{"id":288,"date":"2021-05-26T22:32:27","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T02:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/?p=288"},"modified":"2021-05-26T22:32:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T02:32:53","slug":"ustad-hotel-dir-anwar-rasheed-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/2021\/05\/26\/ustad-hotel-dir-anwar-rasheed-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Ustad Hotel (dir. Anwar Rasheed, 2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on November 4, 2017.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ustad Hotel<\/strong> is the story of Faizal (Dulquer Salmaan), affectionately known as \u201cFaizi\u201d, and his desire to become a chef despite the objections of his father Abdul Razaq (Siddique), who wants him to become the manager of a five-star hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film opens with a narration by Ummar (Mamukkoya), describing the circumstances surrounding Faizi\u2019s birth:  Abdul Razaq (Siddique) and his wife, Fareeda (Praveena), a Muslim couple living in Kerala, are expecting their first child.  Abdul desperately wants a son; Fareeda gives birth to a girl.  As Fareeda continues to give birth to girls, Abdul grows despondent and irritated, and migrates to Dubai to earn for his growing family.  He is missing when Fareeda finally gives birth to their fifth child, a son.  The family\u2019s joy at the birth of Faizi is short-lived, however, when, as a result of the strains of continuous childbirth, Fareeda suddenly passes away.  Abdul takes his five children to Dubai, where Faizi is raised by his \u201cIthatas and Company\u201d (\u201cSisters and Company\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food and cooking is important in Faizi\u2019s life right from the very beginning.  In order to calm him down when he\u2019s crying at his mother\u2019s funeral, his grandfather, Kareem Ikka (Thilakan, in one of his final film roles) warms some milk laced with sugar and spices:  his first taste of sweet according to Ummar\u2019s narration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_SweetSpicedMilkBottle\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Faizi\u2019s sisters, we are told, raise him in place of their mother \u2013 sharing first their toys, and then teaching Faizi to cook along with them, much to Abdul\u2019s dismay.  The sisters prepare the dishes they learned from their mother, passing them on to Faizi, too. Abdul\u2019s admonishments to Faizi to get out of the kitchen and go study don\u2019t stop him, and as an adult he\u2019s shown cooking alongside his older sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_Faizi_Kitchen_Adult\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, each of Faizi\u2019s sisters is married off until, finally, Faizi is left alone in the Dubai flat.  Faizi\u2019s unhappiness deepens when Abdul decides, suddenly, to remarry, springing a new \u201cmother\u201d on him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With his son obviously lonely and at loose ends, Abdul brings home some pamphlets for schools, encouraging Faizi to pick one to go earn an MBA \u2013 Abdul wants to bring Faizi into his business.  At first, Faizi seems discouraged, but one of the schools catches his eye: a Hotel Management Institute in Switzerland.  Faizi convinces his father that this would be better than just having an ordinary MBA.  Abdul sees the merit of the plan, and is excited at the prospect of opening a five-star hotel with his son.  Even more importantly for Abdul, he sees it as a way to silence his detractors, those, he says, who called him \u201cthe son of a cook\u201d.  With his plan in place, Faizi heads off to Switzerland.  What he *doesn\u2019t* tell his father, however, is that the same Hotel Management Institute also offers a programme allowing him to become a chef, and that\u2019s what Faizi switches to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When his schooling is finished, Faizi\u2019s sisters realize the crisis about to hit, when Faizi tells them he\u2019s moving in with his English girlfriend and taking a job as a sous-chef in London.  Worse, still, Faizi wants his sisters to tell their father about his plans, and that he won\u2019t be returning to Dubai to enter the hotel business. The four sisters decide that if they are all to escape their father\u2019s wrath, they need to come up with a plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Faizi arrives in their ancestral home in Kerala, he\u2019s met at the airport by his father and a group of people he doesn\u2019t know \u2013 the family driver, Abdullah, tells Faizi that there has been a marriage proposal, and passes him his phone \u2013 his sisters want to talk to him.  This, it turns out, is part of the sisters\u2019 plans, to arrange Faizi\u2019s marriage to someone Abdul will approve of, before they deal with the fact that Faizi has become a chef.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On arrival at the prospective bride\u2019s house, he meets Shahana (Nithya Menen) and her family, who suggest that the couple should be allowed to chat.  Shahana brings a cup of tea to a courtyard table set just outside the kitchen, where they are watched by the women of the household.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shahana is a sharp cookie \u2013 she wonders why Faizi, handsome and educated abroad, would agree to an arranged marriage, musing that, surely, he must have a European girlfriend (an observation that causes Faizi to do a spit take with the tea).  She also tells him that if it were up to her, she wouldn\u2019t be getting married at all, but her orthodox family insists on arranging her marriage.  The best she can hope for, she thinks, is someone whose values match her own, so their marriage would at least be an equal partnership, and her views would be respected.  Faizi\u2019s sisters have assured her that Faizi would be a good match for her \u2013 as we\u2019ll see later, it turns out they are right.  Shahana studied interior design, and intends to work in that field even after marriage, telling Faizi she wants to do the design work on his five-star hotel.  When Faizi comments that he can\u2019t see that happening, she assumes he would have a problem with her working, and that\u2019s when he drops the news:  he was trained as a chef in Switzerland, and has landed a job as a sous chef at a swishy restaurant in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_Chef\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Shahana excuses herself, leaving Faizi sitting in the courtyard, and goes to tell her family this news \u2013 they are in an uproar, saying that they wanted a groom for her, not a cook.  The family immediately decides that Faizi\u2019s family is not a good match for her \u2013 he comes from a different status, a family of cooks.  Abdul, learning the news for the first time at this gathering, rushes off, furious with his son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abdul doesn\u2019t see the difference between what Faizi has trained as \u2013 a chef \u2013 and what he\u2019s always felt tainted with \u2013 being the son of a mere cook.  He refuses to listen to Faizi, telling him there is no way he will ever allow him to work as a chef.  Faizi will have to toe the line:  work at the five star hotel his father has planned, and marry the bride that\u2019s been selected for him.  A furious Abdul takes Faizi\u2019s passport and credit cards away from him so that he will be unable to return to London.  He gives Faizi until the next morning to change his mind about becoming a \u201ccook like his grandfather\u201d, otherwise, Abdul will kick him out of the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faizi, desperate, decides to pack his things and leave \u2013 he searches for his passport, but is unable to find it.  Without the passport, he has limited options, and Abdullah, after wondering if he\u2019s thought things through, drives him to his grandfather, Kareem Ikka (Thilakan).  Faizi tells his grandfather he\u2019ll only be there a few days \u2013 until his sisters can arrange to get his passport back for him.  Kareem Ikka wonders if they\u2019ll be able to do that, and suggests, wryly, that having his sisters do this for him makes Faizi into a coward:  running away, in essence, from the very things he needs to face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_CookFromBooks\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Kareem Ikka runs the Ustad Hotel \u2013 in their ancestral home in Kozhikode, Kerala, on the beach, just up the ways from the five star Beach Bay hotel.  He also comments, wryly, that Faizi has learned to cook from books, and perhaps, in his time with his grandfather, he\u2019ll actually learn to \u201cexperience some taste\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, Faizi\u2019s apprenticeship with his grandfather proves to be the thing that changes his life and his view on cooking in substantial and deeply spiritual ways.  The one thing the film does beautifully is celebrate food, especially the kind of food prepared by the Kareem Ikka\u2019s of Kerala:  we\u2019re shown lovingly rendered shots of Kareem Ikka preparing the biryani for which he is famous, and which draws customers to his beachfront eatery, Ustad Hotel (\u201chotel\u201d is a word used in the south of India to indicate a restaurant, and \u201cUstad\u201d is Kareem Ikka\u2019s name), adding spices to his cauldron almost as a form of worship, lovingly accented by the Sufi-infused film score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_KarimCooking\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

His days at the Ustad Hotel begin when Ummar brings Faizi tea to wake him up in the morning, and are spent delivering biryani throughout Kozhikode, tasting food from carts, occasionally running into, and running away from, Shahana, cleaning fish for fish-fry and, occasionally, attempting to cook, though his grandfather soon shoos him out, telling his kitchen staff that Faizi is too immature to be in the kitchen cooking, an irony for the European-educated chef.  What Kareem Ikka understands, and Faizi does not (yet) is that there is more to food and cooking than can be learned from a book or taught at a culinary institute:  there are social and emotional layers to our relationship with food that Faizi has yet to experience.  Important too is the understanding that, like the layers in a biryani, there are layers to the business.  Yes, the cooking is important, but so are all the other things that go into the Ustad Hotel, and Kareem Ikka, essentially, has Faizi learning the business from the bottom up:  getting supplies, making deliveries, waiting on tables, cleaning tables, going over receipts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Easily the best thing about the film Ustad Hotel (apart from all the mouth-watering food) is the relationship that develops between Faizi and his grandfather:  there is a warm complicity between the actors Dulquer Salmaan and Thilakan (one of Malayalam cinema\u2019s finest actors, who died not long after the film\u2019s release) that anchors the whole film.  Kareem Ikka eventually allows Faizi into the kitchen (though his skills as a professionally trained chef leave something to be desired when it comes to traditional Kerala cookery of the sort served at the Ustad Hotel), but reminds him that \u201canyone can fill someone\u2019s tummy\u201d.  What\u2019s more important, to Kareem Ikka, is that the key to food and cooking is filling people\u2019s hearts with joy at the same time.  This, he tells his grandson, is the true purpose of cooking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_Tea\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Faizi sees Ustad Hotel as a kind of refuge, where no one forces him to do anything \u2013 unlike his father, who is trying to force him into managing a five-star hotel.  The parallels that writer Anjali Menon draws are subtle and skillful:  Abdul tells Faizi he feels stifled even entering his father\u2019s restaurant; Faizi notes that it\u2019s exactly how he feels with his father, too.  Abdul tells Faizi that nothing in the world can be achieved with philosophy, but it\u2019s Kareem Ikka\u2019s philosophy about cookery and food that underpins everything he does. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Faizi\u2019s European prospects dwindle, his grandfather offers up another surprise:  he wonders if Faizi wouldn\u2019t perhaps like to work at Beach Bay, the five-star hotel just up the coast from Ustad Hotel.  He tells Faizi his father was right about one thing:  to learn, he has to get out of Ustad Hotel.  Kareem Ikka, it turns out, knows the executive chef at the upscale establishment:  in fact, it\u2019s the Ustad that provides the biryani on the menu (the special \u201cMalabar Beach Biryani\u201d) at the fancy hotel restaurant.  And a short, handwritten note from Kareem Ikka (\u201cThis is my grandson, give him a job he would like.\u201d) is, in fact, quite enough to land Faizi a job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_Quality\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

One of the film\u2019s finest moments is a conversation between grandfather and grandson after they visit the bank to discuss the issue of Kareem Ikka\u2019s loan repayment.  As they talk, Kareem Ikka brews a pot of Sulaimani chai, and after he takes a sip of it, Faizi suggests there\u2019s a difference in the ingredients to how it\u2019s usually brewed.  His grandfather tells him that what\u2019s more important than the ingredients is the feeling that\u2019s put into their preparation.  Every glass of Sulaimani, he tells Faizi, should have a bit of love in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sipping the tea, Faizi has a flashback to Shahana, on an evening when he ran into her performing with the band that hangs out at Ustad Hotel, which has him wondering about his grandfather and love, and he asks him to tell him the story of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_Tea_Love\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Kareem Ikka reveals that when he was 18 years old, and had just joined his master, he went to cook biryani for Mawlawi\u2019s daughter\u2019s wedding.  He looked up from stirring the vessel, and saw, in his words, a nymph near the window, like a caged bird.  \u201cI felt a shiver in my heart,\u201d he tells Faizi, \u201cas if everything that has happened in my life seemed to have converged to that point.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young woman in the window, it turned out, was Mawlawi\u2019s daughter \u2013 Faizi laughs, and assumes, as he tells his grandfather, that the wedding took place, they ate his biryani, and that was that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the two get ready for bed, Faizi suggests that, perhaps, his grandfather still misses the nymph, which is when his grandfather drops his bombshell:  the nymph in question was his grandmother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faizi discovers by accident that the bank that holds his grandfather\u2019s loans is in cahoots with the hotel in order to get the land owned by Kareem Ikka, in order to allow the expansion plans of the hotel along the beach to proceed.  Kareem Ikka vows that he will have to repay the loan somehow to stop being forced to sell his property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next thing we know, officers from the Food and Drug Administration show up at the Ustad Hotel for an inspection, saying they\u2019d received a complaint about the hygiene of the restaurant.   Upon finding Faizi\u2019s kitten dead in the kitchen, they close it down for seven days, telling Kareem Ikka he can reopen after another inspection.  In the aftermath, Kareem Ikka decides to close the Ustad Hotel, but Faizi insists that they should fight back, and Ummar tells him that the employees are with Faizi, who wants to fix up the hotel and reopen it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, Shahana has broken off the engagement (with an odious man named Mehroof) her family arranged for her after the one with Faizi fell apart, and she comes to see Faizi at the Ustad Hotel, to admit that, perhaps, she, too, made a mistake when it came to breaking off their alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faizi and Shahana plan the Ustad Hotel renovations, and the staff at the hotel offers up what money they can.  Shahana throws in the gold jewelry that Mehroof\u2019s family gifted her at her bride-seeing, and they all set to work to clean and paint and restore the Ustad Hotel.  They do so brilliantly, and during the coverage of the reopening, the press uncovers the secret that the Beach Bay restaurant biryani is actually made at the Ustad Hotel.  Ustad Hotel reopens to great success, and Kareem Ikka can finally pay back the bank loan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_Mural\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In the midst of all of this, Faizi receives a job offer to go work in France as an executive chef, but his joy is short lived when Kareem Ikka suffers a mild heart attack.  Faizi worries that his grandfather might use it as an opportunity to ask him to stay at the Ustad Hotel.  Instead, Kareem Ikka asks his grandson only to do a favour for him before he leaves \u2013 he wants Faizi to take some money to a friend of his in Madurai in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Madurai, Faizi meets his grandfather\u2019s friend Narayanan Krishnan (Jayaprakash), chef turned social worker, who spends his time cooking for the homeless and the disabled, and surely his story is one that Kareem Ikka must hope that will cause Faizi to think about the choices he\u2019s making.  Kareem Ikka has sent a letter to his friend, telling him that he\u2019s taught his grandson *how* to cook, but needs Narayanan Krishnan to teach him they \u201cwhys and wherefores\u201d of cooking.  Narayanan Krishnan asks Faizi to come with him and his crew, and Faizi watches as they feed people out on the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narayanan Krishnan reveals that he was a chef at an upscale hotel for 12 years, when he came upon an old man who changed his life.  One day, sitting in his car on his way to the Taj, he spied the old man at the side of the road, so hungry that he was eating his own excrement.  It was a moment that caused Narayanan Krishnan to question the purpose of his life, and he walked away from his posh job and dedicated his life to providing sustenance for those who had nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On his last morning with Narayanan Krishnan, Faizi is asked to cook for the youngsters at a school for the disabled \u2013 when he wonders what he should cook, Narayanan Krishnan tells him, biryani, of course:  Kareem Ikka\u2019s biryani. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_Thanks\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

After everything is done, a tired Faizi sits with his head in his hands, and the children line up to sign something on his arm \u2013 when he wonders what they are all doing, one of the teachers tells him they are signing \u201cthanks\u201d.  On the bus back to Kozhikode, Faizi remembers his grandfather\u2019s words:  anyone can fill a tummy, but the true purpose of cooking is filling hearts with joy.  It\u2019s the moment that finally changes the path of Faizi\u2019s life forever.  Arriving back at the Ustad Hotel, he finds it closed:  his grandfather has finally left on his pilgrimage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A despondent Faizi remembers all the moments he spent with his grandfather:  being scolded, sharing a cup of Sulaimani tea \u2013 and as he sits facing the sea thinking, his father approaches, bringing with him Faizi\u2019s passport.  Faizi gives the passport back to his father, and the camera fades to Ummar, continuing the narration of the 60 year history of Ustad Hotel that he began the film with:  we see that he\u2019s been telling this story to a reporter and cameraman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also turns out that not only has Faizi reconciled with his father, Abdul has also reconciled with Ustad Hotel, telling the reporter how he used to serve biryani there, and how now he\u2019s established a branch of the restaurant in Dubai \u2013 run by Faizi\u2019s sisters, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reporter then goes to talk to Faizi, now running the Ustad Hotel, with Shahana by his side.  \u201cIs this the famous Sulaimani story?\u201d the reporter wonders, elaborating for viewers:  the biryani at Ustad Hotel, it\u2019s not just about the taste.  It\u2019s also about the love that\u2019s served along with it:  the lesson, of course, that Kareem Ikka was trying to impress on his grandson from the very beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UH_Two1\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on November 4, 2017. Ustad Hotel is the story of Faizal (Dulquer Salmaan), affectionately known as \u201cFaizi\u201d, and his desire to become a chef despite the objections of his father Abdul Razaq (Siddique), who wants him to become the manager of a five-star hotel.…<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingUstad Hotel (dir. Anwar Rasheed, 2012)<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[212],"tags":[375,372,86,373,374,35,132,371],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-malayalam-movies","tag-anjali-menon","tag-anwar-rashid","tag-dulquer-salmaan","tag-mamukkoya","tag-praveena","tag-siddique","tag-thilakan","tag-ustad-hotel","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}