Neelavelicham movie review: Aashiq Abu's enchanting reboot of Basheer's quaint tale

Cast: Rima Kallingal, Tovino Thomas, Roshan Mathew, Shine Tom Chacko, Uma K.P., Devaki Bhasi, Pooja Mohanraj, Rajesh Madhavan, Renji Kankol, Chemban Vinod Jose

Director: Aashiq Abu

Language: Malayalam

When a giant of literature expands his own short story into the screenplay for a film, it might seemfoolhardy to remake that film over a half century later, when the rose tint of nostalgia has deepened to a shade so dark that it could blind the viewer. Some may therefore say that director Aashiq Abu has entered territory where angels would fear to tread by revisiting the Malayalam classic Bhargavi Nilayam(1964)that was based on Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s screenplay drawn from his short story Neelavelicham. Directed by A. Vincent, Bhargavi Nilayam (The House of Bhargavi) was a roll call of legends. It featured lyrics by the celebrated poet P. Bhaskaran, starred Malayalam cinema icons Madhu and Prem Nazir, and gave Vijaya Nirmala her first major role before she went on to become a Telugu star and director, a rarity among women back then. Historians believe it is the first ghost story from the Malayalam industry.

Clearly then, a remake is a risk. If you think about it, however, Bhargavi Nilayam itself was a risk since, when Basheer wrote a screenplay based on his story Neelavelicham, in a sense he was demystifying what was essentially an intriguing, open-ended saga. Abstractness was the allure of that adorable account of a writer’s stay at a mansion that was deemed to be haunted. Neelavelicham’s littleness left the reader free to either enjoy it at its face value or, alternatively, to dig deeper to understand the occurrences leading up to the luminescence enveloping the writer’s home in the finale and the meaning of that velicham, that light.

If you have seen Bhargavi Nilayam though, you will know that in its own way the film too left space for the audience to regard it either literally as a spook flick or read into it a profound connection between a writer and the characters he creates.

Neelavelicham (The Blue Radiance) – produced by Rima Kallingal and the director, and edited by V. Saajan – stars Tovino Thomas as a reputed writer in 1960s Kerala who finds a house after a long search. Locals warn him about the bloodthirsty spirit of a woman called Bhargavi who had jumped into a well on the grounds on being ditched by her lover. By then it is too late for him to leave, so he decides to probe further and write about her.

Neelavelicham largely follows Bhargavi Nilayam’s narrative structure. The first half focuses on the sahityakaaran. He is unnamed, but it is implied in the original short story and film that the man was Basheer himself. The second half is about as meta as cinema can get – a story within a story, authored by the sahityakaaran. We now travel back to when the college student Bhargavi (Rima Kallingal) and the musician Sasikumar (Roshan Mathew) fell in love. The important characters around them include Bhargavi’s jealous cousin Nanukuttan (Shine Tom Chacko), her mother (Uma K.P.) and their household help Pappu (Rajesh Madhavan).

As with Bhargavi Nilayam, here too the shift from one segment to the next is a bump on the road, albeit a minor one. The new film also stumbles over the spacing of its soundtrack: it is songless for a long stretch before two musical numbers suddenly come up with a gap so short between them that it does not quite sit right. Still, Aashiq’s remake is as enchanting as Vincent’s film, but with an approach to storytelling that has been contemporised to tremendous effect.

Fond reminiscences of past works tend to gloss over their flaws, but the truth is that Bhargavi Nilayam was made at a time when over-statement was still the norm in mainstream Indian cinema. Widened eyes, heightened music and sound design to mark every minor or major dramatic turn in a plot, the camera resting by turns on each face in a room to record individual reactions to an unexpected development were all accepted practices even among acclaimed filmmakers, and Vincent flowed with the tide in this, his directorial debut. The lead trio were undoubtedly charismatic, but Madhu was the only one who leaned towards relatively new, more naturalistic trends in acting. Bhargavi Nilayam was beautiful in its own way but must be seen in the context of the era in which it was made, a context that also renders the inevitable question “how does Neelavelicham match up?” redundant in certain departments.

In terms of tone and tenor, Aashiq’s Neelavelicham is a vastly updated screen rendition of Basheer’s script. Some changes are a critique of the original film – most prominently, Bhargavi Nilayam used dark-skinned actors and blackface to imply dubiousness in a character, but that regressive element has been removed in Neelavelicham. The chopping down of Pappu’s character though is a loss. Some changes have been made possible by the technological advancements of the past 59 years.  Some – the moderation across the board– are a demand of this era’s altered sensibilities.

Aashiq Abu excels at atmospherics, as we know well from his exquisite Mayaanadhi (2017). In Neelavelicham he succeeds in maintaining a mystique around Bhargavi even when she metamorphoses from a glowing white-clad apparition to a flesh-and-blood human.

The cast has been styled and dressed with attention to detail that is so crucial in a period drama, backed by Jothish Shankar’s art direction. Jothish and DoP Girish Gangadharan’s painterly work are key to the air of old-world intrigue that is established from the opening scenes, washing through the sahityakaaran’s initially cobweb-filled dwelling, over the exterior of that imposing structure, across the tree-covered land on which it stands, with an interlude of sumptuousness on a stage enriched by lavish sets and Sameera Saneesh’s opulent costumes.

Cinematographer P. Bhaskar Rao revelled in the radiance of black and white to conjure up poetry on screen in Bhargavi Nilayam. In Neelavelicham, Girish’s thoughtfully conceived frames glide from ghostly darkened areas with blue (neela) hints to the colourful splendour of Bhargavi’s dance performance to tight sepia-tinted frames that induce fear and/or suspense. The VFX for the spectral Bhargavi are impressively orchestrated, reaching a stunning crescendo in the scene in which she and the sahityakaaran first come face to face.

The most distinctive imagery in the film is vintage Basheer. When the rest of us see a wall, we see an obstacle. Basheer saw possibilities. In his novel Mathilukal (Walls), on which Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s 1990 film was based, he wrote of growing to love a woman whose voice travelled to him from the other side of a prison wall. That boundary could not stem affection but ultimately remained a poignant instrument of separation. In Neelavelicham though, a wall signifies the conservatism that prevents people from openly courting each other, but also becomes a symbol of (female) assertion, a dramatic device across which a mischievous romance plays out. The scene in which Bhargavi and Sasikumar first sense each other on either side, tugs at the heart strings in a way a physical embrace could not.

Neelavelicham is faithful to Basheer’s screenplay for the most part. The good thing about that is that we get to see what a modern style can achieve even with a period flick. What’s missing though, for those who have seen Bhargavi Nilayam, is a new eye on the story itself. Basheer’s screenplay left Bhargavi open to interpretation. Maybe she was just a ghost. Maybe she was a rumour who came to life in a writer’s active mind. Maybe she personified his imagination, and was the spirit that inspires and guides every writer’s hand. To me though, the screenplay was a feminist revision of the short: in both, the sahityakaaran is patronising towards the dead woman at the start, lecturing her on her suicide and admonishing her for the unfairness of judging all men by the yardstick of her lover’s betrayal. Mansplaining is the word for it in today’s lexicon. And as certain men say, #NotAllMen. Yes, that’s pretty much the attitude. By the end though, Bhargavi is his friend and he no longer talks down to her. To me therefore, the public’s attitude to her is a metaphor for the ignorance that drives dominant communities’ fear of and condescension towards the marginalised (note how those warning the sahityakaaran against her are men); until segregation ends and mingling becomes routine, as it does between Bhargavi and the hero, allowing prejudiced folk to see that ‘the other’ is ‘one of us’. I wish Aashiq and Hrishikesh Bhaskaran who gets an additional screenplay credit had explored this facet of Bhargavi Nilayam. It didn’t require a rewrite, just an addendum perhaps, in the way Hollywood writer-director Greta Gerwig addressed a troubling question that Louisa May Alcott’s book Little Women left us with: why on earth did Jo March hook up with the non-descript Professor Bhaer, and why did Alcott get her married at all?

Aashiq has wisely not tampered with Bhargavi Nilayam’s soundtrack, instead reviving four of composer M.S. Baburaj’s beloved songs with arrangements by Bijibal and Rex Vijayan.K.S. Chithrasteps in for her formidable forebear, S. Janaki. The scenes featuring AnuragaMadhuchashakamin Chithra’s voice and Ekanthathayude Mahatheeram, in which Shahabaz Aman takes K.J. Yesudas’ place, come as close to perfection as is possible in art.

Rima and Roshan are lovable as the young couple in Neelavelicham. She also dances like a dream. Their magical chemistry is, sadly, a painful reminder of how full his recent filmography is and how rarely we now see Rima on screen in this patriarchal industry that has limited roles to offer its finest women artistes. Tovino’s challenge is that he dominates half the film and spends most of it in solitude. He is too intelligent to try and compete with Madhu’s towering personality, instead using his innate charm to inject innocence into his words as he beckons across an indefinable mathil, “Bhargavikutty…”As Nanukuttan, Shine Tom Chacko is more measured than usual, giving us a glimpse of what he could be with a demanding director.

Neelavelicham is a tribute to the great Basheer, with even the title page reading “Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s Neelavelicham”. Such respect for a person of letters by a film is not common. So yes, I do wish Aashiq had taken the point of Basheer’s short story even beyond what the author himself did when he wrote the screenplay of Bhargavi Nilayam, but as it stands, this Neelavelicham is a captivating reboot of Basheer’s quaint tale.

Rating: 3.5 (out of 5 stars) 

Neelavelicham is 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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