Kunjananthante Kada

Kunjananthante Kada is a film with two dimensions of social and personal ego. It’s not a preachy movie that tells us what to do throughout its narrative. It just flows naturally and shows us what’s wrong in our attitude. With similar backdrops and characters of his earlier film “Aadaminte makan Abu”, director Salim Ahmed has presented a contemporary subject in a very engaging manner.

The plot here revolves around the egoistic individual Kunjananthan. His married life isn’t going smoothly and according to him, he has taken the wrong bus. The lack of understanding with his wife has resulted in his love with the shop he runs. The proud memories of his father managing the shop and the fact that he has spent 3/4^th of his life in this shop make it an inevitable part of his life. At a particular instance he is being forced to leave his possession that meant a lot to him emotionally. With him trying to protect it in every possible way, the plot starts to offer Kunjananthan a lot of instances to show how narrow his thoughts were and how selfish he was.

What I felt really interesting was the realistic way of showing someone’s ego on screen by offering him chance to explain his stand. The arguments of the husband and wife are so real that you will find the humor in it quite genuine. The first half is pretty much on the personal side of Kunjananthan and as the story traverses to the second half, it goes to that social terrain. There also the writer-director creates that genuine sarcasm of teasing the attitude of our central protagonist. The broad mindset that tries to utilize religion, emotion and even the suicide of a mentally challenged for the cause in a way depicts the present attitude of many people towards development.

Technically, the direction is impressive. Loved the script that utilized every character and situations to its best. The dialogs were practical and sharp.  Cinematography is good. The edits could have been a bit sharper, especially in the second half and the background music also required more polishing. The music from M Jayachandran is catchy. The climax visual effects were on the down side. Sync sound was used nicely and compared to other sync sound movies we have seen in Malayalam, this one was much clear (may be because of the quiet environment they chose). A special appreciation for the art department also.

Performance wise, Mammooty has lived the life of Kunjananthan very elegantly. It’s a film that has used the actor in him after a while. Nyla Usha makes an impressive debut as Chithira. The rest of the cast including Siddique, Balachandra Menon, Salim Kumar, the kids and the actors who played the roles of other shop owners were good in their respective characters. Everyone managed the slang very nicely.

It’s a film with a heart that tells you to “move on”. It’s not an intellectual debate to complicate your thoughts. My rating is 4/5 for Kunjananthante Kada. The couple who sat next to me was finding it difficult to enjoy this film. It was sad to see them cursing the movie for its lack of masala, but the positive part was that both of them were agreeing unlike Kunjananthan’s family.