Njan Samvidhanam Cheyyum

A movie that has nothing good about it in any aspect trying to speak about the necessity of promoting off beat films which gets sidelined. That is the irony of the latest Balachandra Menon movie Njan Samvidhanam Cheyyum. A making style that competes with mediocre short films and a script that has unbearable amount of clichés; this movie won’t give you a chance to think that it has significance.

Krishnadas is an NFDC employee who isn’t that close to his wife Gayathri and daughter Pinky. After a long while he comes back to homeland with some intentions of movie making. Gayathri who wanted Das to discourage their daughter from being a film director is taken a back hearing this and the movie ultimately focuses on their tough struggle to make Das’s dream movie and also to give it a proper recognition.

At one point it seems like a movie about the inside story of film stars’ personal life. Then it becomes a family subject. After that it becomes an Udayananu Thaaram and then Mr. Menon discusses the issues surrounding our conventional state award system. Well I do agree with him on the fact that the quality of the jury has diminished hugely over the years and the latest one really shook us all. But making a movie that is extremely lackluster isn’t the way to protest against it. The amount of cliché you have to tolerate in Balachandra Menon’s writing is huge.  There isn’t a single scene that looked real. All the 80’s model melodrama and “romance” gets recreated in the lamest possible way. A large amount of time is spent on that award committee portions and I must say that it looks bizarre. The caricatured characters talks like those mother in laws in the daily soaps.

As I said the making competes with the ordinary short films that get released in YouTube. The director’s vision is still in the 80’s and the drama hasn’t got the ticket to 2015. Balachandra Menon fails miserably to add life to his shallow idea. The actors he chose and he himself was struggling hard to reduce the melodrama and artificiality in the dialogues. Screenplay is a very plane idea with all the “typical” elements we have seen in the director’s hay days in the industry. There is no charisma and the developments look extremely sloppy. The music is terrible and the background score is unbearable. Cinematography was a mess. Whenever the interior of the flat happens to be the background of a scene, the editor will show us the visual of two puppy dolls (was there any great hidden meaning?).

On screen almost all the main actors struggle. Balachandra Menon lacks energy and some of his emotional performances would remind you of the imitation mimicry artists do. Gayathri should thank Praveena for the voice as the voice modulation was the only thing that made the character bearable. Debutant Dakshina has the energy, but Menon’s heavy dialogues with cheesy lines are too much for her to handle. They have introduced a new face Sreekanth who has nothing to do in the film. The remaining cast comprising of veteran actors and other usual faces are just okay in their roles.

If you want to test someone’s patience, go and watch the film Njan Samvidhaanam Cheyyum with them. The movie is 160 minutes long and it will seem like you were inside the cinema hall for the entire day. The rating is 1/5 for this Balachandra Menon film. If the makers truly respect the sidelined parallel cinemas, they should withdraw this film from theaters and give space to such struggling films.