Aaraattu Review : A highly nostalgic exercise in fan service dedicated to the myth around Mohanlal

Director: B Unnikrishnan

Star Cast: Mohanlal, Shraddha Srinath.

 
Mohanlal movies are legit events by itself off late, each new film headlined by the superstar actor seems to be a genre exercises from the roaster of fanboy writers and filmmakers, just probing to see how much more playing to the gallery can integrated to the sub-genre of the Mohanlal entertainer vehicle. Aaaraatu is the latest addition to the rehashed, self-referential and often times cheeky commercial potboiler, steeped in the essence of Mohanlal-ness, navigating its way through a large chunk of his filmography in smartly conceived call backs and self-aware references. The film is designed to invoke the inhumane persona of its leading man, who also happens to be one of our countries all time greatest screen actors, an interesting problem to have, as a screenwriter and more to this later.
The film pulls back no qualms in its adoration for the myth around Mohanlal and the camera follows him around in like its love with his silences and his quirks with the same intensity and opaqueness. We get the massy, stylized action set pieces, down on their luck villains getting their asses kicked at regular intervals, call backs to his older classic films and the heavy-handed background score that almost becomes a side character in the proceedings. Say what to you feel about B Unnikrishnan, the director, his largely inconsistent filmography ranging from serial killer flicks to police procedurals to big ticket entertainers, but the man knows how to present his matinee idol on screen with panache. The film does not manage to design its onslaught of homages in a coherent way, whereby in some scenes, the self-awareness and tongue in cheek delivery of the lines does not stop it from being a tad to over drawn and unwarranted.
Can’t remember the last time I had a grin transfixed on my face while watching an unhinged Mohanlal performance on the screen sans any pompous sense of self importance or irony. The film is structured like an Instagram reel with densely packed Mohanlal references galore that just does not keep coming at you with a sense of faux homage like treatment. The problem intertwined with this decision to contextualize the hollowness of a screenplay around the device of the almost fan made tribute video like aesthetics is that it creates this jarring disconnect for the un-initiated viewer, not familiar with the lines and films being endlessly surmised at will. In an age where online streaming has bridged the disparities in language barriers, this highly intertextual referencing does make it an experience that can be savored as it should be with some context into the cultural and social relevance of the actor’s filmography to the demography of a film crazy Malayalee audiences.
 
Aaraathu whooshes past through it’s a 2 hours 45 minutes runtime largely owing to the intimate charm and zeal of its leading man who seems to be having the time of his life, or at least pretending to do the same sans any self-assumed sense of importance. The fans get the mustache twirling, dialogue baazi and mysterious hero arc in this lavishly mounted film. The plot is more of a afterthought, that never looms above all the referencing and homage like nature of the framing device, set in the background of a local village and its unanimous acceptance of the newly introduced patriarch, with a sense of playful chaos surrounding a land deal gone wrong and its ramifications. Many of the scenes like the odd call back to a song “Thamarapoove” from Chandralekha, one of Mohanlal’s career best comedies, does leave a bad after taste and makes us question the sincerity behind these cash in moments in the screenplay.
The filmmaking is pretty functional at places as the narrative never really counter poses any serious threats to the protagonist other than some trivial backlashes and the episodic vignettes of call backs never really demand an exciting visual design for the whole movie other than just capturing the right punches land like a domino falling over each other and creating a ripple effect. The writing is obsessed with over packing each passing scene with inter textuality of the narrative, as if the movies world is built in a way that echoes every life moment with a similar scene or situation from a classical Mohanlal film.  The antagonists are tired, old formulaic figures that don’t stand a chance to event make a decent strike literally and metaphorically speaking at the always cunning hero, a sign of pitch lazy writing and character development.
 
Mohanlal owns the movie with assured grace and tactful screen timing that comes with experience. The man runs, jumps and dances around as if possessed by the spirit of the many onscreen avatar’s being endlessly projected on screen. This is a particularly effective performance as the entire conceit of the film is tied around his personality and nostalgia offered by his mere presence. The supporting cast is pretty much incidental to the main point of the movie and we get a whole bunch of actors reduced to side notes, often left to stand around in awe to the leading man’s towering personality and antics on screen. Shradha Sri
nath (RDO) gets the most one-dimensional leading lady part that warrants her to look upon the mysterious aura of the hero with a pinch of suspicion and curiosity, leading to nothing much in the end. She gets the best written female part in the movie, an indictment of the writer’s attention to conception of his secondary parts.
Aarrattu has one of the most rushed third act resolution that I can remember in the recent past. All the hanging strands of plots are conveniently hushed aside by a major revelation linking the hero’s past and his reasons for getting involved with the troubles of the village life. We get the shady gang of villain’s, a few lukewarm twists coming at our way in quick succession as if the screenwriting shifting gears to wrap up the referencing and thereby justify the movie’s reasons for its existence in the first place. The narrative highs derived from structuring a whole film around  a single actors screen personal is a dying craft, the movie succeeds in invoking wonder at the heart of even the most cynical cinephile , lamenting the death of cinema at the hands of commercial undertakings, can’t help themselves but marvel at the flawless energy of its leading man and have their eyes transfixed on his upcoming lineup , to see what he is going to pull off next from within his endless hat of wonders. Never in my life I imagined A R Rahman himself riffing on the seminal chartbuster “Mukkala Mukkabla” against the backdrop of the climactic fight scene, indeed dime well spend in my book.