The gold capital of India, Thrissur, is where Muthu (Biju Menon) and Kannan (Vineeth Sreenivasan), two gold agents, are from. The voyage they take to deliver gold to Mumbai is shown in the film, as well as the subsequent setbacks they encounter.
Directors: Saheed Arafath, Prinish Prabhakaran (co-director)
Writer: Syam Pushkaran
Producer: Fahadh Faasil, Dileesh Pothan
Cast: Biju Menon, Vineeth Sreenivasan, Aparna Balamurali, Girish Kulkarni, Kochu Preman
Crew: Saheed Arafath, Saheed Arafath, Dileesh Pothan, Syam Pushkaran, Bijibal Maniyil, Gautham Sankar
Thankam Movie Review
The current movie that Syam Pushkaran (as a writer) is working on is about a man who puts up a front and the extent he will go to keep it up. It's an understated character study with a strong emphasis on an investigative criminal drama. Syam uses a character that has a lot of love and kindness associated to it in order to sell the idea of the facade.
Kannan, played by Vineeth Sreenivasan, is soft-spoken, devout, and obviously self-assured. But people aren't that one-dimensional, and there's always more to learn about them than their behaviours might suggest. The actor's sincere presence is used by Mukundan Unni Associates as an ironic counterpoint to constantly existing within the psyche of a troubled character. Through individuals who are familiar with him, Thankam hopes to progressively reveal Kannan's innermost thoughts. Before it exposes to us that his journey was mentally dark and almost spiritual all along, it leads him on what appears to be a physical journey.
The movie starts off in a pretty crude way with a montage song that is likely about Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth, and is set to a devotional melody. Giving no background information and starting with a sequence that doesn't quite have a story to it is an odd choice, the first of many. The music, which is both devout and melancholy, is undoubtedly appropriate for the movie and its message, but its timing and necessity are less convincing. In hindsight, especially in light of the psychological direction the ending takes.
As Muthu, Biju Men excels because he manages to balance deference to authority with retaining his composure so as not to arouse unwarranted suspicion. The moment in which he and Aparna Balamurali learn of a loved one's passing is excellent for demonstrating how restrained these performers can be when eliciting strong emotions. Another interesting performance comes from Girish Kulkarni, who is in charge of the police department. The entire police contingent doesn't exhibit any quirks or histrionics, and they give the event a very lived-in vibe.
We only catch brief glimpses of Kannan's demeanor, yet he exhibits a darkness that appears to be the result of repressed feelings. It is disconcerting, to say the least, as he yells at Muthu over a logistical difficulty and then instantly reverts to his friendly self. In essence, this is what the writing is attempting to do early on in an initially seems plot-heavy narrative: reveal character in drops rather than all at once.
But when the pouring finally occurs, it doesn't hit you like the sucker punch it ought to have. The seriousness of the themes Kannan was involved with is never felt. I wish there had been a few more moments in the opening itself, especially in place of a montage, to give us a glimpse of it. The main problem with this movie is how far away the main character of the plot is from the audience. More time with Kannan was required. It may be argued that the movie is just attempting to analyse the concept behind the character's death and not the character themselves, but the truth is that as a viewer, I still don't know Kannan well enough for his death to have a significant impact on me.
The message that the film's creators are attempting to make is very clear: that a man, a literal (gold) rider and provider, will go to tremendous efforts to maintain a façade even in his own death, rather than acknowledging that his mental health was in shambles. Even his closest ones would firstly want to keep up that mask rather than say openly that anything went awry. He has people around him who think he was always cursed, who think it was weak of him to make this choice, and who become nihilistic when he passes away. Instead of extending the investigation's daily logs, I wish the movie had spent more time exploring these opposing philosophies.
Syam used two investigations as the foundation for his screenplay. The first is more of an event than the full-fledged inquiry that comes afterwards, but this is where we begin to know the people by watching how they handle their predicament. Even when this suffering is through, we won't have reached the larger story's triggering event. The movie switches direction and turns into a compelling crime drama once we arrive. The investigation naturally develops into a series of interesting events, leaving no time for the reader to consider the genre switch. These segments are amusingly varied; they include comedy, a pursuit, and even an action block that is almost cartoonish. The trust it places in showing the details of an investigation would also make for a wonderful double-bill with Rajeev Ravi's Kuttavum Shikshayum (also the superior film).
With this movie, Malayalam cinema's mastery of dramatising the most realistic narratives with cinematic polish is once again on display. The more I consider it, the easier it would be to develop this intriguing idea. Because no one is actually lying, the narrative is driven forward by trustworthy narrators and builds to a revelation about the passing of the unreliable narrator. However, Thankam falls short of realising its full potential because it struggles to strike the right balance between being a character study and a procedural.
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