This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on November 15, 2019
Appu (Pranav Mohanlal) and his family run a beach-front establishment in Goa by night, organizing the kind of parties that Goa has become synonymous with. By day, he surfs. And rescues his father, Baba (Manoj K. Jayan), from Abusi (Kalabhavan Shajon) and his henchmen. Baba has borrowed a considerable sum of money that he hasn’t paid back, and Abusi squeezes Appu for the money, giving him two months grace to pay him back. Appu meets Zaya (Zaya David) one night when she comes to a Russian New Year Party he’s organized, and causes a fuss when her phone goes missing. Zaya, obviously drunk, cannot remember where she is supposed to be staying, and Appu takes her to his family’s homestay instead. The two bicker until the moment when Zaya has been assaulted by a parasailing assistant (who takes adavantage of being connected to her in the air), and when she undoes her safety equipment and drops into the sea, Appu rescues her, and the two become friends, doing all the typical Goa things: Sight-seeing! Jet skiing! Casinos! Sneaking into a church to see the remains of a saint!
After Appu and Zaya (along with Appu’s friend Macroni) escape from the church with the security guards hot on their trail, the next time we see them is at a police station. We’re obviously supposed to think they got into trouble for breaking into the church, but small details are confusing: why does the policeman mention pepper spray? And why is it only Zaya who must leave a copy of her identity card? Why does only Zaya get into trouble?
The answer is that this is a bit of a fake-out – writer/director Gopy tries to introduce a twist, because what has really happened to land Zaya into trouble is pepper spraying a man who tried to assault Appu’s sister. This attempt at being clever simply falls flat, because it’s not clever, it’s just incredibly confusing.
Eventually, Zaya and Appu grow closer, but when Appu comes on a little strong, kissing Zaya, she promptly packs her things and returns to Kerala.
Baba, seeing Appu nursing a broken heart (we know this because he throws himself off his jetski into the ocean, which Baba sees as a sign that he’s telling the ocean his troubles, which is, I’ll admit, almost poetic), gives him plane tickets and a copy of Zaya’s ID card (ah, that’s why we had that scene with her pepper spraying a dude), and sends him off to Kerala to find her, to either work things out, or end things in a way that allows both of them to move on.
Baba actually has the potential to be an interesting character – despite the fact that he seems to be a bit of a wastral, he has a good heart, and a good understanding of affairs of the heart and some corner of respect for women: he tells Appu that he likes Zaya because she’s in control of her own body and heart/mind, a small vote for her agency, I guess, in the midst of all that goes wrong in the film. I wish this character had been better written, because Manoj K. Jayan has a screen presence that is just a little bit wasted here.
The post-interval portion of the film is actually much better than the first half, with Zaya having a kind of compelling back story that leads to her current situation. But the film is all over the place in terms of the story it wants to tell and the message it wants to share, and Zaya’s story ends up as just a convenient way to create obstacles to the love the hero wants to share with her. At no point does it really try to understand how her past has shaped her present. Zaya quotes Dulquer Salmaan’s character from Neelakasham Pachakadal Chuvanna Bhoomi when she tells Appu that her destiny is her decision – that what has happened to her in her life has led her to be in the only situation she could find in order to escape what she saw as a desperate fate.
So convoluted is the storytelling that I’d completely forgotten about the fact that Baba and Appu owe Abusi money, until Abusi turns up again to ask for it. And then promptly disappears again as the film meanders off in other directions.
And that’s just one of many things that show that Irupathiyonnaam Noottaandu is yet another example of a film that is overlong and confusing, made with a script that needed to be edited to clear out unneccessary details as well as to improve the clarity of the film. An example: when Appu, Zaya, and Macri (Abhirav Janan)sneak into the Saint Francis church late at night, because Zaya’s dearest wish is to see the remains of the saint, we get a mini-history lesson about Saint Francis Xavier and how his remains ended up in Goa (we’re also later subjected to a lesson into the history of Dona Paula beach, because, I’m assuming, her love story is supposed to find a parallel in the movie. As a movie, this is lacking. As a travelogue of Goa, however, it’s on point). The segment is beautifully shot, though — cinematographer Abinandhan Ramanujam, who has worked on several films I really love, including Ajith Pillai’s Mosayile Kuthira Meenukal and Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Amen, knows how to use light to perfection, and it shows especially in night scenes.
The film is also confusing in terms of what it wants to explore as its message – it seems to want to say a little bit about everything, from child sexual abuse to issues of caste, religion, and communal tensions. There’s even a nod to the Communist politics of Kerala. The problematic writing extends especially to women: on the one hand, the film wants to celebrate the kind of agency Zaya is trying to command, but on the other hand, it consistently chips away at that. A couple of examples: first, Zaya, refused a drink by Appu because she’s already drunk, quips that this is why people become feminists, underminding the seriousness of feminism and the feminist cause. Furthermore, when Zaya delivers a tight slap to the dude who tried to assault her, he slaps her back, and Appu only intervenes to help her after that, telling his friends that she deserved one slap. Seriously.
Pranav Mohanlal has a great physicality he brings to the screen (this was even more evident in his debut film, Aadhi), a natural, sweet charm, and a sweet smile when he allows it. He spends much of his screentime, though, with a kind of worried look on his face (which I think is his general facial expression, something I’ve come to refer to as “Resting Pranav Face”), but he needs a good script and director, I think, to bring out the best in him, and, sadly, Irupathiyonnaam Noottaandu, directed and written by Arun Gopy, doesn’t do that. He’s not bad, given the material, which is more than one might say for some actors who can’t rise above mediocre material at all. And while I could be a little forgiving about the obvious nods to his famous father, Mohanlal, in his first film, I think continuing that into his second film just becomes a little too much. Some examples that jumped out at me: the film’s title is a riff on the title of the Mohanlal film Irupatham Noottandu – Twentieth Century; the credits give us Mohanlal’s name, which morphs into “Pranav Mohanlal”, just in case we somehow missed out on that connection. We also get Pranav in a shirt, mundu and Ray Bans doing his father’s trademark dropped-shoulder walk – HINT: Vijay did it better in Jilla – and a reference to the Mohanlal/Sreenivasan film Nadodikkattu. It could almost be a drinking game. Although I’m sure this is intended to be a little tongue-in-cheek and amusing, ultimately, I think, it does a disservice to the young actor. It has to be challenging to be the son of Mohanlal, trying to break into an industry that’s constantly going to compare you to your father, who has had a whole lifetime of perfecting his craft, and it would be nice to see Pranav allowed some space to work with the things he brings to the screen. Because even though Irupathiyonnaam Noottaandu is not a great film, there are moments when Pranav manages to shine anyway, and I think it would be nice going forward if he – or those around him – could cut him loose from his father’s shirt tails.