Cheraathukal

After the director’s credit in the title sequence of Cheraathukal, we would see this credit of “produced and designed” attributed to Dr. Mathew Mampra. As I write this review, the major query that pops up in my mind is about that design part. Anyone who has the patience to sit through this six films anthology will find it hard to understand a common element between all these short films. One more thing that doesn’t make much sense like most of the movies in this anthology movie is its title. Maybe they were looking for a word that sounded nice as a plural.

The first movie in the anthology is Veyil Veezhave, directed by Shanoob Karuvath. And it is easily the best film among the six short films in this package. Calling it the best doesn’t mean it has everything perfect about it. It is the theme of the short movie about same-sex relationships that makes it interesting, and the graceful performance of Marina Michael really smoothens it. The dialogues are pretty stiff, and producer Mathew Mampra who plays a major role in this film, also finds it difficult to convey it naturally. But Marina manages to make the movie a likable feel-good drama with the kind of ease she infuses in her performance. Technically, the static frames are nice, but I don’t know why they broke the 180-degree rule for a very normal conversation.

The second one is Narthaki, directed by Sreejith Chandran, and I would say it’s the second-best movie in the lot. It is on that cheesy side in terms of the writing and making, and nothing is happening beyond our predictions. But the actors’ performances, especially Devaki Rajendran as the central protagonist, made the movie a lot easier for the audience. Anoop Mohandas as Harshan was also really effective, and the duo considerably reduced the cheesiness in those dialogues.

Diwa, directed by Anu Kurisinkal, is probably the worst in the lot. From the amateurish writing to poor acting, there was nothing in this idea that will make you feel that there was scope for a movie. If any of you are familiar with those low budget trailer thing which is a current YouTube trend, Diwa is more like a low budget imitation of the recent Fahadh Faasil starrer Irul in the least complicated way.

Clara by Jayesh Mohan is the most evident scam here. The duration of this segment is only 8 minutes. I am not saying you can’t make great content within a span of 8 minutes. But here, it was very bizarre. When the viewer starts to feel the movie’s premise, they bring down the curtain and make it look like an extremely childish attempt at making a short film.

Shajan S Kallai’s Puzha, written by CV Balakrishnan, has these aspirations to be visually compelling, and they play with darkness and multiple lights to force the viewer to interpret the drama. The story is about the trauma of a lady named Kaaly who decided to abandon her child at a convent. The dilemmas in her headspace should have been the focus of that movie, but what we get to see here is the director desperately trying to show some signature stuff, eventually making the movie an unnecessarily complicated one.

Saamoohya Padam, directed by Fawaz Mohammed, is like a compressed version of an ordinary commercial movie. In a way, it was good that they decided to make it a 35-minutes short film rather than stretching it and making it another template inspirational drama. The film has a lot of eccentric elements, and none of it really contributed to the story. It’s like they started with this idea of making the hero a mad genius, but midway decided to drop that characteristic and play it safe.

Spending 2 hours and 20 minutes watching short films with not much impact is a tedious experience, and if you are generous enough to pay for that, then Neestream would be the better option as they are charging only Rs 70 for this movie. Scam 2021 would have been a fourth-wall-breaking name, and I would have appreciated the makers if they had done that.