Yavanika

YAVANIKA (1982)

I love films that pretend to be one genre and are quietly something else entirely, and Yavanika is the best kind of trick — a murder mystery that's actually an anatomy of a group of people who've spent so long performing for an audience that they've forgotten how to be honest with each other, even in private.

A troupe of musicians is on tour when their tabla player, Ayyappan — brilliant, arrogant, cruel — goes missing, presumed murdered. A police inspector investigates, and through his questioning we get the whole troupe's buried resentments, humiliations, and complicities laid bare one by one. The "whodunit" becomes almost incidental to the real reveal — how much damage one talented, toxic man can do to an entire ecosystem of people who need him and despise him in equal measure.

Bharath Gopy as the inspector is astonishing in his patience — he interrogates like he's peeling fruit, never rushing the bruise to the surface. Mammootty, as Ayyappan, is magnetic even in absence; the film builds him almost entirely through other people's fear and resentment of him, and by the time we understand him fully, we understand why almost everyone in that troupe had a reason to want him gone.

K.G. George shoots this with a theatrical, claustrophobic intimacy — the backstage world of the orchestra becomes its own pressure cooker, and the camera rarely lets you breathe outside it.

The editing has a novelistic patience, letting each character's testimony recontextualize the last. And the use of live performance and music within the narrative isn't decoration — it's structurally part of the mystery, since the troupe's art and their cruelty run on the same stage.

George was already known by this point for unflinching, morally complex portraits of Kerala's middle class, and Yavanika is arguably his most disciplined marriage of genre mechanics with real psychological depth — I'd call it the film where his ambition and his control finally met each other fully.

It was both a critical and commercial success in its time, and has only grown in stature since — regularly cited among the finest Malayalam films ever made, and a clear influence on the psychological-mystery strain of Indian cinema that followed it.

What the film is really asking, underneath the murder plot, is what we owe each other when talent and cruelty live in the same body — and whether an audience's applause makes everyone backstage complicit in what that talent gets away with. 

My biggest takeaway: the curtain — the yavanika — doesn't just separate performer from audience. It separates who we perform as from who we actually are, and George is far more interested in what happens once it falls.

Chidambaram

Chidamaram (1985)

This is a film I find myself returning to less for what happens in it and more for what it refuses to explain, which I've come to think is its entire philosophy.

Set on a remote cattle farm, it follows Muniyandi, a caretaker, and Shankaran, a supervisor who begins an affair with Muniyandi's wife Shivakami. When Muniyandi discovers the betrayal and takes his own life, guilt doesn't just haunt Shankaran and Shivakami — it seems to physically warp the landscape they inhabit, and years later, both are drawn back to the site of what they did, unable to outrun it.

Gopi's Shankaran carries guilt the way some men carry a limp — visible in the smallest gestures, never spoken aloud. Smita Patil, in one of her final performances, plays Shivakami with an almost unbearable interiority; she says so little and communicates everything, and I think it's one of the great tragedies of Indian cinema that we lost her so soon after. Srinivasan, as Muniyandi, makes his eventual despair feel inevitable rather than melodramatic, which is a very hard needle to thread.

Aravindan shoots the natural world — mist, cattle, hills — not as backdrop but as a kind of silent moral witness, and Shaji N. Karun's cinematography (his first as a full cinematographer) is extraordinary, all natural light and unhurried framing that makes guilt feel geological rather than psychological. The editing is patient to the point of demanding real surrender from the viewer — this is not a film that will meet you halfway. Dialogue is sparse almost to the point of absence, which I initially found frustrating and eventually realized was the entire point.

Aravindan was already established as one of Malayalam cinema's most poetic, least conventional voices, and Chidambaram feels like the culmination of everything he'd been building toward — trusting image and silence over exposition more completely than in any of his earlier work.

It won the National Film Award for Best Film and cemented Aravindan's reputation on the international festival circuit, even as it remained a difficult, non-commercial work for general audiences — the kind of acclaim that lives in cinephile memory more than box office records.

What I think the film is really exploring is how guilt doesn't get resolved by time or distance — it just gets absorbed into the landscape of a life, quietly reshaping everything after it, without ever fully surfacing into words. My biggest takeaway: some sins are never spoken because language would make them smaller than what they actually did to the people who carry them.

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam: The Strange Dream of Being Someone Else

There are films that tell us a story, and then there are films that leave us wondering whether the story was ever real at all. Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam, directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery, belongs firmly to the latter category. It is an enigmatic, deeply philosophical film about identity, grief, memory and the strange borders between one human life and another.

James, played by Mammootty, is travelling with a group of Malayali pilgrims returning from Velankanni. He is irritable, practical and dismissive, particularly towards the Tamil world around him. Then, during a lazy afternoon nap, something inexplicable happens. He wakes up, stops the bus in a Tamil village and suddenly becomes Sundaram, a man who disappeared from that village years earlier.

What follows is not a conventional explanation of whether James has been possessed, hypnotised, hallucinated or somehow entered another man's identity. Lijo deliberately refuses to solve the mystery. Instead, he asks us to accept the impossible and observe what happens when the boundaries of identity begin to dissolve.

Mammootty's performance is extraordinary precisely because he does not appear to be acting like Sundaram. His voice, posture, expressions, Tamil diction and entire physical presence change. James seems to disappear and another man occupies his body. The transformation is so complete that the question gradually shifts from “Who is this man?” to “What exactly makes us who we are?”

That is where the film becomes fascinating.

James begins the journey with prejudices about Tamil food, music, language and culture. Yet by becoming Sundaram, he is forced to inhabit precisely the world he had dismissed. The boundary between Malayali and Tamil, outsider and insider, suddenly becomes meaningless. Beneath language, customs and geography are the same human emotions: love, loneliness, fear, longing and grief.

Lijo reinforces this idea through his remarkable visual style. Many scenes are composed as wide, static frames, almost like a theatre stage. People enter, perform their roles, speak their lines and leave. It creates the strange sensation that life itself is a performance and that our identities are costumes we wear for a while.

And then there is Sundaram's family.

For them, James is not simply an intruder behaving strangely. For one extraordinary day, the man they lost seems to have returned. They know something is wrong, yet they allow the illusion to continue. Perhaps because grief sometimes needs something that reason cannot provide.

James becomes Sundaram, and Sundaram becomes a temporary possibility of closure.

The title itself, Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam, meaning “A Midday Slumber,” becomes the film's deepest metaphor. James falls asleep in the middle of the day and wakes up as another man. But perhaps Lijo is suggesting something larger: that what we call our fixed identity, our language, our prejudices, our memories and even our sense of self may itself be a kind of temporary dream.

We spend a lifetime saying I am this person, from this place, belonging to these people.

Then one afternoon, metaphorically or literally, the boundaries blur. Perhaps the film's final mystery is not whether James was Sundaram. It is whether any of us is ever entirely certain who we really are.

2018

2018: When Humanity Rose Above the Waters

Some films tell us about disasters. Some make us witness them. 2018: Everyone Is a Hero makes us remember what we are capable of when disaster strips away everything that normally separates us.

Jude Anthany Joseph's 2023 Malayalam film recreates the devastating Kerala floods of 2018 through a collection of ordinary lives. There is no single superhero at its centre. Instead, there is Anoop, a former soldier carrying the burden of his past; Shaji, an apparently timid man who discovers courage when circumstances demand it; Nixon, dreaming of a life abroad while struggling to understand his fisherman father; Ramesh and many others whose lives begin in the familiar landscape of ordinary Kerala concerns. They argue, fall in love, worry about money, carry resentments and pursue small dreams. They are simply living.

And then the water comes.

The brilliance of 2018 is that the disaster does not arrive merely as spectacle. It arrives as a great equaliser.

The distinctions that seemed important yesterday suddenly become meaningless. The rich and poor need the same boat. The educated and uneducated need the same helping hand. Religion, caste, occupation, political differences and personal grudges lose their importance when the water rises to the roof.

The film captures the terrifying psychology of a disaster particularly well. At first there is disbelief. Then inconvenience. Then fear. Then the awful realisation that the familiar world is disappearing beneath the water.

And when institutions and infrastructure are overwhelmed, something remarkable happens.

Ordinary people become extraordinary.

Fishermen take their boats into currents that could kill them. Neighbours rescue strangers. Young men risk their lives for people they have never met. People who were quarrelling yesterday suddenly stand shoulder to shoulder. The fisherman who once seemed insignificant becomes a lifeline. The reluctant man discovers courage. The frightened man acts despite his fear.

That is why the film's title is so meaningful.

Everyone is a hero.

Not because everyone performs some spectacular act, but because heroism becomes a possibility available to ordinary human beings when somebody else needs them.

There are moments when 2018 comes close to becoming conventional disaster cinema, particularly in its emotional manipulation and large-scale spectacle. But its emotional centre remains powerful because the disaster actually happened. Kerala remembers those waters. The boats, helicopters, rescue operations, flooded homes and desperate families are not imaginary cinematic inventions. They are part of a collective memory.

And perhaps that is what makes the film deeply moving. Disasters reveal something uncomfortable about civilisation. We spend our lives building boundaries around ourselves: my house, my family, my community, my money, my status, my religion, my problems.

Then nature arrives and reminds us how fragile all those boundaries are.

But 2018 also offers a more hopeful lesson. A disaster can destroy infrastructure, homes and lives. Yet it can also awaken something buried within human beings: courage, compassion, sacrifice, cooperation and an instinctive refusal to leave another person behind.

The floodwaters rose beyond anything people imagined. And in response, the human spirit rose too.

Perhaps that is the final lesson of 2018. Sometimes humanity discovers its greatest strength only when everything else has been taken away.

A catastrophe can bring out the worst in people. But sometimes, when circumstances demand the impossible, ordinary men and women reach somewhere beyond their known limits and do things they never believed they were capable of doing. And that is strangely inspiring.

Because perhaps the greatest human achievement is not surviving the storm. It is discovering, in the middle of the storm, how much humanity we still possess.

Kumbalangi Nights

Kumbalangi Nights: When a Broken House Learns to Become a Home

Few Malayalam films have understood the difference between a house and a home as beautifully as Kumbalangi Nights. Set against the quiet beauty of a Kerala fishing village, Madhu C. Narayanan's 2019 film appears at first to be a story about four dysfunctional brothers sharing a dilapidated house. But underneath its humour, romance and gentle chaos lies a much deeper examination of masculinity, family, class, loneliness and the human need to belong.

Saji, Bobby, Boney and Franky are brothers by blood but strangers in many ways. Their father is dead, their mother has disappeared from their lives, and nobody has really taught them how to care for one another. Their house is unfinished because, in a sense, so are they. Each brother carries his own wound, and they have learnt to survive by keeping their distance.

Then comes love. Bobby falls for Baby, but her brother-in-law Shammi becomes the film's most disturbing presence. Played brilliantly by Fahadh Faasil, Shammi presents himself as the perfect husband, brother-in-law and "complete man". His immaculate grooming, polite smile and exaggerated confidence conceal something deeply insecure and controlling. He represents a masculinity that believes the household must revolve around the man's authority.

And this is where Kumbalangi Nights becomes much more than a family drama.

Shammi wants to control a family. The brothers have to learn how to become one. The film quietly dismantles the conventional idea that men must be strong, silent and emotionally invulnerable. Saji cries. The brothers embrace. They admit their fears. Saji eventually seeks professional psychological help. Nobody becomes weaker because they express pain. They become capable of healing.

That is perhaps the film's most radical idea: vulnerability is not the opposite of masculinity. It may be the beginning of maturity.

The film also challenges the idea that family is determined only by blood. This household begins as four men barely able to tolerate one another. Gradually, women, children, friends and outsiders enter their lives, and the cold, chaotic structure begins to acquire warmth. The house changes because the people inside it change.

There is also a sharp class dimension. The unfinished house becomes a social label. The brothers are judged before they are understood. Bobby's love becomes unacceptable not simply because of family dynamics, but because Shammi sees the brothers as socially inferior. Respectability becomes a weapon.

Yet Kumbalangi Nights never delivers its message through lectures. It allows us to discover it through laughter, awkwardness, tears, silence and small acts of kindness.

By the end, the transformation is not really about repairing a building. It is about repairing the idea of family.

The four brothers begin as damaged men occupying the same address. They end by understanding that family is not merely the people who share your blood or your roof. It is the people who stay when you are broken, listen when you cannot speak, hold you when you fall and help you become whole again.

Perhaps that is what Kumbalangi Nights leaves us with: A home is not built with bricks, walls and a roof. It is built when people finally feel safe enough to be vulnerable with one another. And sometimes, the most beautiful families are the ones we slowly choose to create.

Drishyam 3

Drishyam 3: The Price of Protecting a Family

There was a time when Georgekutty believed he could outsmart everyone. In Drishyam, he was the ordinary man who discovered that intelligence, observation and an extraordinary instinct for his family could defeat an entire police machinery. In Drishyam 2, he became the architect of a perfect cover-up, but the price was a family condemned to live with a secret. In Drishyam 3, Jeethu Joseph asks the question that perhaps matters most: what happens to a man after living with that secret for thirteen years?

Georgekutty is now a successful film producer, having turned the story of his own past into cinema. Yet prosperity has not brought peace. Anju remains psychologically scarred, Rani tries to hold the family together, and Georgekutty himself has become increasingly paranoid and emotionally exhausted. His old enemies return when Prabhakaran, Varun's grieving father, joins forces with the unstable former constable Sahadevan and others to construct an elaborate trap around Anju and the family. Georgekutty once again sees through the conspiracy and dismantles it piece by piece.

But this time something is different.

Georgekutty is no longer merely fighting to escape the law. He is fighting to escape the life he has created.

The three films therefore form a fascinating progression. The first was about protecting a family. The second was about protecting the secret. The third becomes about the psychological and moral price of having done both. The brilliant family man who once seemed almost invincible has aged into someone carrying an enormous invisible weight. Mohanlal understands this beautifully. His Georgekutty is quieter, more vulnerable and more haunted, and the actor's greatest achievement is allowing us to see the cracks beneath the familiar composure.

The climax is consequently not another victory of cleverness. Georgekutty finally surrenders, accepting imprisonment for Varun's death in exchange for the safety of his family. Yet even in surrender, he remains Georgekutty: he has calculated the move, protected his daughter and ensured that the evidence he possesses remains a final warning to Prabhakar.

Is this really the end?

Jeethu Joseph has described Drishyam 3 as the concluding chapter, yet the final moments deliberately refuse complete closure. Geetha's grief and demand for justice remain alive, leaving a faint but unmistakable door open.

And perhaps that ambiguity is appropriate.

Because Drishyam was never merely about a murder and a cover-up. It was about how far a parent will go to protect a child, and what happens when love, fear, morality and survival occupy the same room.

Across three films, Mohanlal has transformed Georgekutty from an ordinary cable operator into one of Malayalam cinema's most fascinating morally wounded characters. Jeethu Joseph's real achievement is making us repeatedly ask whether Georgekutty is a hero, a criminal, a loving father, or simply a man who crossed one line to protect his family and then spent thirteen years discovering that there are no easy lines left.

Perhaps that is what Drishyam ultimately wanted us to understand:

You may escape the law. You may defeat your enemies. You may even bury the truth. But you cannot always escape yourself.

Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra

 Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra: A New World Rises from Kerala's Folklore

Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra is an audacious attempt to give Malayalam cinema its own superhero mythology, and its greatest achievement is that it does not begin with superheroes. It begins with Kerala's folklore and asks a fascinating question: what if the Yakshis, Chathans and other supernatural beings of our stories actually existed, quietly inhabiting the modern world?

Directed by Dominic Arun, the film places Chandra, played with striking restraint by Kalyani Priyadarshan, in neon-lit Bengaluru. She is mysterious, immensely powerful and carrying a secret that gradually unfolds. Her ordinary neighbour Sunny, played wonderfully by Naslen, and his friends provide the film's warmth and humour, while Sandy's menacing Inspector Nachiyappa represents something more frightening than the supernatural: ordinary human cruelty, corruption and misogyny.

The film works best when it trusts mystery. The flashbacks revealing the origins of Kalliyankattu Neeli give the familiar Yakshi legend a fresh interpretation, transforming a figure traditionally associated with fear and vengeance into a powerful survivor. The mythology is not fully explained, and that is both the film's strength and its occasional weakness. By the end, we have more questions than answers about Chandra, Moothon and the larger supernatural order.

Technically, Lokah is exceptional. Nimish Ravi's cinematography, Chaman Chakko's editing and Jakes Bejoy's music create a striking visual and sonic world, while the action choreography gives Chandra genuine physical power. The film does occasionally borrow familiar superhero and vampire tropes, and the narrative becomes somewhat stretched in places, but its ambition remains infectious.

Its extraordinary success can, in my view, be attributed to four things. First, it takes a globally familiar genre and gives it a distinctly Kerala soul. Second, it places a woman at the centre without making her identity as a female superhero the entire point of the film. Third, it combines spectacle with humour and believable human characters. And finally, it understands the power of curiosity. Every revelation opens another door.

The post-credit appearances of Tovino Thomas as Michael/Chathan and Dulquer Salmaan's Charlie/Odiyan connection make it clear that Chandra is only the beginning. The planned subsequent chapters promise a much larger Wayfarer Cinematic Universe, with Lokah Chapter 2 already announced.

And that is ultimately why Lokah promises so much.

It is not merely creating another superhero. It is attempting something more exciting: to turn the mythology we inherited into a mythology for the generation we are becoming.

For centuries, Kerala's supernatural stories lived in books, oral traditions and collective memory. Lokah has opened the door and invited them into the modern world.

Chapter One has not told us everything. It has done something more important: it has made us want to know what comes next. And in the age of cinematic universes, that may be the most powerful superpower of all.