Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam(SonyLIV)
Directed by Senna Hegde
Rating: *
Critics in India need to rein themselves in. Overpraising Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam luckily doesn’t kill the amiable ambience and positive affect of the film, although the climax where a screechy girl named Manisha arrives in a rural Kerala household, should be given the award for the most over-the-top climactic antics in the history of Malayalam cinema.
Nonetheless the sweet charm of this film lies not in its weatherbeaten plot—marriage days away and bride wants to run away with her boyfriend—but in the laidback languorous treatment of the sweaty situations that arise when members of the joint family begin to assemble at the home of Vijayan(Manoj K U) .
The tiny household is crammed with relatives, some are forever eating, others are picking quarrels. Vijayan’s younger son is trying to find the money to find his college education. Vijayan’s elder son-in-law is chopping woods for the wedding feast to be cooked, and the bride is planning to elope.
Vijayan, we gather from the initial scenes where he berates his wife for wanting to buy new utensils) is bit of a bully. He has been sulking since his elder daughter Surabhi(Unnimaya Nalappadam) married the man she wanted. Now to make amends the younger daughter Suja(Anagha Narayanan) must marry the man of Vijayan’s choice.
Suja has other plans. As she prepares to elope with her boyfriend , the frames crackle with a homespun energy spreading outwards towards us in an infectious spiral. Not all of it is funny or even amusing. I didn’t think much of the celebrated pennu kaanal sequence where Suja’s Dubai-returned husband-to-be is made fun of. To his credit the actor who plays the hoodwinked groom is up to the task. His video conferencing monologue at the end had me in splits.The nerdy,finally rejected ,husband is a prototype so old it would take the mind of a genius to infuse new life into the hackneyed joke.
Director Senna Hegde is luckily up to the task. He reveals a penchant for seeking out novel ways to present familiar familial situations, such as the nervous encounter between the bride-to-be and her future husband. Or those furtive hand-holding across the window between Suja and her boyfriend Ratheesh as the wedding preparations are on full swing.
There is a third angle in the Suja- Ratheesh romance, a nerdy bespectacled idiot(played well by Ranji Kankol) who thinks Suja is interested in him. The running gag eventually chokes the breath out of the triangle . The same goes for the characters in Vijayan’s family who are assembled for the wedding(that is not meant to be). They tension among the women specially could be cut in the knife.
In the satirical mood at which the pre-wedding plot plays itself out,I was reminded of Seema Pahwa’s Ram Prasad Ki Tehrvi, corroborating the view that there isn’t much difference in the tensions of a wedding and a death.
There is plenty that is not quite right in Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam. But the proceedings never lose their satirical spirit. Even in the darkest moments when Suja’s impending marriage seems to clamp around her neck, the director finds a smile or a chuckle. And we move on.