Quietly, without fuss, Sharan Venugopal’s new Malayalam film Narayaneente Moonnaanmakkal, with three of the finest Malayali actors playing brothers, lodges itself permanently into our hearts. This is that rare kind of cinema where nothing seems to happen on the surface while storms brew subliminally, causing welters of irreparable emotional damage in the familial fabric.
Smothered screams can be heard in the distance if you strain hard to listen. But the characters, gathered together around the matriarch’s deathbed, have no interest in confrontations: they just want to finish dealing with the crisis at hand and go their separate ways…
Navigating Complex Emotions
If only life were what we wanted it to be! Narayaneente Moonnaanmakkal negotiates across brittle bonds and indelible hurts without pushing the emotions cart too hard. That the three brothers are played by Alencier Ley Lopez, Joju George, and Suraj Venjaramoodu only makes the proceedings more immersive. These are actors who know how to build backstories for their characters without being given instructions in writing.
I like how the three screen brothers build the calm before the storm. In fact, the two major meltdown sequences are relatively less efficacious than the rest of the narrative, which sort of takes it all in, watching, observing, waiting, sometimes with unnerving poise.
Supporting Characters And Their Moments
While the brothers are uniformly well-played, the rest of the family are not space-fillers either. Sajitha Madathil, as the eldest brother’s wife trying to balance her differences with her teenaged daughter and her husband’s sibling crisis, has some sturdy moments.
I especially liked the moment where she ticks her husband off: “Don’t speak to me like you speak to your brothers.” The other brother’s wife (Shelly Kishore) is an outsider in the family, receiving no sanction from the family and neither seeking any.
Also Read: Aly Goni’s Indirect Dig At RJ Mahvash Amid Yuzvendra Chahal & Dhanashree Verma Divorce Buzz?
Romantic Undertones In A Tense Family Drama
The sneaked-in romance between the two cousins struck me as inopportune on many levels: the mood in the family is almost funereal, and the hormonal assertion is incestuous. Nonetheless, that underlining life-goes-on statement is effective, largely due to the directorial restraint.
Writer-director Sharan Venugopal keeps the emotions on a tight leash. The outbursts are almost apologetic in their intrusion. But then, life is like that. You have to deal with the blows even when wrestling with the lows.
A Study In Evocativeness
Although Narayaneente Moonnaanmakkal doesn’t quite achieve the greatness it could have — it lacks the poignant irony of Priyadarshan’s Manorathangal, in which the deceptively diminutive Indrans was outstanding as the spiritual attendant who is a silent witness to the selfishness of the dying man’s family — this film is nevertheless a study in bridled evocativeness.
