Actor Asif Ali has lately emerged as one the most powerful competitors to Fahad Faasil as the finest actor of Kerala. And why just Kerala? Asif can give our Ranbirs and Ranveers a run for their money.
In his new dark brooding film, Kishkindha Kaandam , a dramatic but reined-in look at an askew family shifting dynamics, Ali is exceptionally restrained in his portrait of a grieving widower , he is almost invisible. Asif plays Ajayan and his silences speak far more loudly than his words.
It can’t be any other way for Ajayan: his father Appu Pillai (Vijayaraghavan) dominates the family to the brink of bullying. He is at the cusp of what seems to be dementia. But he leaves Ajayan, and his newly married wife Aparna(the unfailingly spot-on Aparna Balamurali) with no option but to submit quietly to his dictatorial ways.
There are grave family secrets buried in Ajayan’s backyard including a dead first wife and a missing son Chachu. As Aparana clues into her new home’s dark past with Bahul Ramesh’s camera crouching menacingly, she begins to seem like the second wife in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, with a lot of fearsome foliage to deal with.
This dense drama is shot at the brink of a jungle. Monkeys play a vital role in creating a cosmic chaos .They are like messengers from another time zone hurling into the present tense, with more tension.
There is something intangibly eerie about director Dinjith Ayyathan’s drama of self-deception. Writer Bahul Ramesh proves himself to be one of the most promising talents of Malayalam cinema. He can teach the Bollywood writers a thing or two on originality and characterization. All through the narration, the fractured family feels like a wounded presence in our own lives. It’s as though the missing child becomes a tangible metaphor for all that we, the audience have missed out in life.
A sense of profound loss cuts through this ruptured symphony on domestic distress. The family secret, buried deep into the concealing folds of the jungle, doesn’t jump on us as some startling revelation. There is an organic flow to the passages of time, achieved not by clock but serendipity.
Finally Kishkindha Kaandam is about the truth, and how we twist and bury it in our minds according to our convenience.
At one point Ajayan’s father says, the truth is useless of it causes hurt.It, the truth, remains a fugitive till the end. We finally don’t want to know what happened to Ajayan’s son. Mourning for the missing is easier than for the dead.
