Prithviraj Sukumaran

City of God – Lijo Jose Pellissery’s moving hyperlink New Generation Malayalam film may have been ahead of its time

moviemavengal11 Comments

City-of-God1

After seeing the fantastic Malayalam film Angamaly Diaries last week, I couldn’t wait to seek out director Lijo Jose Pellissery’s other films.  City of God was the one recommended to seek out first, and glory be, it’s on Google Play for rental and purchase.  At $4.99 to buy, I snatched it right up.

City of God is part of the New Generation of Malayalam films with a hyperlink non-linear narrative of four interlocking stories.  It came out within months of Traffic, the first of the new wave Malayalam cinema, but City of God was pulled within a week of release.  It may have been a bit ahead of its time.  It felt much grittier and more violent than Traffic, and isn’t really suited to a broad family audience.  I felt Traffic relied a bit too much on the audience’s familiarity of all the actors in that multi-starrer, and I didn’t really get to know any character that well.  I liked City of God much more.

A signature of Malayalam New Wave films is an accident, and coincidences that bring people together and set off the events of the film.  City of God starts with a horrific car crash.  Prithviraj is driving a car that crashes into a street light pole, after hitting a motorscooter with a young couple.  There’s also a van full of toughs that pile out to confront Prithviraj after the crash, and then we flash back.  We see the events of the film from several perspectives, replaying various key scenes from the point of view of different characters.  This is a movie where you have to pay attention a bit to catch on to what is going on.

wall_1024x768_4

Prithviraj is sort of a capo or enforcer for his rich friend Sony (Rajeev Pillai).  He gets lots of very cool fight scenes, mostly just kicking and punching his way out of various jams, but in the photo above wielding a firehose like a urumi sword!  Prithviraj looked pretty bulked up, and this film was around the time of the filming of Aiyyaa.  Hubba hubba.  It was super fun to see Prithviraj be a sort of gangster tough guy, smacking people down first, and asking questions later.

Sony is obssessed with a young actress, Surya (Rima Kallingal).  He had a romance with her in the past, but his parents made him abandon her, and he’s trying to get her back, even though she’s married to an abusive husband.  Surya is a big actress, and one of the big musical numbers is cleverly one she’s doing for a film within the film.  The director was very clever about the songs.  There  was this one during a film shoot, one big one at a wedding, and then a couple more playing on a radio and so on.

There’s a complicated land deal going on between some corrupt business types, Sony, and some mafia.  Prithviraj is sent out to “deal” with one guy, and his wife then vows revenge.

city-of-god-malayalam-movie-stills (73)

My favorite story line involved the migrant Tamil laborers who were working on the building project for Sony.  My reader Mohzin let me know that half this film is in Tamil, including half the songs!  He said that the Malayalam audience didn’t need subtitles for the Tamil speaking parts.  The love story of Swarnavel (Indrajith) and Marathakam (Pavarthy) is just so wonderful.  It’s the heart of the whole film.  Marathakam has fled Tamil Nadu and her abusive husband.  Swarnavel obviously loves her, but holds back as she is already married.  Marathakam’s friend Lakshmi (Rohini from Baahubali!) urges her to marry again, but Rohini has other ideas than poor Swarnavel.  She tells both the other thinks of them as either brother or sister, and so Marathakam, heart broken, agrees to marry a supposedly wealthy man.  Then comes my all time favorite scene of the whole film.  The  cops come and arrest her husband, and then she finds the drunk Swarnavel to chastise him for letting her marry this thief.  Then the sparks just FLY once they realize they don’t view each other as siblings AT ALL!  When he breaks off her mangalsutra — so hot!  Another favorite thing is that she won’t kiss him as he’s drunk, and sobers him up with a bucket full of water over his head!

Roh

This is the couple from the opening scene accident who were on the motor scooter.  Why they were so frantically racing on that bike gradually is revealed.

city-of-god-malayalam-movie-_5_

Prithviraj doesn’t get a full on romance in the film, but he does rescue a damsel in distress and gives her very swoony longing looks through the rearview mirror.  Mostly, in this film, he just gets to kick ass in very cool fights, and he seems much more savvy and smart than anyone around him.  But then Prithviraj usually does seem like the smartest one in the room.

The tone of the film can change dramatically from scene to scene,as we’re going from one character’s point of view to the next.  There are several side characters who have comedic moments — quite a few sort of comedy uncle characters.  The main actors were all pretty good, but the guy playing Sony didn’t make much of an impression on me.  Prithviraj, Pavarthy and Indrajith were the standouts. Indrajith stole the whole movie, in my opinion.  I don’t really remember him from Classmates, but he’s in Amen, which I’m going to try to watch next.  Pavarthy looks so completely different from any other character I’ve seen her play, that I honestly did not recognize her until I saw her name in the end credits.  Once I went back and rewatched that HOT love scene song, I could tell it was her, maybe with darker makeup?  Quite the different look than in Bangalore Days or Charlie!

The cinematography was quite interesting.  Some cool different angles to many shots, and great editing.  The fights didn’t feel quite as intimate as the recent Angamaly Diaries.  There was a steadicam being shook up, I guess to  imitate the Bourne films, but it just made me dizzy.  It worked in Angamaly Diaries, and didn’t work for me here in the same way.

As I said earlier, I didn’t really enjoy the hyperlink in Traffic, as there were too many shallow stories that weren’t developed.  Here, there were four key stories that interconnected, and the characters were more fleshed out.  This film can be gritty and violent like Kammatti Paadam or Angamaly Diaries.  Maybe the audience 6 years ago wasn’t quite ready for an innovative film like this.  Angamaly Diaries is still the better film, but it was really fascinating to see this director developing his signature style.

star_rating_4_of_5

Ezra – A Malayalam Horror movie about a Jewish dybbuk that I found hilarious

moviemavengal8 Comments

ezraA new Prithviraj movie is worth a 40 minute drive, and his latest is Ezra which finally came to a few US theaters this weekend (it released in Kerala on Feb. 10).  Margaret of Don’t Call It Bollywood and I met to see a matinee, and the movie was playing at a theater that doesn’t usually play Malayalam movies, so there was a sparse crowd.

I didn’t see the 2012 horror film The Possession, but remembered the trailer with the family finding an antique box that turns out to house a dybbuk, an almost demon like spirit that possesses the body of a living person (from Jewish folk lore).  The Yiddish word that dybbuk is derived from is “cling”.  There was even a handy featurette for the The Possession movie explaining dybbuks:

 

The Malayalam film Ezra, directed by Jay K, is not a direct copy of The Possession but it is obviously inspired by it.  The Possession film, in turn, is inspired by The Exorcist, as the possessed person is a young girl.

ezra-movie-review-rating

In Ezra, the possessed person is Prithviraj’s young wife, played by Priya Anand, who buys the dybbuk box while shopping for their new house in Kerala.  The couple have moved to Kerala from Mumbai for Prithviraj’s job with a nuclear facility.  Priya has a strained relationship with her parents because she married a Christian.  The box has ended up in the antique shop, because the last Jewish person has died in Cochin.  One of the most ancient Jewish diaspora communities in the world used to be in Kerala, but as this article says, the numbers are down to the double digits.  That last Jew dying releases the curse put on the dybbuk in the box.

bg-video-11132016105523am

I don’t generally seek out horror films.  They’re not my thing, but it’s Prithviraj.  Horror movies don’t need to have a big budget to be scary.  This one relies on the usual dark haunted house kind of jumps and scares.  It’s just not tight enough of a movie.  There’s a lot of excess time spent establishing that Prithviraj and Priya are a loving couple (song montage!), and then a lengthy back story on how the dybbuk got in the box.  Jay K has used a lovers prevented from marriage story which is similar to the one in The Dybbuk Russian/Yiddish play from early in the 20th century, but he makes it interfaith, to mirror our modern couple.

ezra-malayalam-movie
Yes, that’s a real hamsa Jewish amulet still used to ward off the evil eye.

I have several issues with Ezra.  I did jump a few times, but it wasn’t scary enough for me, and the narrative should have been tightened up.  Horror films shouldn’t be two and a half hours long.

But the biggest thing is that the movie made me laugh, which I don’t think was the intention.  I didn’t grow up Jewish, but my husband is, and I’m on the board of our synagogue.  The way the rabbis and the Jewish people in this movie dressed made me giggle hysterically.

ezra-review-2-jpg-image-784-410

For someone who only knows Jews from Seinfeld and Woody Allen movies, I guess dressing up rabbis in Catholic bishop vestments seemed perfectly logical.  How else are Mayalalis to know that the rabbis characters are clergy if they don’t have white priest collars?   And the tallit (the prayer shawls) are worn in the movie like sari scarves wrapped this way and that.

xrWUSid.jpg

For the record, rabbis in the US generally just wear suits and the small yarmulke skullcap, but Hassidic rabbis, who practice Kabbalah (mystic Jewish faith) would look like the below, and I actually found a Chabbad rabbi in Kerala.  Jay K, Google is a wonderful tool.

The exorcism scene made me laugh the hardest, because they had to drag in 10 random Jewish tourists to complete the ritual (yes, many Jewish prayers need a minyan of 10 Jewish men, so that’s real).  It was the random tourist thing with their weirdly draped prayer tallit that made me guffaw.  That, and the HUGE shofar horn the rabbi had to blow.

stop violence trio

Prithviraj, I love you, but your red eyes were much scarier in Stop Violence.

I have another bone to pick.  The flashback for the dybbuk’s story goes back to 1941, and Ezra’s father actually says that the Jews want to take over the world.  Argh.  Let’s think a moment just what was happening to the Jews in 1941.  Again, smh.  That deserves a double Seth.

seth2.gif  xrwusid

There were some Jewish touches they got right, like an older rabbi gives a priestly blessing over some kids, a hand gesture familiar to Star Trek fans, because Leonard Nimoy used the Cohen hand position for Spock:

Spock_vulcan-salute.png

I could see how The Possession would have been creepier just because a child was the one possessed.  I wouldn’t urge you to race out to the theater to catch Ezra.  It’s not Prithviraj’s best, and it’s not the greatest horror film.  It’s an okay timepass once it comes on streaming services.

star_rating_2_of_5

 

 

2016 – My Movie Year

moviemavengal6 Comments
CFday25-580.jpg

 

Letterboxd.com is where I keep a diary of all the films I watch, including films I rewatch.  They have a very cool year in review feature.  I was inspired by this Matt Bowes post about all the media he consumed in 2016, to make this post.  I’ll just talk about the movies here, but I love how he listed all the comics, podcasts, etc., too!

So, according to Letterboxd, I saw 222 films in 2016, which includes short films and rewatches.  That averages out to over 18 a month, and over 4 a week.  Weeks like our visit to the Sundance Film Festival, where we saw 30 films (including shorts) certainly help to bump up that average, but I am an avid movie viewer no matter how you slice it.  I just started this blog in April, but I had been posting short reviews on most films to Letterboxd before that.

2016 started with The Hateful Eight (which I didn’t love) and ended with Zootopia, which I did love.  There were mostly older films, but I did watch 82 films that were released in 2016.  It won’t surprise any of my readers that fully half were films from India, 111 of them.

Nassar-atadu-771x414.jpg

Interestingly, the actor with the most films I saw was not Shahrukh Khan (who was second with 12), but Nasser with 14!  That man is in EVERYTHING!

????????????????????????????????????

This year I discovered Telegu cinema megastar Mahesh Babu (9 movies) and Malayalam cinema star  Prithviraj.  I’ve got a stack of more Prithviraj movies to watch — the man has made so many!  I’m amused that Prithviraj’s early film Stop Violence – which I watched without subs! – Letterboxd lists as my “most obscure movie”.

The highest rated (by people on Letterboxd) film I saw in 2016 is Moonlight, which is heading to the Oscars.  The lowest rated is Yoga Hosers.  Yeah.  Have to pretty much agree with that — but Assassin’s Creed is giving it a run for it’s money on that score. Yoga Hosers is just crazy silly (Brat Nazis!) but it was worth it to go to the midnight premiere just to see Kevin Smith.

img_3346

2016 will always be in my memory, because this was the year that a movie I helped get made premiered at Sundance.

how-to-tell-youre-a-douchebag

 How To Tell You’re A Douchebag is the movie I saw the most times this year, as I attended screenings of the film, and showed it to friends and family.  I’m so proud of writer/director Tahir Jetter’s achievement.  It was bought by BET and aired this summer.  You can watch it on iTunes, Amazon video or Google play now!

Top films from 2016 I saw in Hollywood and Indian cinema coming soon.

Oozham – My first Prithviraj movie in the theater!

moviemavengal7 Comments

oozham-reasons-to-watch-07-1473255251

I was excited that Prithviraj’s Onam Malayalam release Oozham [Turn] was coming to Chicago, but I was forewarned that it wasn’t his best film.  I didn’t care.  I was still excited to see Prithviraj on the big screen for the first time.  I have not yet seen writer director Jeethu Joseph‘s previous films Drishyam (Mohanlal) or Memories (Prithviraj).  From the reviews I’ve read, and especially this savage 1/2 star take down by Anna Vetticad, the disappointment in Oozham is particularly acute because Jeethu Joseph’s previous films have been so great.

I didn’t hate Oozham like Anna, but I certainly don’t love it either.  It’s okay — and with Prithviraj, I also would expect better than okay.  The man has made what, 100 films?  I’ve only been watching the cream of the crop, and they can’t all be at the level of Mumbai Police.

Spoilers ahead warning –

The set up of this revenge film is fantastic.  Oozham means turn — and Prithviraj turns the tables on the man who had his family killed, because he has special skills.  Not a particular set of skills like Liam Neeson in Taken.khhbgfe

One special skill — Prithviraj’s job in the US is as an explosives expert engineer (building demolition and such.)  And it’s super handy that his adopted brother is a white hat hacker!  That is a hook that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, in Hollywood or Indian cinema, having the good guy be an expert in plastic explosives.

The film starts with a van full of bad guys with guns (almost a clown car level amount) who are in search of someone, and there is a small explosion when they try to open an apartment door.  Prithviraj is behind that door!  The film cuts between this action sequence of Prithviraj on the run, and fighting with groups of these chasers, throughout the happy family scenes, the setup, and most of the film, frankly.  Our director is too clever by half, as he uses a visual transition every blinkin’ time – focusing on a shoe in the chase, and then a shoe in the happy family scene, etc.  Every. Single. Transition.

prithviraj-balachandra-menon-neeraj-madhav-488-1-551x400

Prithviraj is visiting his family for a few weeks for his sister’s engagement.  He’s the oldest, and besides his sister is an adopted Muslim brother (who lived next door, and who lost both parents.)  Prithviraj’s dad is a health inspector, and very busy with some sort of virus outbreak and always rushing off looking worried.  He has a police officer friend who drops by for dinner with his younger sister to set her up with Prithviraj.

qe2juhhejfacd

The happy family scenes dragged quite a bit, but I really liked the relationship Prithviraj had with his younger sister.  Prithviraj was, of course, the best actor in the whole film.  I liked how flustered he got being set up with Divya Pillai as Gayathri.  And in the physical fights he looked like a guy who wasn’t necessarily an expert fighter, but you can totally believe he is clever enough for all the plans that follow the family tragedy.

Once back in the US after the engagement, he’s Skyping with his sister, when he witnesses her murder and the murder of his parents.  The bad guys look right into the computer screen, but don’t know they are on camera as she had minimized the Skype window.  Prithviraj makes you feel his horror and helplessness as he is thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.

oozham-movie-08

The cop friend is killed the same day by a “terrorist attack”.  Prithviraj, his adopted brother and the sister of the cop think that coincidence very strange, and they get into their father’s email and piece together who had a reason to kill him.  The villain is head of a big pharmaceutical company that the father suspected was putting a virus into drinking water (this part was very vague and not explained.)

13729170_503014473240887_671981184938223893_n

Watching the revenge plot unfold was the best part of the film.  They do try to approach the police, but of course one of the killers is a rogue corrupt cop.  There were some very clever sequences, as they pick off the conspirators one by one, using controlled explosions.

The villain (Jayprakash) to be honest wasn’t that scary, and he has two lines in English that Anna Vetticad calls out as inexcusable.  He hires his own explosives expert, Captain, to protect him and find out who his adversary is.  Captain (Pasupathy, who was the rebel terrorist leader in the Tamil Kannathil Muthamittal – A Peck on the Cheek) has failed to protect someone close to Jayprakash and he says “How Dare!” and the subtitles say How Dare You both times.  One time I could excuse that they didn’t have time to reshoot an emotional scene, but twice?  The subtitles were pretty bad, but the English sprinkled throughout the film wasn’t good either.

My main issue with the film is the pacing.  I can give a slow buildup in the first half.  The inter-cutting with the chase/action fight scenes was pretty good.  But the film should have moved at a swift pace in the second half as the action heated up, and it lagged.  I really did like the ending, except for one thing.

My beef is that the villains are of course killed — but the virus that they spread in the water or what have you?  That issue is completely ignored in the conclusion.  You had a hacker for cripes sake!  He hacks all their emails to track the villains’ movements — how about sending all the incriminating emails to the press or the authorities?  In a Hollywood film, I think that would have been a major part of the revenge plot.

So, I wouldn’t necessarily run to a theater to see this film but it would be worth a rental.

star_rating_3_of_5

Margaret of Don’t Call It Bollywood and I saw it together.  She agreed that Oozham was just “okay”.

Ayalum Njanum Thammil – Prithviraj in the story of a young doctor and his mentor

moviemavengal13 Comments

ayalum-njanum-thammil37436Ayalum Njanum Thammil (Between Him and Me) is a 2012 Malayalam film starring Prithviraj as a young doctor and the relationship he has with his mentor and teacher.  It has a tragic romance in it, but the main focus of the film is Prithviraj as Ravi and his first job out of medical school in a rural hospital.

I’m on a bit of a Prithviraj kick at the moment.  I am absolutely amazed that this actor is only 33.  He’s made over 80 films!  He’s just so great in any film that he is in.  He has a worthy actor to play against in Ayalam Njanum Thammil as director and award winning actor Pratep Pothen plays his mentor, Dr. Samuel.  I really loved Pratep Pothen in this role.

ayalum-njanum-thammil38684

Lal Rose, who also directed Prithviraj in the classic Classmates, uses a similar flashback structure in Ayalam Njanum Thammil that he did in Classmates.  We start in the present day, and Prithviraj is a dedicated doctor at a large city hospital.  He’s brought in to consult on a young girl that needs heart surgery, but he can’t convince the parents to approve the surgery.  He does the surgery anyway, and the girl dies.  A mob forms outside the hospital, and Prithviraj gets a call, and leaves out the back way, but gets in a car accident and vanishes.  His friends and family try to reconstruct where he could have gone, and through the flashbacks we learn about how he became the dedicated to maybe an extreme surgeon he is in the present day.

z5xR4D7

His best friend relates how they nearly flunked out of med school together, and even tried to cheat on tests.  They all thought it was a big lark.  Prithviraj’s family is Christian, and he had a long term relationship with his Muslim classmate Sainu (Samvrutha Sunil).

Prithviraj is given an ultimatum by the school dean.  Pay the rest of his tuition bill, or serve as a rural doctor for two years.  He’s confident his father will pay, but his father thinks doing some growing up away from home will be good for him.

ayalum-njanum-thammil-prithviraj-prathap-pothen

Dr. Samuel (Pratep Pothen) takes Prithviraj (Dr. Ravi) under his wing, and shows Prithviraj just how much he has left to learn in his medical education.  One of my favorite moments comes when Dr. Samuel accidentally calls Dr. Ravi Rahul which is his estranged son’s name, showing that he’s come to think of Prithviraj as a son.  There’s another young woman doctor at the rural hospital, Dr. Supriya (Remya Nambeesan) who becomes his fast friend.

Prithviraj has a run in with a local cop with a car accident that comes back to haunt him later.  His love Sainu is about to be married off by her parents, and Prithviraj has arranged through his friend to meet her back at the medical school to get a registry marriage.  But he’s delayed by helping Dr. Supriya with a touch and go patient.  When he finally starts driving at 3 am, there’s a roadblock and the cop won’t let him through.  How he retaliates against the cop later when the cop has an ill family member is a very tense scene in the movie, and a key moment in his relationship with his mentor, Dr. Samuel.

hqdefault (2)

I don’t think this movie will go down as one of my favorite Prithviraj performances, but it was very good.  He believably goes from mature competent dedicated super surgeon in present day, to madcap goof off student in the flashbacks.  Prithviraj’s acting carries us through the journey of Dr. Ravi growing as a person and a caring physician.

The ending is not what I would call happy, but more wistful.  It’s not the typical tidy ending one usually expects.

Three and a half stars out of five.

Read Margaret’s review of Ayalam Njanum Thammil on Don’t Call It Bollywood where she compares it to Dr. Kildare.

 

Aiyyaa – How can a movie be so sublime and so awful all at the same time

moviemavengal1 Comment

I love Rani Mukherji so Aiyyaa was on my watchlist, but it moved right up to the top after I saw this video:

I have only seen a few Prithviraj films, and my impression was of a very good serious actor in Ennu Ninte Moideen, Classmates and Mumbai Police or even Aurangzeb.  But I hadn’t seen him like this:

aiyyaa-4

Aga-Bai-Aiyyaa

Aga-Bai-Aiyyaa-5

Holy moly.  (Is it getting hot in here?)

Aiyyaa means Oh, My!  Aiyyaa was a comeback film for Rani, but was Prithviraj’s Bollywood Debut.  (He made Aurangzeb around the same time.)  The film was produced by Anurag Kashyap and was directed by Sachin Kundalkar.

Rani is Menaskshi, a young woman who loves zany Bollywood films, the more over the top the better.  The songs in Aiyyaa are her fantasies.  She imagines herself at the beginning as Madhuri, Juhi and Sridevi.  Her parents want to arrange her marriage, but first she gets a job at the local art college.

07_CP_Prithviraj_2_1229714f

She is struck speechless by the appearance of art student Surya, and is entranced by his smell.  (The director Sachin Kundalkar, had done a previous Marathi film about the senses.)  She asks around to learn more about her crush Surya.  He always has red eyes so the rumor is that he’s on drugs or spends all his nights drinking.  He barely ever speaks to Rani, and is very mysterious and standoffish.  She finds him sleeping in doorways and hallways.  She knows he speaks Tamil to the chaiwallah boy, who she bribes to teach her to speak Tamil.  “How do I say I like dark skin people, not fair skin?”  The chaiwallah recommends she watch the Tamil Midnight Masala TV channel.

Rani dreams she’s in a Southern Masala film, and we get this insane number that made me just laugh in delight:

As Prithviraj said in an interview — it’s Bollywood’s crazy view of Southern films.  What I absolutely love about this song sequence is that I’ve never before seen Prithviraj so silly, and you can just see him going for it with gusto.

aiyyaa-16

He just has this crazy grin through the whole song.  They rhyme humping and thumping, and he bobs his head following her waist gyrations.  Prithviraj’s having his own fun spoofing regional song sequences.  Having seen several South Indian films, I felt like I was in on the joke.

rani-mukerji-and-subodh-bhave-in-movie-stills-of-aiyyaa-560x374-e1433044139338

Rani’s eccentric family have placed a matrimonial ad and she grits her teeth through meetings with several suitors.  One very nice average guy she reluctantly agrees to see again.  He’s kind and sweet, but he just doesn’t float her boat like Surya – who seemingly doesn’t even know she exists.  While shopping for wedding saris, she has the lustful Aga Bai fantasy song from the top of the review.

0

I wouldn’t have minded if Surya had just been a fantasy and she ended up with the nice average Maadhav (Subodh Bhave).  On the day of her engagement, she escapes the house and follows Surya.  Finally she discovers the source of his intoxicating scent, and they connect.  The romance is just so swoon worthy.  It’s sublime.

But unfortunately, Prithviraj, Subodh and Rani aren’t the only people in the film.  Rani’s family is at first amusingly eccentric.  In the first half, it’s not so bad, but her brother character especially in the second half just goes off into crazyland.  The very worst character is her co-worker Maina, who has big buck teeth and comes to work with vodka in a bear shaped water bottle.  She’s not only un-funny, she’s just blatantly offensive.  The writer-director was going for zany, and he veered too far on the wacky spectrum.  You know it’s bad when Johnny Lever would have brought subtlety to this film. If this film instead had had the comedic tone of something like Dum Laga Ke Haisha it would have been perfect.   It was just so uneven lurching between the extreme awful comedy and then the swooniness of the romance.

I loved the romance bits of this film so much I have rewatched it already, but I fast-forwarded through all the family scenes and the Maina bits.  Rani in her fantasies in Aiyyaa reminded me a bit of Amelie, that magical realism French film:

 

prithvi-aiyyaa

So dear reader, I have trouble whole-heartedly recommending this film.  The film has a great message about cross-cultural romance and even with a male director is interested in the female gaze and point of view.  If you’re a big fan of Rani like I am, you’ll agree that she was fantastic as Meenakshi.  If you love Prithviraj as I am beginning to, you’ll love seeing him be almost Mr. Darcy like, and also having zany fun being a sex symbol.  If you can stand to watch not so great films for the transcendent good parts, just do yourself a favor and keep your finger on the fast-forward button.

Three stars out of five.  Aiyyaa is available on ErosNow, which is where I watched it.

 

Mumbai Police – Prithviraj’s stunning performance in this film gobsmacked me

moviemavengal14 Comments

Prithviraj Mumbai Police Movie Photo

I was absolutely gobsmacked by the amazing performance of Prithviraj in the Malayalam crime mystery drama Mumbai Police.  I had seen Prithviraj in a stellar if unflashy supporting role in the Hindi film Aurangzeb, also as a cop.  Then I saw Classmates as I was told how influential it is in modern Malayalam cinema.  He was very solid also in the romantic drama Ennu Ninte Moideen.  I had been impressed by his body of work, but nothing prepared me for his incredible performance in Mumbai Police.  Essentially, he’s almost playing a double role.

mumbai-police-malayalam-movie-teaser-2

In the opening scene, Tony (Prithviraj) is driving down an empty street at night in his police jeep.  He is speaking into a phone saying, “I have found the culprit.” in Malayalam and then repeats it in English.  Suddenly a refrigerator falls off a truck in front of him, and he swerves and the jeep rolls over.  The next scene has a bewildered scarred Tony in a car with Farhan who tells Tony he is his best friend.  Tony has lost all his memory, and this fellow cop friend and the doctor are the only people who know that.  Tony was in the middle of the investigation of the murder of a fellow policeman and the political and press pressure is intense for the case to be solved.

Tony doesn’t know who is friend and who is foe.  After Farhan drops him off at his apartment, Tony is attacked by several men, and is stunned that he can quickly dispatch all of them.  He asks his doctor if he can really return to work, and she has him solve a sudoku puzzle.  She explains that before the accident he was “Person A”, and after he lost his memory he is “Person B”.  He may have different likes and preferences as Person B, but all the skills he learned as Person A, any languages he learned, he will still know.  She brings up that Steve Wozniak lost his memory the same way for five weeks after a plane accident.  (All the computers in the film are Macs).

MOVIE-3-6-5-13

So, Tony returns to work, bluffing his way through his interactions with subordinates and poring over the investigation notes.  He learns the murder victim was his good friend Aryan, and Tony, Farhan and Aryan were known as the “Mumbai Police” since they had served there together before returning to Kerala.

tumblr_nimcqiE8UZ1qzheh0o1_1280

The films Memento and Ghajini deal with short term memory loss, but Mumbai Police reminded me more of the old Harrison Ford movie Regarding Henry.  In Regarding Henry, Harrison Ford plays a hard charging lawyer who loses his memory and has almost a complete personality change after being shot.  He’s two different people and his family has to adjust to the “new” Henry.

Tony at first wants to get back to what he was before, but in the course of reinvestigating the murder, he discovers that he was quite the asshole. He was confident and arrogant, with a certain swagger, but his staff walked on eggshells around him waiting for him to explode.  There is a scene where Tony is questioning a possible witness, and grabs the guy’s wife and manhandles her, molesting her in front of everyone.  His female subordinate looks on in complete disgust at his abuse of power.  And we in the audience had been falling for this super competent cop, and then his darkness slaps us in the face.

Gradually, Tony finds that the murder happened from a specific kind of sniper gun from a nearby building to the murder parade ground.  Aryan was about to be decorated with a medal for bravery and his speech is cut short by the bullet to the heart.  Tony was the one who actually deserved the medal, but was letting Aryan take the credit.  Tony’s team lose confidence in him because they can see that he had steered the investigation to protect someone.  And you sense, that maybe it was Tony himself.  But WHY??  It makes no sense!

mumbai_police_ver2_xlg (1)

The last 20 minutes of the film are shocking.  Yes, the film has been out for three years, but I’m not going to spoil it, in case you, dear reader, have not seen it yet.  I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open.  It’s Six Sense or Crying Game level shocking and I wouldn’t spoil the reveal in those films either.  Prithviraj in those final scenes had a level of acting that was just so beyond anything I had ever seen him do.   He is raw, completely vulnerable and just devastating.

The script of this film is put together like clockwork, written by the team Bobby-Sanjay who also wrote Traffic.  A lot of Indian films can feel like they have slap dash scripts, or maybe had no written script upon filming (ahem), but this was almost like a Hitchcock film in how it was so carefully crafted.  Solid directing by  Rosshan Andrrew, and a nice moody soundtrack.  The supporting players are all good, but none really stood out to me as exceptional.  What is extraordinary is Prithviraj’s performance and he gave his all for this film.  Everyone needs to see this superb tour de force movie.

Four and a half stars out of five, and now one of my all-time favorite Malayalam films.

Only if you’ve already seen the film and know the surprise ending, read the Don’t Call It Bollywood analysis of the film which has tons of spoilers.

Ennu Ninte Moideen – Just as special a Malayalam film as I’d been told it would be

moviemavengal6 Comments

01SM_MOIDEEN_2603093g

Over and over, I’ve had the 2015 Malayalam film Ennu Ninte Moideen (Yours Truly Moideen) recommended to me.  It’s an incredible love story starring PrithViraj and Parvarthy.  And it is so incredible because it is a real life story of Moideen and Kanchanamala.

In 2006, director R.S. Vimal interviewed the real Kanchanamala and people who knew Moideen in the half hour long documentary Jalam Kond Murivetaval (or) One Who Was Wounded By Water

Kanchanamal wanted Prithviraj to play Moideen because she thought looked very much like him.

ennu-ninte-moideen_144344328040

Ennu Ninte Moideen is the tragic love story of an interfaith couple who were kept separate  by their families for years.  Moideen and Kanchanamala’s fathers were friends and each were land owners in Mukkam, Kerala.  Moideen’s father was a renowned Muslim leader, and Kanchanamala’s family were Hindu.  Kanchanamala and Moideen went to school together as children, but later Kanchanamala went away from her home to attend college.

As she was returning to college from a school vacation, the family car broke down and she was allowed to take the bus back to the college town (something she was normally not allowed to do).  On that bus, Moideen and Kanchanamala’s eyes met, and they fell in love.  It’s an adorable scene in the film.  Moideen sends a book of poetry to Kanchanamala and then they exchange secret letters.

She steals away from the college, and there is a beautiful love song in the rain.

 

In their courtship, Moideen and  Kanchanamala never even touch once.  When their families learn of their romance Moideen’s father throws him out of the house when he won’t go along with an arranged marriage.  Kanchanamala’s brothers and uncles react even more cruelly, and lock her up in the house.  She’s barely allowed to even leave her bedroom.

19-1442670699-ennu-ninte-moideen-review-5

They sneak letters to each other, and even come up with their own private language to communicate with each other.

1412161587_prithviraj

Moideen becomes a political activist, in opposition to his father’s politics.  He uses the campaign speaker car to speak his love to Kanchanamala.  Moideen’s father attacks him with a sword in the heat of an argument over Kanchanamala, and Kanchanamala’s relatives beat her to try to break her bond with Moideen.

The decades long devotion of Moideen and Kanchanamala would seem impossible to believe and like a fairy tale if it were not based on a real life story.

Finally, they decide to emigrate to America, but then a tragic accident happens.  I thought the director had hyped up what happened for dramatic effect, but the documentary showed the newspaper clippings!

Moideen’s mother has left Moideen’s rigid father in disgust after the sword attack, and she takes Kanchanamala into her home as Moideen’s widow.

Ennu Ninte Moideen is an extraordinary love story.  Tragic and very sad in the end, but still inspiring.  The acting is wondrous both from Prithviraj and Parvarthy.  Luminous soundtrack as well.

The real Kanchanamala criticized the director for changing parts of the story, but for a biopic, I think he was maybe almost too slavish to the true events and could have tightened up the narrative a bit.  Still, a magical romantic film about love that transcends religious and  cultural barriers.

Four stars out of five.

1412925463_ennu-ninte-moideen