Kumbasaaram

Much like his last movie Zachariahyude Garbhinikal, which received the state award in various categories, Aneesh Anwar’s latest movie Kumbasaaram is also a deeply emotional journey. Dilemma of human mind seems to be something that fascinates the writer in Aneesh, if it was the four pregnant women’s conflicts last time, this time the focus goes to the problems of two fathers who are desperate to save their children.

The movie focuses on the story of the couple Alby and Meera. Alby is an autorikshaw driver who married this Hindu girl and they have a boy named Jerry. The lower middle class family’s happy and simple life gets a setback when Jerry is diagnosed with cancer. The basic conflict zone of Kumbasaaram is in Alby’s desperation to get money to save his child and how it takes him to some really messed up situation.

The movie takes amble time to showcase the poverty and misery of the main protagonist’s family. When you reach the half way mark of the film, you won’t expect it to have the sort of twist it gets in the second half. As a writer I think that’s the area were Aneesh Anwar managed to surprise the audience considerably and the kind of similarity in situations of the protagonist and antagonist gives the movie an interesting texture. Even though the heavy drama wasn’t supporting the performance of the crucial roles of the child artists, there is a kind of intrigue in the darkish narration of this tale of desperate measures.

Aneesh Anwar’s typical treatment using slow motions throughout with some glossy scenes in between is been followed here as well. As the tone of the movie is a debate between hope and misery, that style of making is convincing. In the writing part, I really feel that he should lessen the melodrama in dialogues at least when the actors aren’t that great. The dialogues he has written for Jerry may have the content to give the boy that selfless attire, but in a way it goes to that level of too less innocence on a child. On a screenplay level I thought he could have reduced the scenes that were used to make us feel the condition of Alby’s family. Alby’s cinematography is wonderful as almost every frame captures our interest. The music sounds good in the movie but the kind of auto tuned singing is becoming too excessive in Vishnu Mohan Sithara’s compositions and the styles of songs are also repetitive. Edits were good and the background score was also nice.

Jayasurya once again shines in his character portrayal. He did the character of Alby with the required perfection and you can easily understand that when you look at the dialogue delivery of other actors. Honey Rose was okay in her largely tearful character. Akash as Jerry and Gaurav Menon were also nice in their characters. It was good to see Priyanka in a good character. Prem Navas was nice. Small roles for Vineeth and Tini Tom.

On the whole, Kumbasaaram is one more emotional flick from director Aneesh Anwar that manages to convey its basic thought. The excessive melodrama in the writing has caused jitters, but the movie still has that something to convince you. The rating for Kumbasaaram is 3/5.