And help comes in the form of women – a widow, a foreigner and a really young girl in love. In fact, these traditional roles appear changed when the house that really needs help is that of the four men - played by all four actors in ways that could put a knot in your heart. Why do you always need to look outside for help, really? As a viewer used to scripts that depend on another male figure having to step into the house to stop abuse, you are taken pleasantly by surprise at this little interference. Simi, who seems so much like the stereotypical nodding-along-with-the-husband type of a woman, and whose voice is the kind you ignore when there is an argument in the house, suddenly breaks a mosquito bat and silence falls, making you and the others in the house listen to her. And you realise it only later, for that’s how easily they do it. Religion taken care of, Syam and Madhu, the director, then address patriarchy. There’s a scene where Simi asks Baby, isn’t he a Christian and Baby says, “Jesus is not someone we don’t know.” Again, it has to be in Malayalam. He ticks off quite a few social realities with moments like these that make them appear so insignificant. They adapt to each other without long lines spoken, with lines as simple as "Is true love really out of fashion? Am just asking cause I don’t know." It sounds beautiful in the moment, in Malayalam. But what’s pretty here is that she doesn’t try to change anything about herself either. Baby mol does not even try to change anything about Bobby. But from his behaviour, you know he is not a man you need to be wary of. He is irritable as the man who tells his friend, “Who buys a tea shop to get tea?” when he hears about the friend’s marriage plans. Bobby of course doesn’t easily mend his ways. So you can imagine what it would be like when a lad like Bobby falls in love with a girl like Baby, coming from a house like that. But when he does, with no background music – with which Sushin Syam otherwise attaches you to the stories of these men – and not even a word wrongly said, Fahadh brings in tension. Fahadh doesn’t show up much on the screen, what with the script dealing so beautifully with the stories of four brothers in the neighbourhood. You cannot begin to describe how, just by smiling and speaking overly politely, he creeps the hell out of you. You see what they mean in the scene when Fahadh Faasil comes on screen - as the endlessly smiling Shammi.
#Kumbalangi nights reviews movie#
Simi has just got married when the movie begins – and the new man isn’t too friendly, the boys tell Franky who has come home from school for vacation. “Baby mol used to drink from a milk bottle till three years ago,” her sister Simi (Grace Antony) says. Aims sometimes crop up as new people coming to your life, or else incidents that scar you for life.Ĭurly haired Anna Ben looks every bit a schoolgirl and that’s how she is introduced. The aimlessness of men who wake up to just pass days by, sponging on another, sitting by when the sun is up and drinking in the evening. Something snapped as things do in broken families, and new ways of life set in. It is a house that had once seen happy days and nights, you know from the disappointment in the youngest’s face, missing a mother who’s gone away and a brother who rows away. Shyju Khalid’s camera makes sure you know every corner of the house and the water towards which it looks out. There, without a voiceover that appears to have become customary in movies these days, without any grand entries, new director Madhu C Narayanan, coming from Aashiq Abu’s school of filmmaking, introduces you to the house that will become the centre of Kumbalangi Nights. Bonny (Sreenath Bhasi), the brother who comes to visit, sees the fighting and rows the boat away. Saji and Bobby (Shane Nigam) can’t even make peace on their late father’s remembrance day. He had once told his eldest brother – Saji played by Soubin Shahir – that it is the worst house in the panchayat, made so bad by his two brothers who are always at each other’s throats. And the youngest of the four men of that house – Franky by name – asks in surprise, “Really?”. One of the later occupants of the house calls this house beautiful.