Sarvam Maya is not a great film. For a major part it suffers from a split personality. It starts off as a savage spoof on ritualistic religiosity.And then, as though fearing a backlash, it swerves into a ghost story , with the young female ghost taking a human form. Cute.
The ghost is played by Riya Shibu, who is nothing like we imagine a ghost to be. That feeling of being trapped in a world where the stakes are not so high but always at an arm’s reach, haunts this ghost’s tale. Part of the sense of incompleteness comes from the casting. Except Nivin Pauly who always plays his confused characters as people who know the joke is on them, and Aju Varghese, the rest of the cast just doesn’t get it. Either they are unconvinced about the goings on—and we can’t blame them—or pretending that they are convinced.
Riya Shibu’s cool-ghost act is a serious misfire. Her portrayal of a dead girl on a down-to-earth mission misses the one vital quality required for the part: gravitas. She is all over the place in Prabhendu’s Brahminical household. She is Madhuri’s Hum Aapke Hain Clone. She is energetic but not funny.
There are some highly palm-in-the-face interactions involving Prabhendu and the ghost , like the village bullies whom Prabhendu takes on.Why? Just for the ghost-dost’s sake.
The ghost angle seems fast-tracked, teasing interludes out of the actors in a non-organic way. I found Nivin’s reciprocity with his pundit cousin Roopesh (Aju Varghese, excellent) far more rewarding than anything in the rest of the film.
The entire film should have examined Prabhendu’s atheism vis a vis his Brahminical background instead of becoming an over-cute version of Spike Jonz’s Her with the female robot being replaced by the ghost.
Director Akhil Sathyan preserves the wispy willowy mood till the end. But the delicacy never goes from dribble to delectable. Throughout, I kept thinking of how beautiful a ghost story this would have been if the ghost was more substantial less trendy. Her backstory comes too late. And it belongs in a different film altogether.
