REVIEW 622: MARADONA

Release date:	Kerala: July 27. Delhi: August 3, 2018.
Director:	Vishnu Narayan
Cast: Language:	Tovino Thomas, Tito Wilson, Sharanya R. Nair, Chemban Vinod Jose, Leona Lishoy, Jins Baskar, Shalu Rahim     Malayalam

It’s not what you are thinking. Maradona is not a sports flick. The title comes from the name of the small-time criminal played by Tovino Thomas in this new Malayalam film release. 

Maradona and his friend Sudhi (Tito Wilson) are on the run from a bunch of brutal hitmen led by a fellow called Martin (Chemban Vinod Jose). While one of them holes himself up in a hotel room, the other finds refuge in the Bengaluru home of distant relatives (Leona Lishoy and Jins Baskar). Stuck in that flat in a high-rise building in a massive housing complex, Maradona at first experiences intense loneliness, a foreign feeling that drives this callous man to seek out fresh relationships in an alien world.

Hundreds of kilometres away, in Kerala a senior politician is preparing for a crucial election. His son Aravind (Shalu Rahim) lies in a hospital with a life-altering head injury, and silence around the boy’s condition is of essence for the neta’s career. He is, however, determined to find the people who reduced his child to this state.

As debutant director Vishnu Narayan takes his time to unveil the events that brought matters to this pass, he centres his screenplay around Maradona’s coming of age.

The story of Maradona by Krishna Moorthy has been modelled somewhat on the lines of Aashiq Abu’s Mayaanadhi (2017), which also starred Thomas. That film was about a gangster on the run who is desperate to convince the woman he loves to remain in her relationship with him. It was soulful, poetic and convincing.

Narayan and Moorthy manage to marginally replicate Mayaanadhi’s tonal quality, but their plot is not as credible. They operate on the premise that human warmth can change the worst of men for the better. Fair enough. However, for one to believe that Maradona evolves because of the friendships he finds unexpectedly in that impersonal ocean of apartments, it was essential for the film to establish that his earlier life was bereft of all such bonds. But it is not. It is clear from the start that Maradona and Sudhi are joined at the hip and willing to risk life and limb for each other. What then is the difference between that equation and the ones that develop in the present day in that housing compound? The answer: nothing apparent.

Maradona expects us to buy into the hero’s conversion simply because it tells us he is converted. But why should we? He was a jerk a moment before he metamorphosed into a non-jerk, good co-existed with evil within him (read: his great love for Sudhi versus his nastiness towards the rest of humanity) a moment before he became an all-round Mr Nice Guy, but with an unconvincing in-between the metamorphosis is just not believable.

What works in Maradona is the protagonist’s chilling behaviour in his before story filled with acts of meanness and violence that, significantly, do not involve bloodletting. Nothing betrays the hardness of a human heart better than harshness towards kids and harmless house pets – through Maradona’s behaviour towards child and beast, Messrs Narayan and Moorthy establish the man’s utter amorality.

Thomas is wonderful in those scenes. He is also a good casting choice because his urbane outward appearance and natural charm make you want to like his character until the narrative reveals how unlikeable he is.

(Spoiler alert) Aside: that said, unless Team Maradona is intentionally taking a pro-vegetarian stand, you have to wonder what they were thinking, or if they were thinking at all, while equating Maradona’s other acts of cruelty with a scene in which he captures a bird for food. Is eating meat the same as physically hurting a child or tying a dog’s mouth shut because it is disturbing your phone conversation? Really? (Spoiler alert ends)

When Maradona’s transformation to selfless goodness does happen, it is signalled by another scene involving birds that is melodramatic and in-your-face to the point of being silly. This is one of only two instances of overstatement in the film and a needless break from the otherwise subdued tone that is its most attractive feature. The other instance comes when a person the leading man has grown to love simply disappears. There is a heightening of tension when this occurs. (Possible spoiler ahead) The person offers no excuse when she resurfaces, making her disappearance an obvious contrivance intended to manipulate the viewer, unless Narayan and Moorthy are deliberately resorting to the women-are-teases stereotype. (Spoiler alert ends)

All is not lost though. I loved Sushin Shyam’s ominous background score for Maradona, and Sabu Mohan’s art direction, especially the film’s colour scheme. Conventional cinema tends to equate the big city with inhumanity while painting the countryside as an idyll where innocence and decency dwell. Narayan turns that trope on its head by setting Maradona’s goriest scenes in thickly vegetated seemingly remote locations while placing the central character in an urban jungle as he journeys towards self-discovery. The forest where men are seen being beaten to pulp is a delicious deep green, the brick-and-cement cluster where Maradona becomes a better man is a soothing, ice-cream-like lime green.

Often in that urban agglomeration, Maradona is shown standing on a balcony or a terrace rooftop from where cinematographer Deepak D. Menon pulls out further and further and further, until the man is a disappearing dot on the camerascape. It is a captivating device that elevates Maradona’s atmospherics and thoughtful air – until it gets repetitive.

As the titular character, Thomas is the fulcrum of Maradona and justifies every second of screen time given to him. The young actor is growing with each film. Tito Wilson is excellent but gets too little space here. Hopefully it will not take long for Mollywood to realise that U-Clamp Rajan from Angamaly Diaries is hero material.

Sharanya R. Nair who plays Maradona’s neighbour Asha has an interesting screen presence, but it is worth asking why film after film in Mollywood persists in casting newcomers as female leads instead of seeking out established names as they do for male leads. Leona Lishoy – who appears as Nadiya, in whose house Maradona takes shelter – is an example of a woman actor with an impressive on-screen persona who is repeatedly given character roles and supporting parts because for decades now, Mollywood has rarely allowed women to build up substantial filmographies as leads.

That is a separate discussion and one worth having. For the moment though, let’s talk about Maradona, a gangster flick with a difference that is mildly engaging but fails to live up to its own promise.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	2 hours 28 minutes

A version of this review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/maradona-movie-review-tovino-thomas-adds-layers-to-a-mildly-engaging-film-that-leaves-its-promise-unfulfilled-4890981.html

Visuals courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/MaradonaTheMovie/

REVIEW 592: SWATHANTHRIYAM ARDHARATHRIYIL

Release date:	Kerala: March 31, Delhi: April 20, 2018
Director:	Tinu Pappachan
Cast: Language:	Antony Varghese, Chemban Vinod Jose, Vinayakan, Tito Wilson, Sinoj Varghese, Aswathy Manoharan, Lijo Jose Pellissery Malayalam

When a film’s leading man is Antony Varghese, the handsome hottie who shot to fame as Vincent Pepe in last year’s groundbreaking hit Angamaly Diaries; when Angamaly’s director Lijo Jose Pellissery and writer Chemban Vinod Jose are its co-producers; when Pellissery has a cameo in this film, Jose a major supporting role, and another important character is played by Tito Wilson who was Angamaly’s U-Clamp Rajan; when the same technical team is on board here too; and when Pellissery’s associate on that project, Tinu Pappachan, is the director of this one, of course speculation will arise, as it has, about possible similarities between the two films.

So let us get this question out of the way first: no, Pappachan’s debut directorial venture, Swathanthriyam Ardharathriyil, bears no resemblance to Angamaly Diaries.

That 2017 film was an earthy, profoundly insightful take on gory gang wars in a Kerala town. This one is an action thriller set in a jail complex as a new inmate plans a break.

Antony Varghese plays Jacob, a finance firm employee who ends up behind bars for a bloody crime involving a policeman and linked to the woman he loves (Aswathy Manoharan). As soon as he enters this all-male universe, he starts trying to get out.

The film is as much a series of observations on the experience of being a prisoner suffering filthy toilets, mucky food and constant aggression, as it is about the protagonist’s escape strategy. Its title, which means “Freedom At Midnight”, refers to the date (August 15) and time Jacob chooses to take flight.

To say that Swathanthriyam Ardharathriyil is elegantly shot is stating the obvious. Girish Gangadharan is one of Mollywood’s finest cinematographers, and his approximately 11-minutes-long uncut single shot of two rival groups battling it out on a crowded street during a jampacked church festival in Angamaly Diaries is still fresh in public memory.

He seems to be enjoying himself in Swathanthriyam Ardharathriyil, playing around with the rain, close-ups of faces and the hero’s pretty eyes. Those frames provide a telling contrast to an arresting aerial view of the jail that highlights its sparseness in comparison with the verdant surroundings and the isolation of its inmates from the bustling world outside. The camera pulls out to that shot in an attention-getting staccato manner.

Gangadharan is at his astonishing best during a ferocious fist fight between two men in a muddy underground tunnel. Shameer Muhammed’s editing sleekly interlaces those orange-lit shots with the stillness and gray-blackness of the night overground.

Their work is beautifully teamed with Deepak Alexander’s throbbing background score. Alexander’s percussion-heavy instrumentation is particularly effective because Pappachan knows when to use it and when not, occasionally letting the film’s soundscape go blank to dramatic effect.

That said, it speaks volumes about Swathanthriyam Ardharathriyil that I gravitated towards waxing eloquent about its technical accomplishments before describing its characters. Stylish and suspenseful though it is, the film remains fun at a superficial level because the people in it do not come alive as they should in Dileep Kurian’s screenplay.

And so we never get to understand Jacob as anything beyond a good-looking guy with a ticking brain. Chemban Vinod Jose’s Devassy, nicknamed Kallan (Crooked) Devassy, is never more than a criminal who becomes Jacob’s strongest collaborator. Simon (played by the wonderful Vinayakan from Kammatipaadam) is a brute and an unlikely ally. Vattan (Crazy) Girijan, played by Sinoj Varghese, is the prisonmate whose deceptively off-kilter façade masks a sharp mind. Tito Wilson’s character is at all times only the chap who will not forget that his own attempt at fleeing was impeded by Jacob. As for the drug-peddling twins, they are…well, they are twins who love each other, that is it.

This stupendous cast is capable of great things when given substantial writing material. Antony Varghese, for one, has the confidence and camera-friendliness of a seasoned artiste although this is just his second film. The entire troupe marks their presence in Swathanthriyam Ardharathriyil because of their personal charisma, but the screenplay does not flesh their characters out with emotions and motivations we can be invested in.

Even the cultural details that have made Pappachan’s mentor Pellissery’s earlier works so pleasurable are absent here. We are told Swathanthriyam Ardharathriyil’s jail is situated in Kottayam, but frankly it could have been placed elsewhere without making an iota of a difference to the storyline or its treatment. 

The writing of Jacob’s scheme also required greater thought. While some of his ideas are clever, too many things fall too conveniently into place, and we are expected to buy into too much of what happens just because it does. For instance, without giving anything away, let me just say you cannot throw an unlimited amount of liquefied or soft solids other than faeces down a toilet without clogging it. And, (spoiler alert) did the police in a prison housing murderers lack firearms and communication equipment that night?

Swathanthriyam Ardharathriyil still remains entertaining because Pappachan’s adept direction, his cast’s appeal and his tech team’s sophistication keep the thrills going when all else falters. The atmospherics, the haunting ugliness of that prison complex and the suspense hold out enough excitement to make this a watchable albeit flawed film.

Rating (out of five stars): **

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	138 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/swathanthriyam-ardharathriyil-movie-review-the-angamaly-diaries-team-returns-with-a-fun-but-flawed-jailbreak-flick-4441207.html

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