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Release
date:
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Kerala: December 21, 2018. Delhi: December 21, 2018.
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Director:
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Sathyan Anthikad
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Cast:
Language:
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Fahadh Faasil,
Nikhila Vimal, Devika Sanjay, Anju Kurien, Sreenivasan, K.P.A.C. Lalitha
Malayalam with
some Bengali and German
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Sometimes I want to
wrap Malayalam cinema in a big, warm bear hug and plant affectionate, grateful
kisses on its cheeks. I felt this way for the nth time in my life this weekend
as I sat in a packed hall in Gurgaon watching Sathyan Anthikad’s Njan Prakashan, a life-affirming film
with a life-as-it-happens tone that ends a largely disappointing 2018 on a high
for the Malayalam industry a.k.a. Mollywood.
In a Facebook post
earlier this year, Anthikad had described Prakashan as “a typical Malayali
youth of the sort we see all around us”. Quite appropriately, at that point the
film was even titled Malayali.
Contemporary commercial Malayalam cinema tends to normalise the ways of young
men in Kerala who hang about doing nothing but blame their fate on the state,
who perennially view women with suspicion yet long for girlfriends and wives,
who want marriage although they do not financially support themselves, who
claim victimhood if women choose not to be with them (“avalu chadichallo da,” she betrayed me, being a constant refrain
about women who merely said no), who prefer unemployment to work they consider
menial or unmacho, and are obsessed with going abroad even if it means doing
jobs in other countries that they would refuse to do in theirs.
Njan Prakashan’s hero possesses several of these
characteristics, but is not shown assuming – in typical Mollywood style – that
all women are potential traitors. He simply dehumanises them, as he dehumanises
pretty much everyone around him, seeing them all as nothing but passports to a
vaguely envisioned, financially secure future. The difference between this film
and regular mainstream cinema is that the writing does not romanticise the
leading man’s misbehaviour in any way. The fellow’s dishonesty often leads to
laugh-out-loud circumstances but the dishonesty per se is not treated as funny.
The Kerala media is
full of the news that Njan Prakashan reunites the legendary hit combination of Anthikad and actor-writer Sreenivasan
after a gap of 16 years. It also reunites the director and actor Fahadh Faasil
for the first time since their box-office success with 2013’s Oru Indian Pranayakatha. In a sense,
that film’s roguish Aymanam Sidharthan spills over into Njan Prakashan’s protagonist who also bears marginal shades of the
thief played by Faasil in Dileesh Pothan’s Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum (2017) and the scamp he was in Venu’s Carbon this year.
But he is more than
that because Anthikad and Sreenivasan make sure he is more. He is not the
benign crook he appears to be courtesy Faasil’s deceptive look of wide-eyed
innocence, and in fact, he is much more than that “typical Malayali youth”
Anthikad spoke of. That he is untruthful and untrustworthy is clear early on,
but the way he treats his ex-girlfriend Salomi (Nikhila Vimal) proves that
he is callous and calculating too.
Prakashan is a
laggard who changes his name on a whim to P.R. Akash to be his idea of cool, a
qualified nurse who refuses to practise his profession under various pretexts,
a fellow with his head in the clouds who reflexively stretches his arm around
his head to reach for his nose instead of simply lifting his hand to his face.
At some point in
his interactions with Salomi it becomes evident that this frustrating man is so
used to his twisted, over-smart thinking that he does not take the straight
path not only because he does not want to, but because he genuinely no longer
sees it.
Njan Prakashan inhabits familiar Anthikad
territory yet within the familiar, the director manages to unearth the
refreshing and the new. It is hard to explain what the film is about because it
is not about anything in particular, yet it is about anything that matters –
life, death and the relationships that come in between.
Everything about Njan Prakashan is understated, from the
lessons it offers the central character, to the throwaway line in a fleeting
scene that takes a swipe at Kerala’s political parties, Shaan Rahman’s sweet
melodies, and S. Kumar’s camerawork that zooms in and out of picture postcard settings
with a casualness underlining the everydayness of Kerala’s beauty that locals
are likely to take for granted just as human beings take for granted the
beauty that the cosmos routinely sends our way.
The other striking
aspect of Njan Prakashan is the
manner in which it looks at “the other”. The fervent Christian family, for
instance, is amusing but not caricatured. And the Bengali migrant labourers Prakashan’s
mentor Gopalji coordinates, though not fleshed out as definable
characters in the storyline, are spared the casual parochialism that sometimes
rears its ugly head in commercial Mollywood – instead, they are treated with
affection and respect, a mark of which is the fact that Anthikad goes so far as
to include an entire Bengali song in the soundtrack with Faasil visible among
these impoverished, hard-working men.
The star is in top
form as Prakashan. His personality lends itself well to the Common Person he
has played in so many films. His skill is what enables him to distinguish each
of his Everyman performances from the other. Here he portrays the busyness of
Prakashan’s mind without underlining it unnecessarily, is hilarious and
poignant by turns, and journeys chameleon-like from unthinkingly cruel to
humane in an utterly convincing fashion.
The writing of the
women characters is even more interesting. The conceptualisation of Salomi, in
particular, is outstanding. (Alert: some
people may consider these questions spoilers, I do not) Was she reduced to
tears of joy on discovering that her feelings were reciprocated by a man
she loved or was she shocked at the extent of his opportunism and his apparent
conviction that she would not detect it? Was she really unable to understand
his overtures and jokes, or was the joke on him? Was she mocking him or
genuinely dense? Had he really managed to double-cross her or had she seen
through him and allowed herself to be taken for a ride? I am being
intentionally obtuse in this paragraph to avoid spoilers. Come back and read
these questions after watching Njan
Prakashan, and you might see that the screenplay leaves Salomi completely
and entirely open to viewer interpretation. Nikhila Vimal is excellent in
capturing the intentional ambiguity of the writing.
Devika Sanjay and
Anju Kurien are just as good playing Teena and Shruthi respectively, the other
two women who have a crucial impact on Prakashan.
Through his
interactions with these three, his eyes gradually open up to a world beyond his
earlier selfish, narrow gaze, with some help from Gopalji played by Sreenivasan
himself. This is a world in which Prakashan a.k.a.
P.R. Akash cannot assume he has the upper hand with his deceptions since others
may well have a trick or two up their sleeves too, and where the greatest
trickster of all is life itself.
At different points
in Anthikad’s controlled narrative I found myself bewildered by Prakashan,
exasperated, giggling, smiling and sobbing my heart out. What a wonderful end
to 2018 this is.
Rating
(out of five stars): ****
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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131 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
Poster
courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/FahadhFaasil/
