Summer In Bethlehem was a movie produced by Siyad Kokker, and Marivillin Gopurangal was a beautiful song from that film. In fact, every song in that Vidyasagar musical is extremely beautiful. The new film from Siyad Koker’s production house is given the title Marivillin Gopurangal, and this movie also has music from legendary Vidyasagar. But as soon as the movie begins, we get to hear an underwhelming song that has lyrics like “One Needs Thanupp, One Needs Puthapp” penned by none other than the hit machine Vinayak Sasikumar. The cringe + What the hell reaction one would have hearing that song is pretty much what I felt about the whole movie, which was wandering aimlessly for more than two hours.
Shinto is an aspiring filmmaker, who is struggling to set up his first film. He is currently writing a children’s show for a TV channel to pay the bills. His wife Sherin runs a nursery, and the couple have decided not to have kids until they are financially stable. One day Shinto’s brother Rony makes a surprise visit with his girlfriend, and it turns out that Rony’s girlfriend Meenakshi was pregnant. The events that happen in the life of all these people after that are what we see in this comedy directed by Arun Bose.
In the movie’s credits, rather than using written and directed by, Arun Bose has opted for concept and direction. Well, that’s precisely the problem with the movie. When you look at the episodic and disjoint nature of the screenplay, it feels like the makers, Arun Bose and Pramod Mohan, should have written something solid rather than exploring a concept. If you watch the trailer of the film, it might give you the impression that it is about pregnancy and the decision to have a child or not, etc. But that is just one of the subplots of this film that is shuttling between passion, childhood trauma, etc. “Conceptually” it makes sense to make a movie about “why one should have a baby?” in 2024 as there are several couples out there who have chosen not to have kids. But the scattered script of Marivillin Gopurangal can’t even focus on that concept.
Towards the interval point of the movie, it is revealed to us that something is majorly bothering Rony, and that comes out of the blue unsettling the feel-good rhythm of the film. But when the movie restarts in the second half, the writing gets lost in Shinto so much that you almost forget what happened to Rony. Shinto’s rift with the child actor and his impulsive decision making etc., feels very plastic, and you don’t feel any sort of empathy towards any of the characters. The placement of emotional issues of characters and how it all eventually culminates in the film’s climax, just feels like a template. When Shinto shows up as Shock Shinto towards the end, Arun Bose might have imagined it as a sweet and predictable fun banter thing, but what eventually got created was a lifeless cringe scene.
The characters of the movie are designed in a way that almost all the actors are forced to perform in a slightly louder way. Indrajith has done characters in a similar zone previously, and the performance was fine. Sarjano Khalid is still struggling with dialogue delivery in certain areas when there are too many words for him to handle. My favorite performance came from Shruti Ramachandran as she managed to bring down the eccentric energy to a sensible level in many sequences. And there are sporadic sequences in the film where the scenes use only her smile and glances, which I believe were more effective than the lines. Vincy Aloshious is slightly over the top in the initial portions of the character, and a share of the blame should be given to the writing. But her labor room comedy was somewhat a relief in a movie that was otherwise tiresome.
In Marivillin Gopurangal, the hero, Shinto, is a struggling director who is unable to narrate a script and convince producers or actors. By the end of the movie, we are shown that Shinto has succeeded in learning how to narrate a film. The irony is that we witnessed the whole thing in a movie that was narrated pretty badly, making you almost wonder how they convinced the producers about the potential.
When you look at the episodic and disjoint nature of the screenplay, it feels like the makers, Arun Bose and Pramod Mohan, should have written something solid rather than exploring a concept.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
