Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam movie review: Mammootty and LJP shoulder a whimsical tale of re-awakenings

Cast: Mammootty, Ramya, Adithya Suresh, Ashokan, Rajesh Sharma, Vipin Atley, Ramya Pandian

Director: Lijo Jose Pellissery

Language: Malayalam and Tamil

In Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Churuli (2021), when a busload of rural folk crossed a rough-hewn bridge into a mountain village, they instantly transformed from mild-mannered, polite individuals into snarling, abusive creatures intimidating the visitors journeying with them. The situation is as dramatic if not more in Lijo’s markedly quieter new film Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (A Mid-Day Slumber)in which the protagonist metamorphoses into someone else as his bus drives by a Tamil Nadu hamlet near the state’s border with Kerala.

James (played by Mammootty) is a Malayali Christian on his way back from the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health in Velankanni. He stops the bus, strides into the home of a bewildered Tamilian Hindu family and claims to be their missing son Sundaram.

Two men of differing temperaments and tastes, different ethnic and religious identities – it’s a baffling, intriguing scenario.

James is a nill-tempered, snappish killjoy and a portrait in contrasts, which may explain why no one seems to dislike him though he is difficult – he is a penny pincher yet he financed this trip for a bunch of people; he opted to go on a pilgrimage but he does not unquestioningly bow to prescribed religious practices; he can be a spoilsport, he can also be warm, considerate and funny. Sundaram is garrulous, sociable, cheerful and a devout Hindu.

Early on, when James pays for the lodge in Velankanni in which his entire band of pilgrims stayed, the billing counter serves as a bridge between the shots of the basilica in the film’s introductory frames and the Hindu imagery seen in Sundaram’s village. Around the counter, a slew of Christian and Hindu iconography is showcased side by side as a mark of the syncretic culture in this holy site for Christians. James’ unblinking reaction to the pictures implies his acceptance of religions other than his own. In a later scene though, he expresses contempt – not mere dislike but contempt –for the fare at an eatery in Tamil Nadu. James represents the average human within whom simultaneously resides both liberal and illiberal values.

We gather that James understands but does not speak or read Tamil, and that he has only peripheral knowledge of Tamil culture. When he steps into Sundaram’s persona, on the other hand, he speaks Tamil fluently, consumes the local food with a completely altered palate, and is immersed in the state’s popular entertainment. A clue to what the film stands for comes from a quote on the lodge’s wall that the manager has to explain to James is from the Tamil classic Thirukkural: “Death is sinking into slumbers deep. Birth again is waking out of sleep.”

Thiruvalluvar combined with James/Sundaram dozing off at the turning points in the narrative leaves us with a multitude of meanings. Like the crossing in Churuli, sleep in Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is a portal into another life, another world, a Narnia in James’ mind.

Produced by Mammootty Kampany and co-produced by Lijo’s Amen Movie Monastery, this tale of re-awakenings is based on a story by Lijo, with a screenplay and dialogues by S. Hareesh, and editing by Deepu Joseph. It had its world premiere in December 2022 at the International Film Festival of Kerala where – like Churuli – it won the Audience Choice Award. Hareesh had also written Churuli’s screenplay. This film’s allegorical nature is unlike Churuli, in which abstractness eventually descended into pretentiousness.

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam’s determined open-endedness is accompanied by a sense of humour and a packed soundscape that enriches it even when it wears thin in other departments. Film dialogues in more than one language, songs, serials and ads – occasionally in the foreground but mostly as a backdrop– are a constant and delightful adjunct to the rhythm of daily life here. Even when it is not obvious that the audio is coming off a radio or TV, the background score mimics the universal sounds of melodramatic movies and serials.

Perhaps James is a performer in a play or film within this film. The words shown painted on a vehicle right in the end certainly suggest this as one of various possibilities, the other being that the Tamil Nadu setting is not to be taken literally – James and Sundaram may be found anywhere, somewhere, in one place (oridathu), some place or every place. Perhaps we are watching James in a dream that changes him for the better through exposure to a people for whom he harboured an aversion without necessarily being a raging bigot. Perhaps we are witness to the wanderings of an unsettled mind – James had indicated as much at the lodge.

Significantly, unlike in most patriarchal societies, the onus here is not placed on the wives, Sali and Kuzhali, to save their husbands from going astray. The community on both sides largely supports the women. The wives too defy stereotypes and support each other. But Sundaram’s mother – the only one who ‘sees’ him when he is resurrected – feels like a clichéd notion of maternity.

While James and Sundaram are etched out in detail, several supporting male characters are well-defined, and the women’s concerns are effectively conveyed (most perceptively in a scene dwelling on every female traveller’s primary worry: the availability of clean, safe toilets), the women themselves remain nebulous beings. And the gender-specific ageism in the casting of male-star-led films continues here too. Sali and Kuzhali are played by actors vastly junior to Mammootty, in continuation of the apparent belief that women in their 60s and 70s are unsuitable on-screen partners for this handsome septuagenarian.

Still, it’s nice to see Lijo directing Mammootty without being overly aware of his superstardom, barring a dispensable moment on the bus when James and the others watch a Mammootty film. They could have picked another film with the same import featuring another star, but they chose this one.

DoP Theni Eashwar’s camera enhances Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam’s meditative tone, capturing the beauty of scenic locations, and adding a whole layer to the film with a persistent focus on doors, windows, the corridor of a motel, winding streets in a village and roads passing through fields. Most interesting of all is the decision not to zoom in on Mammootty’s face for a long gap until a pivotal moment close to the climax when at last he ‘sees’ himself.

Apart from the music and sound design, the highlight of Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is its immersive central performance. This is a choice of film that harks back to the Mammootty who took risks like Sathyan Anthikad’s Artham (1989) and Venu’s Munnariyippu (2014). The thespian does not give either James or Sundaram any quirks, yet masterfully conveys their divergent personalities leaving us in no doubt as to who is who and when.If Rorschach and Puzhu last year hinted at it, this team-up with Lijo confirms that Mammootty is steering his career into a whole new experimental phase, embracing not just the sort of middle-of-the-road, slice-of-life ventures that have endeared Malayalam cinema to a pan-India audience, but also entering an unapologetically philosophical arena.

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam feels like a coming home for Lijo whose run of brilliance in the last half decade with Angamaly Diaries, Ee.Ma.Yau and Jallikattu was disrupted by the hyperventilating Churuli. Raucous, aggressive masculinity was deployed in Angamaly Diaries and Jallikattu to underline its self-defeating, destructive nature. In Churuli though, the machoism came across as gratuitous and the loudness was exhausting. Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is not my favourite among Lijo’s works, but it is certainly amusing, thought-provoking and pleasantly low-key, a consistently engaging take on dissolving mind blocks and real-world divisions…or perhaps something else? (* inserts grinning emoji *)

Rating: 3 (out of 5 stars) 

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam had its world premiere in December 2022 at the International Film Festival of Kerala where it won the Audience Choice Award. It is now in theatres.

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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