When you see Fahadh Faasil’s name in a film, you are within your rights to expect something extraordinary, and not something so extraordinarily ordinary, and morally compromised like Mareeesan.
Director Sudheesh Sankar’s first film in eleven years starts off as an innocuous road movie but eventually grows (if growth is what it is), rather morphs into something much darker and dangerous.
Admirably, Fahadh, the Marlon Brando of Malayalam cinema, shares equal screen time with Vaidvelu, the veteran comedian known only for supporting parts, who is not funny this time: which is a pity, as the film seems to take itself too seriously. Vaidvelu plays Velan, a man whose mind seems to be playing games with him. Those around him claim he has “dementia,” although no one is clinically qualified for such a diagnosis.
Velan takes off with Dhaya (Fahadh Faasil), a con-man who feels it’s okay to steal since the world is filled with much bigger criminals, like Velan, who is suspected of being a serial killer.
The screenplay (V. Krishna Moorthy) plays mind games with the audience by constantly changing the moral perception about the two protagonists: Velan is a forgetful simpleton… no, he is a dangerous paedophile… no no, he is actually a saint… Dhaya is a greedy greaseball… nope, he is actually a loveable thief like Dev Anand in Jewel Thief but with much less hair…
After a while, these catch-me-if-you-can games get exhausting, for the characters and the audience. By the time we get to Fahadh’s climactic hand-to-hand fight with the actual villain (by the time we get to this point, the screenplay has decided to externalize the evil), it is hard to take the storytelling seriously anymore.
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The writers substitute inspired writing with fidgety manoeuvres, which are neither interesting nor rational. Hell, they are not even politically correct! It is terrifying when a serious crime like paedophilia is introduced into the plot midway, somewhat like Forrest Gump meets Crime Patrol, and not in a very productive union.
The tangential reference to child abuse is so flaky, it seems like an afterthought. A woman, Meenakshi (Sithara), diagnosed with Alzheimer’s (yes, the second character to suffer from memory loss, though maybe the first one was just faking it, or whatever), is unable to identify the sex offender in the courtroom. Apparently, she remembers the crime, though not the criminal.
There is a touching moment (there are a few of those scattered all across, but not enough) when Sithara asks for her husband, who is sitting right in front of her, and he leaves the room promising to find him.
Some such fugitive emotional validity is sought by the film. Maareesan is brimming with ideas of morality but unable to pinpoint a core of conflict. Eventually, it seems like nothing more than a pretext to bring the two lead actors together. If they liked each other’s company, they could have met over tea at home.
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