Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is clearly a departure from the style Lijo Jose Pellissery has been following from around Ee Ma Yau. From that frantic and violent tempo, both Lijo and Writer S Hareesh place this story in a remote village on the Kerala Tamilnadu border to deliver a consistently hilarious story, that subconsciously works as a character study. With ample scope for the actor in Mammootty to perform like a theater artist, Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is a well-crafted comedy that uses the idea of hallucination to create something novel.
A group of people who are traveling from Velankanni to Changanasserry is the focus of this story. When they were passing through a rural village, the group head James asks the driver to stop the vehicle, and he goes to that village. The weird series of events that happens in that village post his arrival is what we witness in Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam.
Even though the primary foundation of the movie is humor-driven, S Hareesh utilizes the space to show the group behavior with all its variety. More than trying to unveil too many details regarding why something happened, the emphasis is on how it affected the people. There is a moment in the film where a lodge owner defines sleep referring to Thirukural, to which our hero laughs. That definition is somewhat giving a framework to this comedy. But the progression of events is hilarious, and despite the slow tempo, it keeps you engrossed.
As I said, Lijo Jose Pellissery somewhere goes back to an Amen-like zone where the scenes feel a lot more like a meticulously designed one. Every frame by Theni Eeswar is static, and some are even symmetric. And to keep it in that lighthearted space, the lighting is also on the brighter side. I loved how those Tamil tracks were incorporated into the film, almost like a narrative tool to give us clues about Sundaram. Lijo Jose Pellissery has given the credit for that to editor Deepu Joseph. His editing was exceptionally good in conveying the silent humor as the pacing played a key role. It was not like the makers completely ignored the audience’s curiosity to explore the fantasy bit in the film. The very last reveal and the way the dog reacts after that opens up possibilities for a lot of theories about that other person who is pretty much in the shadow.
It was a delight to see Mammootty flowing freely as a performer. As the party-spoiler James to the Tamil-speaking Sundaram, the transition is fabulous, and there is that enthusiasm in him to get lost in the character in some of those lengthy single shots. The rest of the cast doesn’t really have extensive screen time, but the screenplay gives them enough scenes to be memorable. Ashokan, Rajesh Sharma, Vipin Atley, Balan Parakkal, Suresh Babu, etc. are some of the familiar faces in the elaborate star cast of this film.
Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam offers the viewers a wide range of ways to look at it. It has this hallucination fantasy aspect, and it also feels like a satiric take on human dynamics. The movie is placed from one afternoon nap to another nap, and it shows how everything changes for the people in that space over the course of this “death” and “birth.” I had a feeling that the movie could have explored other characters more deeply using this theme. But the ambiguous elements in the writing are actually making us create our own narratives, which makes the movie even more compelling.
With ample scope for the actor in Mammootty to perform like a theater artist, Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is a well-crafted comedy that uses the idea of hallucination to create something novel.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
