I watched thanmatra last weekend. I had been looking forward to it ever since it was released but never found time to sit down and watch(More out of procastination than lack of time). I had read articles on how the movie was supposed to present effects of Alzheimer's disease.
The story is pretty simple. Mohanlal plays a government employee(a.k.a file pusher), spending his time with his family and making plans for future. He gets stricken with Alzheimer's disease out of the blue. The second half is about how he and his family deals with this unexpected turn of events.
It is presented very well. The first half wouldnt be out of place in a decent tamil movie nowadays with sequences showing Mohanlal character's affection and love for his family and getting the same in return. The characters are squeaky clean and are always smiling or well mannered. Add to it, Mohanlal's character pontificates a lot on human memory and how to use it effectively.
The drift towards alzheimer's starts towards the end of the first half and the director slowly tightens the screw on dread as Mohanlal's character slides ever more deep into the disease. The contrast with the atmosphere of the first half hits you hard as we see Mohanlal's character struggle to do things normally done without batting an eyelid in a healthy human being.
The director has to be commended for keeping a tight leash on things in the second half. There are lots of opportunities waiting to be exploited for melodrama and barring a few, he does a good job of moving the story along.
Mohanlal has done a good job in this movie. However, his frame makes you worry about Meera Vasudevan, the actress playing his wife in the movie. I know he is chubby but it seems like he has added an additional layer of fat for this movie. The controversial shot where Mohanlal is in nude does show the seriousness of his affliction but it would have been more palatable and less terrifying without all those fat filling up the TV screen. As is mostly the case with malayalam movies, there are times when my tamil movie fan side screams to see some overacting just to relieve some tension.
Meera Vasudevan , who plays the wife character, does what is expected of her which isnt much. She does come up with some surprise expressions seeing her husband deteriorate steadily. Her initial reaction at not knowing what to do when the primary breadwinner of the family has to stop working is very good.
Nedumudi Venu, as the father of Mohanlal's character, is pretty solid, as always. There is a sameness to his acting which continues with this movie too.
The son's character, played by Arjun Lal, is etched out well. While the character comes across a goody two-shoes(with a half hearted attempt by the director initially to show some spine in him), showing him that way throughout the movie does get tiring. Towards the end of the movie, I expected him to throw something at his father to vent his frustrations. But, other than a tiny out burst of tears, nothing happened.
My miniscule exposure to movies in different indian languages has convinced me that malayalam movies do very well when presenting a story with realism. I have also read stories about how malayalam movies for quite some time have been trying to address competition from tamil, telugu and hindi movie industries by becoming more like them, more flashy and melodramatic and unbelievably star-driven. Maybe, it is the collective learning curve of an industry more used to realistic portrayals or backlash from malayalam movie fans, they keep coming back once in a while to things that made them watchable and thereby, stand out in the wreckage that is indian movie industry. I am not saying tamil, telugu and hindi movies are unwatchable. I am merely suggesting that their star driven ventures start to grate after some time. Malayalam movies have their stars too and thankfully, Mohanlal has chosen to act in this role, going against the stereotype(You know, the cigarette flips, multi goonda fights, foreign locale songs, amma/thali/thangai/jaathi/mozhi/ sentiments...). The credit should go to the director for fashioning a movie that is like a vikraman movie in the first half and a bala movie in the second half. The movie also has very judicious references to bharathiar poems which, given their positioning in the story, sounded very poignant.
Here is hoping, some tamil directors get 'inspired' by this pseudo medical movie and not by a half-assed pseudo medical movie like Anniyan.
