Kismath

Kismath isn’t entirely a love story that tries to pitch another Romeo and Juliet to its viewer. It has a clear and strong agenda and it presents that with all the sincerity. I watched it from a full house theater and there were people hauling at the end of the film and in my opinion those were appreciations. Those abuses were against the politics of the movie and any rebellious thought is always criticized in a nasty way.

Kismath is set in Ponnani. Anita and Irfan are in love with each other. Anita belongs to SC community and Irfan is a Muslim. Anita is 5 years older than Irfan. The movie deals with the incidents that happen after these two approaches the police station for protection to get married. Their struggle to overcome the orthodox mindsets is what the movie telling us.

Shanavas K Bavakutty has tried to present the movie as a politically strong one. The sort of discrimination the helpless poor people face in our society gets depicted in a very realistic way. It is not just the attitude towards the SC female lead, you have a man getting forced to become the accused to save a police officer and there is this worker from Assam getting squeezed by the authorities. Some of it may have sounded comical, but ultimately they are all different versions of the torture faced by the so called lower class people. While the first half invests equally on other cases along with our main story, the second half is entirely focusing on the love story. Looking at the very small runtime of the movie, I felt that they could have spent more time on the love story part, letting the audience know the depth of the bonding. That and Shruthy Menon’s filmy performance is probably the only drawbacks this movie has got.

After those small roles in Annayum Rasoolum, NPCB, Kammattipaadam and a few others, Shane Nigam gets a main role in a movie and I have to say that the boy has a great potential to be a fabulous actor. He emotes perfectly and the attitude required for various scenes were spot on. Shruthy Menon’s performance was a bit theatrical and with actors around her performing with such flare, it sort of stood out. Alencier Ley, Anil Nedumangad, Sunil Sukhada and a few more quality actors are there performing really well in their respective roles. The best performer in the whole movie in my opinion was Vinay Forrt who delivered a top notch performance as the brutal SI. The effortless way of carrying that character was really superb. A special mention to the impressive performance of Binoy Nambala.

Shanavas has tried to keep it real to the core. There aren’t any cinematic cheesiness and the character outbursts are quite real. He captures the scenes with utmost rawness. Some may have an issue with the sudden ending and the small length of the movie. But I found that hard hitting. The movie in its realistic approach teases every bit of the common orthodox reactions such a relationship could face. Thus the humor in the movie is quite sensible and the pain is also deeply haunting. Like I said earlier, the romance portions could have been given prominence. The cinematography is largely focusing on static frames and it was really good. Edits were nice and the background scores are pretty impressive. Kisa Pathiyil song is now among my favorites.

Kismath haunts you the same way Annayum Rasoolum and Njan Steve Lopez did (If they did). It narrates things in the real world with less theatricality. It is not a depressing movie, it is a movie that tells you to keep on fighting against the odds. If you are lucky enough to know the soul of the film you will get it.

Rating : 3.5/5