Neelavelicham (Amazon Prime Video)
Rating: ***
Scarcely had we gotten over Tovino Thomas’s class act as a do-gooder during the Kerala floods of 2018 than he is back, this time almost unrecognizable as a down-but-not out writer in a mundu and spectacles to occupy a haunted house in coastal Kerala.
What follows is a fertile fable fabulously filmed by that magical cinematographer Girish Gangadharan. It’s a pity we have to watch the film on the home medium This is a work with its compelling colour palate, that deserves a 70mm screen, if not larger . Hats off to the art director and the costume designer , everything looks right.
The periodicity is pungent and never overdone. The vexatious elements connected with the supernatural genre is reined in and never allowed to overcome the intrinsic dramatic value of a tragic fable on true love. Here is where that talented actor Roshan Mathew leans into the plot as Sashi Kumar an artiste whom Bhargavi(Rima Kallingal) instantly falls for.
The casting of the central character is problematic. Ms Kallingal is not able to convey the tragic grandeur and the luminous beauty of the ghost haunting the house where she loved and lost Sashi Kumar to the villain Narayanan(Shine Tom Chacko, as vile and repugnant as ever).
The plot construction towards a flagrant climax is alluring, but somehow one feels the drama is not able to achieve the sublimity it sets out to.Part of the blame goes to the female lead. Also, the tight unwavering structure of the original short story(Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s Bhargavi Nilayam) is squandered in supplementary screenwriting with superfluous characters popping up with their two-bit slowing down the central eeriness.
What works, and works wonderfully, is Tomas Tovino’s flirtatious bonding with Bhargavi’s ghost . The writer talks to the ghost without seeing her, assures her he is there for her. He is not the least frightened by her omnipresence It’s a performance that blends bemusement with sincerity. Tovino proves himself once again to be evolving into an actor who embraces any character effortlessly.
Roshan Mathew is subtle and persuasive as the artistic loverboy whose goodness of heart proves his gravest undoing.Rich in period details, shot in an ancient but sturdy bungalow where ghosts seem a natural occurrence, Neelavelicham oscillates between the eerie and airy,making sure that it doesn’t fall between the two extreme moods.
