Kadina Kadoramee Andakadaham(SonyLiv)
Rating: *** ½
Debutant director Muashin’s deceptively blithe film on the quirks and collaterals of the pandemic is the kind of cinema that lulls you into ‘LOL’ , only to jolt you into a state of somberness with a second chapter so different from the first—and so much superior to the first chapter—that it feels like boarding for one destination and landing in another, with no urge to ask for a refund.
Initially this is the story of a wedding planner Bachu(Basil Joseph) whose business of cooking biryanis for marriages goes bust during the lockdown. The initial sequences seem to run more like a television serial than a feature film, with Bachu trying to convince various moneylenders and sponsors that , well, the show must go on.
There is Bachu’s normal family with absentee father in Dubai, pregnant sister at home, and his estranged brother-in-law(played by the wonderful Binu Pappu) in a sulk…. It all seems vagrant and scattered.
Until a crisis happens. Suddenly the narrative gathers its wits together . The characters particularly the unsettled Bachu, change. Suddenly it is no longer about I-me-myself. The feeling of camaraderie and closeness during a time of crisis is nothing new to cinema. We’ve seen it in cinema in many languages repeatedly.
What sets Kadina Kadoramee Andakadaham apart is the tone of compassion and empathy that seeps in organically, sweeping the characters and the audience into a clasp of unrehearsed kinship.Repeatedly towards the end I found myself holding back those little sobs that threatened to break free from the pit of my stomach.
Especially heartrending are the family’s attempts to take a last look at the coffin of a loved one while the Covid rules forbid them from doing so. Harshad’s writing reins in the emotional velocity even as the melodrama of bereavement kicks in without warning.
The idea of a son’s guilt over his father’s death is put to tremendous use in this saga of unannounced farewells. The film captures the heartbreaking suddenness of a personal tragedy during a time when all human communication was stalled.
The performances elevate the emotional strength of the film while gracefully hiding its weaknesses.This is a film that tells us how vulnerable the pandemic made us all. It forbade us from grieving for the gone. But the good thing is, it made a film like Kadina Kadoramee Andakadaham possible.