Anarkali

Towards the climax, there is this impeccable performance of Biju Menon in the movie Anarkali that will surely make you laugh out loud because of the comedy timing the actor shows. Even after having the aid of some superb technical backup, Anarkali from Sachy can’t really establish itself as an eternal tale. With equal weightage for highs and lows in the overall output, Anarkali is pretty much an average cinema.

Shanthanu is the newly appointed diving instructor and he has arrived at Lakshadweep. The past of Shanthanu has a love story and it happened when he was in the navy. Things didn’t go smoothly for Shanthanu and that ultimately ended up in a forced discharge from the service. The decision to come to Kavarathi had certain connections with the lost love. What is that connection and what exactly is the complication in front of the love birds is what Anarkali narrating.

The trailer shows a suspense side to the movie and the beginning of Anarkali also has this curiosity generating buildup for a small duration. If I am not wrong, I think it was after the meeting of Shanthanu and Zachariah at Lakshadweep the movie starts to show hiccups. Shanthanu is a character who waited for nearly 14 years in a relationship and I don’t think that longing and depth of love was shown effectively in the movie. All those mysteries they create in the beginning and also at the half way point ends up being charmless twists in the tale. Thanks to Samskruthy Shenoy for spoiling the mystery behind Sudev Nair’s character by revealing too much in last night’s television show. The chemistry of the lead pair helps Anarkali in being a less cheesy love story.

This is Sachy’s debut venture as a director. He starts of the film in an interesting manner, but slowly the melodrama spoils the intrigue. As the script isn’t emphasizing much on what kept them together for this much of time, it becomes a little boring when you see the character constantly losing hope. The climax idea was also a little too over the top and at the same time it wasn’t that mind blowing. The conclusion and the attitude of Kabeer Bedi’s character reminded me of the 90’s movies “Pithaji” of the heroine. Sujith Vassudev has done a tremendous job with his camera. The helicam, steady cam shots showed really good quality and aerial shots had zero jitter. The released songs managed to grab attention, while the remaining few wasn’t that catchy.

Prithviraj’s looks for Anarkali is undeniably fabulous. When it comes to performance there was a slight glitch at some areas. Like the scenes where he laughs before saying something sentimental had this lack of feel. Biju Menon was really good in his typical comical avatar. While he is just giving counter dialogues during the majority of the screen time, that climax portion was written for him and he nailed it completely. The predictability of the climax went slightly unnoticed because of the improvised performance of Biju Menon. Priyal Gor did impress me. She has proved that she is not just another pretty face. Miya was good as the doctor and Suresh Krishna also performed nicely. Sudev Nair doesn’t have much to perform. Kabeer Bedi performs in his usual style and in a few scenes I guess the dubbing wasn’t done.

On the whole Anarkali is a mixed bag. You have the beautiful visuals of Lakshadweep, the bubbly Priyal Gor and a hilarious Biju Menon on one side. On the other side there is this predictable melodrama, lingering sentiments and shallow romance. The rating for Anarkali is 2.5/5. It is better than London Bridge but is far away from something like Ennu Ninte Moideen.