MAYANADHI (2017) - Malayalam Movie Analysis
Director - Aashiq Abu
Cast- Tovino Thomas, Aishwarya Lekshmi
Being an enthusiast of films, it's a bit of a turn down that I have started watching films produced from the four leading south Indian industries from as late as 2019. But, in the past two years, these films are like ecstasies from Pandora's Box. Most of the films I have watched are either Tamil or Malayalam and few Telegu and Kannada , and but the Malayalam industry seems to me to be the most creatively diverse among all of them, with due respect to others. I have heard about Mayaanadhi earlier, but I was introduced to Aashiq Abu with the brilliant Virus. While that film was a macrocosmic perception of people affected by the Nipah virus, this is a microcosmic vision portraying the ideas of love, belief, trust and friendship through two characters. These two films are enough to understand the versatility of Aashiq Abu as a filmmaker.
This film is written as a slow burning story of betrayal and new found love, concerning Aparna and Mathan, two people who are sucked into the societal demeanors of a chance act. Mathan accidentally kills a police officer while fleeing with a huge amount of money. This leads to a cat and mouse plot development, but with a definite tone of redressal for a past act concerning the love of his life, Apu a.k.a Aparna. It's a love story with a deep implication on how the idea of being with a person affects each and every act of man. It's a story about the lasting impact of trust. It's a poetic rendition of unrequited love, where fatalism lies more in the emotional expression than in the fate of the characters. The final 7 minutes of the film give you a glance into an emotional depth which is unprecedented as far as the idea of togetherness is portrayed in the rest of the film. It's kind of a structural deviation, and the film builds up to that vantage point.
Tovino Thomas and Aishwarya Lekshmi are tailor made for the aforementioned characters, both in their outlooks and the respective performances. The sequence where Apu demands motivation from Mathan before her audition for an important role is performed with an intent which is rarely found in Indian mainstream films. This is actually true for each and every performance. Harish Uthaman is a name which is added to my list of impeccable performers. The sequence where he shows considerable disagreement to the ideas of his senior officer is an instance of perfect expressions put forward on screen. To add to the intensity of the film's outlook, there are cameos from Soubin Shahir and Lijo Jose Pellissery .
Rex Vijayan's compositions add to the intensity of the narrative, as does Saiju Sreedharan's edits and Jayesh Mohan's cinematography. I found a single flaw in the whole film. The red wine which Sameera wants to have changes to white wine when she actually has it. Maybe that was something which the team (mostly Sreedharan) overlooked, but that's too little a mistake to affect this impactful a narrative.
The film is currently streaming on SUN NXT, JioCinema and Vodafone Play. It's highly recommended.
Happy Reading.
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