Zachariayude Garbhinikal

It definitely has some extra dosage of drama and some unpolished performances, but director Aneesh Anwar’s second directorial venture Zachariayude Garbhinikal definitely has that positive feel to keep you attracted with its compact two hour long screen play. Set in the backdrop of pregnancy, the movie narrates 3 different aspects of it. With lush visuals and beautiful music to enhance the quality of the content, Zachariayude Garbhinikal will not disappoint you for sure.

The story revolves around the 3 pregnant ( +1 faking) women that comes to the life of gynecologist Zachariah. One is Anuradha whose extra marital affair has caused pregnancy, one is a nun who lately started to feel that motherhood is the completion of being a female and tries to give birth to a baby through artificial insemination, the third one is Saira who is doing her plus two and wishes to conceive her baby against her parent’s demand to do abortion. The last one is a nurse at Zachariah’s hospital who fakes her pregnancy to get some consideration from the doctor who had a soft corner towards pregnant women. All four character’s pregnancy has a different backdrop and the film narrates these stories in a sensible way throwing light on our society’s attitude.

Failure is basically in the screenplay that can’t equally accommodate these four female leads. While Anuradha and the nun appears occasionally, a larger (deservingly) focus is on Saira. And the fourth character is interestingly an added up one for comedy which works big time. If the screen space was even, I think the impact would have been better. It’s not like these characters don’t convey anything. With the right support from her Husband, Anuradha is recovering. The nun also transforms in a positive way and Saira also tries to make a sound statement. The humor track of Fathima also does its feel good part nicely.

On screen, Lal has done a very impressive job as the doctor. The actor has delivered a performance which is non-typical from his side. Asha Sharath is convincing as his wife. Sanusha was ok in parts and giving her modern character such heavy Malayalam dialogs was a bad idea. Sandra Thomas doesn’t do much with her face which I believe made Aneesh to focus on her lips at a couple of times. Joy Mathew was good in his limited screen time. Aju did his role as Aju very nicely and never made the character look goofy. Rima had some hiccups in the beginning in rendering that Kasargode slang, but as the movie progressed the actress scored. Geetha was good as the nun. Rest of the cast including Prem Navas, Kochu Preman, Sivaji Guruvayoor etc did their roles nicely.

In the making, Aneesh Anwar has done a very nice job when compared to his first film. Never really makes the narrative dull with the making. Screenplay as I said was a bit uneven in giving the stories their relevant space. The way they treated Fathima’s story without annoying the rhythm of other stories was something positive. Dialogs at times were over dramatic. Cinematography is excellent and the music is also quite catchy. Convincing BGMs and edits are there. I loved the perfection of the visual effects which was occasionally used and the animation also showed some quality (comparatively).

Overall, it’s far from being perfect, but still a good one time watch if you are expecting a sensible output. My rating is 3/5 and thumbs up for Zachariayude Garbhinikal. It’s a good one.