Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam

The movie is visual poetry, from cinematography to acting to the beautiful tamil songs woven into the narrative, this movie is a wondrous delight for any aesthete.

Its a pleasure to see Mammootty sir at full throttle accompanied by a stellar supporting cast.

LJP is an auteur par excellence who is trying to engage the audience with an exploration into society, identity and its fickleness. This odyssey into the human mind is brilliantly supported by Theni Eswar who has clearly upped his game here, the unsymmetrical static shots with multiple activities in a single frame give this movie an ethereal feel.

Personally it still doesn't make sense to me why this movie was not given the Golden Pheasant at IFFK. This was more brilliant than the exploration of climate change and cultural identity done within Utama.

Overall a brilliant cinematic experience.

Director Lijo Jose Pellissery is always searching for a variety of plots and themes for his next ventures. All of his films differ from each other in that path. His latest one, Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam was screened in the 2022 IFFK and receives wonderful acclamations. Now the film is out in theatres and is wrapped with positive responses. Veteran actor Mammootty's production banner's first production venture was Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam. But the film that came out for the first time through Mammootty Kampany in theaters was Rorschach. Likewise, the title of the film talks about the nap. The nap of a theatre artist named James and the routine of a local Tamilian named Sundaram was the element in the film. The structure of the script lies in the category of Magical realism. We had seen that kind of writing pattern in his previous film, Churuli. We can tie this film into the perspective of a character dimension contrast. While James taking a nap and awake as Sundaram and Sundaram taking a nap and awake back to James was the exact idea behind the film. The period between those two naps was the subject of the film. When we examine the film in detail we find that kind of confusing and somehow ambiguous underlying plot which is like a dream or a thing that is going to happen. There lies the open-end description of the film. The frames are like wallpaper because the shots are static which smoothly allows James to incarnate Sundaram. The ambient sounds like old film dialogues, devotional songs from the temple, radio songs, etc played a wonderful job to enhance the movie. All actors justified their characters the most. Lijo spends a lot of effort to find new faces for his characters and here also we can find strange faces. But it's quite unbelievable that a familiar face doing strange things throughout the film and that was Mammootty, who portrays both James and Sundaram. Yet another Lijo magic that feels like a nap done by James and others which fell us into a deep sleep encircled with a beautiful dream. And that dream is Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam.

Unbelievable is the first word comes to my mind for what is achieved through this masterpiece. I am a non Malayali or Tamil speaking person and watched it in hindi. I loved the way the director unfolds this perfect movie.

This has an Oscar deserving Direction and sound design at the display. Something that you might have never experienced even if you are a Hitchcock or Kurosawa fan.

The metaphor of sleep as rebirth is apt. The acting is nearly perfect and the chaos is masterful. Its a drama par excellence reaching to the level of meditative experience.

Story: 9/10 The layered story with perfect execution. One star deducted for relying on the background sounds for understanding the context.

Screenplay: 10/10 It's as perfect as it is humanly possible.

Direction: 10/10 This is the first movie I watched from this masterful director and I am going to watch all of his work.

Sound: 10/10 So much to take in, the use of TV sounds and movie's context for an North indian is a great initiation to malyali and tamil cinema.

Art Direction:10/10 It's perfect, perfect and perfect.

Acting: 10/10.

Mammotty achieved something unimaginable for all other great actor of our time. At the age of 70 years this is art at its best. He deserves all accolades.

Do yourself a favor and watch this masterpiece and you will forget that bollywood garbage forever.

What more to tell about this man. Running out of superlatives to describe what he is upto in NNM. Just makes us go awww while he switched between James & Sundaram

Watch out for that bit where he behaves as Sundaram to Jame's relatives. Out of the world🙏 #NanpakalNerathuMayakkam

#NanpakalNerathuMayakkam What happens when James dozes off & wakes up as Sundaram & travels through his life for a day before he goes back to the world of James.

Something only Lijo can pull off & boy hasn't he done just that. Nothing complex this time. Absolute mastery by LJP🙏

Mammootty , LEGENDARY ACTING 🔥⭐⭐⭐ State Awards - It's not even a question or a discussion

National Awards - Only looking forward to that.

The plot is about a malayali tourist group that got stuck in a Tamil Village and the chaos that ensues.

The narrative is brilliant and meta. The audience are also one of the characters in this movie. The plot starts with the man asking everyone to come and ends with "let's go".

The themes of society, acceptance and isolation are brilliantly captured and performed by Mammooty. Ultimately, you cannot lead a life you want if there is no support.

The concept of 2 lives repeats throughout the movie with old songs and dialogues accompanying every scene. Applause to the casting team for a perfect Tamil casting!!