REVIEW 724: AMBILI

Release date:	Kerala: August 9, 2019 Delhi: August 16, 2019
Director:	Johnpaul George
Cast: Language:	Soubin Shahir, Thanvi Ram, Naveen Nazim, Vettukili Prakash, Neena Kurup, Sreelatha, Jaffer Idukki Malayalam

When they were children, Teena could not tell that there was a difference between her and her friend Ambili. Now that they are adults, she knows. He is a guileless soul, a child stuck in a man’s body, a man-child whose innocence almost everyone exploits.

Soubin Shahir, fresh from his stupendous performance in Kumbalangi Nights, plays the titular Ambili who wants nothing but to be loved. Teena is his rock, but her brother Bobbykuttan – current national cycling champion and Ambili’s best buddy from his childhood – is less reliable. This new film by writer-director Johnpaul George (of Guppy fame) is pivoted around a felicitation ceremony being planned for Bobby’s glorious return to his rural home in Kerala and an excursion he plans to take.

Up until Bobby’s arrival, the film seems firmly headed somewhere. Ambili is a darling, his conversations and his writings are hilarious, the manner in which locals take advantage of him is heartbreaking and Shahir is brilliant. When Bobby comes on the scene though, the narrative takes off on a trip that the screenplay does not have the muscle to sustain.

This part of the film actually involves a physical journey. It is an emotional and figurative ride too, and I totally get what George is aiming at. Sometimes, watching human beings at peace with rather than in conflict with nature can be deeply moving. Venu’s Carbon and Jayaraj’s Ottaal from recent years deployed genius cinematography at divine locations within a minimal script to portray our species in communion with our Earth, and both were near-spiritual cinematic experiences. Sadly, once Bobby’s expedition begins, Ambili mistakes lack of substance for minimalism.

Through the second half, even Shahir’s performance delivers diminishing returns, with the film occasionally taking a somewhat patronising tone towards his character. Ambili is a sweet man with a clean heart, there was no need to cutesify him in his interactions with random members of the public. An extended shot towards the end when he is seated alone and the camera dwells on him, his crumbling face and his physical tics is transparent in its effort to emotionally manipulate the audience.

The dialogues too go downhill in the second half, whether it is the tacky lines given to an old lady in Goa or a maudlin voiceover from a doctor in Maharashtra (no fault of the charismatic actor in that part).

Ambili’s obsessive stalking of Bobby might have borne fruit if the actor playing the friend had the chops to match up to Shahir. Debutant Naveen Nazim – brother of the sprightly Nazriya Nazim – does not. He is bland and his Bobby is, consequently, an unattractive character.

Thanvi Ram playing Teena is far more competent. However, Ambili is superficial in its writing of her bond with the protagonist. (Some people might consider the rest of this paragraph a spoiler) That Teena is a loyal friend is clear. But is she genuinely attracted to Ambili? Or is she submitting to his attraction out of a sense of duty and compassion? (Spoiler alert ends)

The appeal of the pre-interval portion of Ambili is its light touch – complemented by Vishnu Vijay’s lively music – in spite of the leading man’s grave circumstances. Post-interval the film becomes ponderous and stretched. Sharan Velayudhan’s lush camerawork within Kerala becomes less striking despite the vast potential of the varying landscapes traversed in the second half. He does manage to serve up some good-looking frames here, but they are not half as stunning or as all-pervasive as his work in Ambili’s home state. It almost feels like the film had a lower budget for cinematography outside Kerala. This lacuna robs Ambili of much of the magic it could have had during these passages, the weak writing, direction and a few poorly chosen bit part players take care of the rest.

Apart from its vacuous meandering nature, this part of Ambili is also riddled with flaws and loopholes. Through its post-interval travels, the film fails to acknowledge India’s great diversity. This is particularly evident in its odd assumption that Hindi is the language of every non-Malayali Indian, the amateurishness of some of the Hindi lines and the absence of multiple tongues in the soundscape as state borders are crossed.

Besides, too many questions are left unanswered. (Spoiler alert: please read this paragraph after you watch the film) Why doesn’t Bobby tell everyone that Ambili followed him? A character tells Bobby that the social media is abuzz with discussions about his road trip, but there is no evidence to suggest that he has done anything to generate such chatter – no photographs taken, no posts posted, no relevant activity at all on his part. And who was the woman other than Teena on the phone with Bobby? The voice sounds the same but her disdain for Ambili suggests that she is someone else. Who? (Spoiler alert ends)

The relationship that truly underscores this film’s potential is the one between Ambili and Vettukili Prakash’s character, which delivers the complexity sorely missing in the writing of the Teena-Ambili equation. Despite the briefness of his role, Prakash walks away with the film in a beautifully enacted and perfectly directed conversation. That scene, along with Shahir’s moving performance in the first half, are the selling points of Johnpaul George’s earnest but faltering Ambili.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	140 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/ambili-movie-review-soubin-shahirs-sweet-earnestness-diminishes-over-endless-vacuous-wanderings-7223211.html

Visual courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/AmbiliMovie/

REVIEW 567: HEY JUDE

Release date:	February 2, 2018
Director:	Shyamaprasad
Cast: Language:	Nivin Pauly, Trisha Krishnan, Siddique, Neena Kurup, Vijay Menon, Aju Varghese Malayalam

Jude is different. At 28, he is more socially awkward than a pubescent teen and easily bullied. He is hardworking and, in his specific areas of interest, brilliant. He obsesses about his routine. He refuses to tell lies even if his congenital honesty causes embarrassment to a family member. His idea of frankness extends to telling people hurtful truths that need not be told. He has no friends.

His loving mother Maria – a stay-at-home parent – worries about him. His father Dominique (pronounced Dominic), who runs an antique store in Kochi, is forever exasperated with him. His college-going younger sister Andrea tolerates him with condescending amusement.

On a trip to Goa with his Mum and Dad, Jude meets the noisy, music-loving Crystal Ann Chakraparambu and her father Sebastian. Crys runs a café and is the lead vocalist in a local band that performs at her restaurant and at weddings. Sebastian is a psychologist who, when not swimming in alcohol or betting on cricket matches, uses music as therapy for persons with mental/psychological issues, leads Tai Chi sessions in his front yard and hangs out with Crys.

Unlikely friendships are formed, and over time Jude begins to understand his own diffidence better. As he does, his family too starts seeing him with new eyes, not as an eccentric or difficult youngster, but as a unique individual with special problems and gifts.  

Art-house director Shyamaprasad opts for a light touch in Hey Jude. In terms of its naturalistic, unmelodramatic narrative style, the film sits well with the likes of last year’s Nivin Pauly-starrer Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela and other slice-of-life cinema that has been a hallmark of the Malayalam New Wave – if you wish to call it that – of the past decade or so. Pauly himself has been one of the stars at the forefront of this movement that has earned massive box-office returns while defying many of the conventions of commercial cinema. In Hey Jude, he plays the title character whose Asperger’s Syndrome is staring back at viewers with any degree of awareness about the condition, long before he is diagnosed in the film.

Asperger’s is part of an umbrella category of disorders called Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) marked by challenges with social skills, behaviour and communication. In Jude’s case, what to a viewer comes across as endearing innocence is irritating to Dominique and Andrea. This leads to many comical situations. What sustains Hey Jude through its entire first half is the sensitivity with which Shyamaprasad portrays their interactions (even if Jude’s actions are foreseeable to us while, oddly enough, the father who has known him all his life cannot seem to predict them).

The delicacy with which Hey Jude treads around its central character in its pre-interval portion is one of its many attractions. We are introduced to his multiple quirks with humour and affection, yet the storyteller is never patronising towards him.  

Not everyone on the autism spectrum is a savant, but this expectation has been a widely held misconception about ASD ever since the global success of the Hollywood film Rain Man (1988) in which Dustin Hoffman played a mathematical genius with autism. Possibly because of this false impression arising from a film that otherwise had a huge role in awareness building around autism, and perhaps because I am currently also watching the US TV serial The Good Doctor, in which the protagonist is a genius medico with autism, frankly I have been longing to see a screen offering on someone with any disorder on the spectrum who is not a genius. Be that as it may, Hey Jude does still score – when assessed in this context – because it is not fixated on Jude’s incredible knowledge of oceanography or his calculator brain, its focus throughout remains his confusion about his distinctive limitations.

That said, it defies believability that Maria and Dominique, who seem educated and certainly belong to a community and a state known for their high education levels (they are Malayali Anglo-Indians), would not have doggedly sought medical opinions about their unusual son in all these years. It appears that Maria’s sounding board until the events of the film is their priest. Considering the compulsory educational qualifications required to be a Christian priest, it further defies believability that that gentleman would not have advised them to consult a doc about Jude.

Even if you buy this set of improbabilities, what is impossible to swallow is the extremely unintelligent behaviour of the doctor who does at last use the A word to the parents.

(Spoilers ahead)

The series of missteps in Hey Jude’s second half begins with what can only be described as mind-boggling stupidity on the part of Dr Sebastian who not only leaves copious notes about Jude’s Asperger’s lying around where the young man could easily chance upon them, but even goes so far as to describe him as “abnormal” to his face.

It is also troubling that the film does not deem it fit to examine a point raised by Jude when he sees that the doctor had, without his permission, viewed his intensely personal video diaries. Jude is unequivocal in his furious assertion that this is an invasion of privacy. By leaving that point hanging, the film suggests that it is not important enough. Before that, Maria and Dominique are shown not even batting an eyelid when they find the videos with Sebastian. It is as if intruding on the private space of an adult who is not considered “normal” is kosher.

By this time, a certain predictability has settled into the proceedings. That scene in which Jude finally overcomes his fear of water to save his Dad from drowning can be seen coming from a mile. I mean, c’mon, at a party filled with able-bodied adults, no one else jumps into the swimming pool when Dominique falls in, as if they all knew the passage had been written into the screenplay of their lives to give Jude a chance to cross this milestone.

(Spoiler alert ends)

Hey Jude then is a mixed bag. Nivin Pauly’s remarkably restrained performance imbues the film with an all-pervasive charm that overrides its follies. The downplaying of his natural good looks, the precise way he says “crispy”, the ungainly manner in which he storms up a flight of steps to his room – there is not an iota of exaggeration in any of this, it is all just so.

One of the aforesaid follies lies in the greater depth and verve lent to the writing of Dominique rather than Jude. Although Jude is the lead, Dominique dominates the narrative and, played as he is with such gentle nuance by veteran actor Siddique, ends up being more memorable.

Hey Jude is the Malayalam debut of Telugu-Tamil superstar Trisha Krishnan who has made the same mistake now as with her 2010 Hindi debut Khatta Meetha: she has chosen to play second fiddle to a major male star already established in the industry she is just entering (earlier, Akshay Kumar) instead of opting for a film in which hero and heroine get equal space. Krishnan looks beautiful here as always, but beyond bringing her innate charisma to the role, there is not much she can do with her sketchily outlined character or the rushed reference to Crys’ bipolar disorder.

Aju Varghese in Hey Jude, on the other hand, gets a hilarious cameo to beat all cameos.

DoP Girish Gangadharan – whose work in Angamaly Diaries is still fresh in the mind – fills the film with glossy visuals. He is on a roll when showing us the changing geographical landscape on the road trip from Kerala to Goa, though I wish that spectacular aerial shot of a pristine beach as the family enters Goa was not repeated as they leave. If the intent was to bookend Jude’s stay, it does not make sense since his personal journey does not finish there. The dialogue writing though switches smoothly between Malayalam and English, as it would in this milieu in real life.

Hey Jude’s music is an ode, witting or not, to the Beatles with whose song it shares its title. One of the most-loved bands of all time, the Beatles’ works were distinguished by irresistible tunes and very basic lyrics. Each song here is hummable, but the words of at least two – Hey don’t worry Jude and Rock rock (well sung by Sayanora Philip) – are so rudimentary as to be amusing.

Still, the pleasantness of the melodies matches Hey Jude’s overall tone: sweet and affecting. This is the sort of film that made me want to put my hand on my heart and go, “Awwww.”

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	146 minutes

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/hey-jude-movie-review-nivin-pauly-trisha-krishnan-starrer-has-heart-and-humour-but-not-enough-depth-4334431.html#comments-section-4334431

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