What made me watch the new Malayalam film Antappante Athbudha Pravarthikal was that it was written and directed by Vipin Atley, who made an impressive debut as a writer with his first film, Homely Meals. In the pre-release interviews, the crew talked about how they had to get the camera at the last minute during shoot days. The bad performances due to the casting limitations of an indie project like this are understandable. But Antappante Athbudha Pravarthikal is not making an effort in the key area that has nothing to do with funding: the writing. With a loosely edited film that has a satirical goal and no intent to polish it through writing, Antappante Athbudha Pravarthikal is a half-hearted attempt that rarely felt like a potent idea.
So Antappan, aka Esho, our title character, considers himself the Christ. His strong belief that he is the Christ makes him go on a hunt for his 12 disciples. Once that was done, it was time for the miracles. The growing popularity of Antappan was creating tensions in the minds of those who controlled the religious institutions. How that rift transpires is what we see in Antappante Athbudha Pravarthikal.
As you can easily guess, the movie is a religious satire, and Vipin Atley is trying to expose the hypocrisies of the church that endorses certain inhuman practices to maintain its power over believers. In a progressive modern society, such a subject is indeed relevant. But the thing is, it’s not a very novel thought. The movie starts with a lot of real footage of fraudsters all over the world who fooled people by claiming to be Christ. Vipin Atley is basically merging that thought into an already existing template of something like PK. It almost feels like he got to know about various fake Jesuses around the world, and he decided to club it with that climax TV show we saw in PK. But how to take the story to that climactic space is an area where he is clueless, and we are seeing a lot of gag comedy that works only in one or two instances.
Vipin Atley definitely knows a number of points that he can use to question the religious authorities who want to be the controlling entity. But the idea of filmmaking is not blandly saying your stand on certain issues. One of the most fundamental things of filmmaking is writing, and people like Vidhu Vinod Chopra have emphasized the need for writing multiple drafts to crack that one version which will feel like an enhanced cinematic depiction of your vision. But in Antappante Athbudha Pravarthikal, everything is hasty and impromptu. Vipin Atley is repeating his “Windows Media Player” joke from Homely Meals in a different form. He may have some interesting thoughts in his head, like his casting choice of Lucifer. But the messed-up writing fails to communicate his intentions.
The movie is two and a half hours long, and a major part of it is pointless comedy scenes. It’s like Vipin Atley decided to shoot a lot of stuff to fill certain segments of the film, and on the editing table, he decided to keep them all, not taking into account whether it helps the movie be engaging or not. The movie’s split is also making the experience difficult. Out of the 155 minutes, the first half is under one hour, and the second half is almost 100 minutes. The cinematography has its limitations due to the budget. The music is irritating, with songs popping out just for the sake of it, with clumsy one-word lyrics.
Much like most of his other films, Vipin Atley is the one playing the title role of Antappan, and he performs that part in a style we have seen him do with that peculiar kind of innocence. Out of the 12 disciples of Antappan, the only familiar names are Sajid Yahiya, Dominic Dom, and Kalesh Kannattu. The performances of most of the actors have that amateur feel, which sort of magnifies the movie’s sloppy writing. So many established names have appeared in the movie for these one-scene roles.
I have mentioned it previously in one of my reviews about what James Cameron had said famously about making that first independent amateur film. He said, “Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director.” This quote wasn’t about a proper feature film that will be seen by people who will judge the material purely for its merit. So if you are making a movie that will demand someone’s time and money, at least a certain sense of creative hard work should be visible beyond the flaws due to limitations. Writing and editing are two areas where you can’t make excuses for limitations, and Antappante Athbudha Pravarthikal is sloppy even in those departments.
