start, it is no surprise that other elements end up being shaky. Vivek probably had a good idea to begin with, but he and Mathews seem torn between wanting to make a paranormal thriller or a crime saga woven around a portrait of mental health. To throw us off their scent, they keep implying that the film is one or the other, but in the end, once the final twist is done and dusted, there are too many loose ends, red herrings and unconvincing motivations left hanging that the team seems not to have known how to tie up. Just think, for instance, of the painter who can see into the future among the patients at Dr Diaz’s home for the mentally ill.

In fact, after their introductory scenes, Nithya’s fellow patients are given nothing to remember them by beyond the defining quirk assigned to each one. Even the insertion of Kalari into the plot feels superfluous, an attempt perhaps to either divert attention from and/or provide an indigenous touch to the very obvious Hollywood source for the plot.

Besides, the narrative goes slack after a while. The musical interludes do not help at all, most especially that passage featuring a song in which a crucial character is shown romancing another in conventional commercial Indian cinema style.

It is hard to believe that Mathews was the writer of Ee.Ma.Yau., director Lijo Jose Pellissery’s incredibly beautiful funeral film released last year. The story of Athiran maybe Vivek’s, but the screenplay after all is Mathews’. Considering the expectations raised by the stellar credits, Athiran’s ordinariness is a big disappointment.

Rating (out of five stars): *3/4

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

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/athiran-movie-review-fahadh-faasil-and-sai-pallavi-have-chosen-unwisely-6484841.html

Poster courtesy:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/FahadhFaasil/