Cinema Review

Orul Naal Varum: Recreating the Sreenivasan-Mohanlal Magic

By

Bhawani Cheerath Rajagopalan

Early July a much awaited film came to the theatres in Kerala. The reasons for the wait were many: the Mohanlal-Sreenivasan chemistry was back in form, we were told. Moreover, T K Rajeev Kumar is directing the film and M G Sreekumar dons a new hat as music director. To further pique the potential viewers’ interest there was a hullabaloo in the press by a Calicut resident, accusing the scenarist, Sreenivasan, of having lifted his script. This set the matters off to the familiar trail of court cases and the staying of the film’s release.

So, what does ‘Oru Naal Varum’ offer the Malayalee cineaste who has been waiting for a good film, not the arty variety but pure mainstream cinema? Is it a laugh-riot, or one of those ‘well begun but not necessarily well concluded’ films? Well it has all the dialogues that, by proxy, target the corrupt, nepotism-infected, red-tape bound society we are reconciling ourselves to. But has it the potential to slake our thirst for a ‘good watchable film’? It is good in parts.

The main plot is woven around Gopikrishnan (Sreenivasan) as the incorruptible Assistant Town Planning Officer and Kolapully Sukumaran (Mohanlal) a middleclass householder who is desperately trying to get the blueprint of his new home approved. ‘Approval’ is not easy to come by. Delays, redundant building laws and the sanctioning officer who projects the ‘holier than thou’ attitude – all these manage to send people running round in circles.

If that is the broad outline, it’s the waiting hall of the Corporation that gives you a picture-perfect view of Kerala’s ‘clean’ dealings. You have fixers who will get you permits, fake marriage certificates, and demolish buildings, all because you can lubricate the right palms.

The Malayalee parents’ obsession with engineering and medical professions for their wards creating the need to accumulate amounts as large as 40 or 50 lacs for a seat in the right medical college can only be achieved if you hand over your backbone to the businessman-bureaucrat-quotation gangs-politician combine. Sreenivasan does a double whammy; he outwits intelligence and enforcement bureaus because there are employees who brief the nexus of every move. Yes, these sequences receive claps from the stalls. Is that not proof enough that it touches a chord somewhere?

On the personal front, Mohanlal is a single parent bringing up his daughter. The court sessions where Meera’s (Sameera Reddy) advocate and Mohanlal’s advocate try scoring against one another is a peek into the now increasing niche segment of family courts, divorce and custody disputes. The couple has a perplexed look when the lawyers trade accusations, because they seem to be talking about events which the couple do not know of.

Towards the end of the film you realise that T K Rajeev Kumar has taken you through the nasty side of the state which has PQLI quotient that matches those of the Scandinavian nations!

The film is watchable; and for us who were put through the TV reviews and interviews of the director, and the promos, it can be a little disappointing, because the punch is missing. Probably a lesser cast and director would have sent this film into the dustbin of film history – unsung and unknown.

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