Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam

On a return bus trip from a holy Christian shrine, a group of Malayalees doze off to discover midway that the cantankerous group leader has stopped the bus and walked off nonchalantly into a remote Tamil village to assume the life of a simple milkman. The Tamil family into whom he imposes his presence have barely recovered from the mysterious loss of their son and husband two years prior. The villagers are bewildered by this imposter who looks nothing like him but who acts to all intents and purposes like the deceased, a factor which is beguiling and unsettling. The daughter and brother of the deceased are incensed by the arrival of the interloper whilst the aged, blind mother affectionately accepts him without question.

As confusion reigns, it is left to the the father of the deceased to prevail upon the odd circumstances with kindness and empathy whilst marshalling the villagers into caring for the traumatised family of the imposter. The two wives caught up in this drama are linked by a shared trauma, the Malayalee wife dealing with the sudden inexplicable loss of her husband's personality and the deceased man's wife with a closure that has been cruelly disrupted.

Theni Eswar's thoughtful cinematography is a centrepiece of the artful direction of this movie - a homage to the acclaimed Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray with its carefully framed snippets of the chief protagonist's intrusion into the unhurried pace and bucolic lifestyle of a remote village in Tamil Nadu. The dreamlike theme developed by director Lijo Jose Pallissery might well be an allegory of life (waking to consciousness) and death (falling asleep) and how faithfully we hold the roles dictated by family, society and culture on life's ephemeral stage. A rare delight to soak in.

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.

Each and every movies of LJP stands different from one and another here the film moves at a slow pace but still kept me hooked till the end and all the frames of the movie were a wide and static similarly the sound design was really so good and it was a different expirience. The movie interprets into a way in which the audience can decide what happened to James or whatever happened really did happen !. The movie starts from a conflict while sleeping and finds a solution after a sleep. I really enjoyed the movie it's pace, sound design, performances, frames and i think everyone should watch it.

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 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.