Review: Chandrettan Evideya

Chandrettan Evideya has been called a realistic, middle-class movie, because this is what real middle class people do - have an affair because you had dated a dancer a thousand years ago and want to have a go at her now. Rating:

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Dileep and Anusree
A still from Chandrettan Evideya starring Dileep and Anusree.

Dileep and Anusree
A still from Chandrettan Evideya starring Dileep and Anusree.

Title: Chandrettan Evideya

Directed by: Sidharth Bharathan

Starring: Dileep, Anusree, Namitha Pramod

Rating:

4 Star Rating: Recommended
4 Star Rating: Recommended

Chandrettan is Nowhere

Almost a decade after Malayalis exhausted their brief but collective fascination for a type of astrology called nadi jyothishyam and the half-truths hidden in its palm leaves, Sidharth Bharathan decides to make a movie around it. What does the future hold for the film? It is kandakasani, Sidharth, Saturn has gone malefic. What do you do now? Maybe pray to Saturn, wear black on Saturday but, for sure, make a far better movie next time.

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Chandrettan Evideya is Sidharth's second feature film, after Nidra in 2012. Realistic Malayalam movie, for a long time, has meant the hero is a schoolteacher, a small-time government official, a constable. So Chandramohan Mattannoor (Dileep) works in the Complaints Cell of the Assembly, but there is an artistic streak in him. He skips office to watch classical dance performances and then reviews them eloquently in magazines. He is quite a connoisseur. His ringtone, the classic Bhavayami raghurama, hardly pauses because Sushu, as he calls his wife Sushama (Anusree), keeps a tab on him from faraway Thrissur where she works in a BSNL office and waits, with her son Achu (Master Ilhan, who plays it smart), for a transfer to Thiruvananthapuram. Until then, she will be on the other end of the phone, asking "Chandrettan evideya", as he tries to wake up from a hangover, goes for a jog, steps into the office, opens his lunchbox, opens his booze bottle and loafs about with his friends. They are Shekhar Menon (Mukesh), who, we are told, has a lot of girlfriends and flies in and out of foreign countries apart from having worked in the Indian Express once, and Brahmasree Narayanan Elayathu (Suraj Venjaramoodu), a television astrologer. They make fleeting appearances, their backstories (even front stories) are nonexistent: while Mukesh walks through the movie without effort, without effect, Suraj comes up with a surprisingly different look and tone to his character.

Prompted by the always-on-a-pilgrimage Valsalachechi (Sidharth's mother KPAC Lalitha), Chandran takes his family on a tour to Thanjavur. Near the Vaitheeswaran Koil, they are tempted to read their fate on the palm leaves stored by the astrologers there. Chandran will have an affair, the astrologer warns, as he is going through Ketu dasa. This is followed by some gobbledygook about Chandran's past life: he was a royal poet of a Chola king who fell in love with the court dancer Vasanthamalika. She will come back into his life, 1,000 years later, to lure him. This bizarre storyline is matched only by Dileep's terrible makeup as poet Velkozhukottuvan. You don't know if this is meant to be farce or serious. Don't blame yourself: even the filmmaker is unsure of how to treat it.

If you haven't run out of the cinema hall by then, you will get to see Chandran coming across Geethanjali (Namitha Pramod). She is a doctor who is getting complaints from the local people for writing wrong prescriptions and abandoning her primary health centre for weeks on end. Big deal. She loves to dance, you see, her mind is not in medicine. For Chandran, this is the return of Vasanthamalika and the excuse for a romance on the side.

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While Dileep sleepwalks through the first half of the movie, Anusree gives a controlled performance. Namitha rocks some handloom saris and tilts her head and smiles charmingly but little else. It says a lot about the performances and dialogue that one of the better sequences in the movie is Dileep spoofing Shobhana in Manichitrathazhu.

Chandrettan Evideya has been called a realistic, middle-class movie, because this is what real middle class people do - have an affair because you had dated a dancer a thousand years ago and want to have a go at her now.

There is no visual coherence in the movie. There isn't even passable cinematography. There is no story that can make for a good movie or a song that you can hum.

The genius of parents should not be thrust on the children. Nobody is asking Sidharth to rebrand his father's "Bharathan touch", that brand of visual lyricism may even be dated now, but he needs to find his own stamp.