A couple of minutes into the Lijo Jose Pelliserry’s Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (NNM or A Mid-Day Slumber), which languidly opens within the pilgrim city of Velankanni, we see the next verse written on the entrance of an inn.
“Death is sinking into slumbers deep,
Birth again is waking out of sleep”
– Thirukkural
James, performed by Mammootty, reads this and says ‘Thirukkural’ sounds just like the title for a play. The occasions that unfold later really feel like a play set in a sleepy rural village of Tamilnadu. James and his spouse and another households from his hometown are at Velankanni for a pilgrim go to. Usually, spiritual abodes in movies come on the finish, appearing as the placement for the redemption of characters, like in G. Aravindan’s Chidambaram, which culminates on the Shiva temple within the city of Chidambaram. Or Vipin Radhakrishnan’s Ave Maria, the place your complete movie takes place in Velankanni.
NNM opens in Velankanni, and the key occasions occur in a rusty previous Tamil village on their method again house. As the pilgrims return to their houses, the small bus stops in the midst of rural Tamil Nadu, and James wakes up from his afternoon nap and begins strolling right into a village. The occasions that happen someplace close to the border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala place James in an ‘in between’ state that blurs the strains between actuality and desires, in addition to the duality of id and language.
The location seems to be just like the numerous villages in India that appear to be frozen in time. There isn’t any sense of urgency; males are seen sitting sluggishly on the benches of a tea stall, a girl is seen drying cow dung truffles on a wall, and a grandmother is seen always watching TV whereas carrying a black glass on the verandah of her personal home, oblivious to the ‘drama’ that takes place in her personal abode.
James walks into the village, goes inside a home, adjustments his garments, talks Tamil to a sleeping lady, will get on a bike, and leaves. The individuals in the home are dumbfounded and surprised. James, a Malayali Christian, was remodeled into Sundar, a Tamil Hindu who had gone lacking from the village a while in the past. In the 1993 Malayalam film, Manichitrathazhu (remade in Hindi as Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Chandramukhi in Tamil), psychiatrist Sunny (performed by Mohanlal) tries to explain Nakulan ( performed by Suresh Gopi), the psychological situation of Ganga (performed by Shobhana) by saying the dialogue: “Haven’t you read in newspapers incidents like a 7-year-old Muslim girl suddenly starts behaving and chanting Sanskrit shlokas like a 71-year-old Brahmin woman? Old people term this as possessed, but in Psychiatry, we call it split personality or dual personality ”.
Similarly, Lijo shouldn’t be fascinated by explaining the logic of James’ psychological situation. He neither needs to fall into the story of a Malayali man getting possessed by a Tamil ghost. He is a filmmaker who tries to realize one thing greater than narrating a narrative by using the audio-visual potential of the medium to the fullest. The filmmaker makes an attempt to elicit the considerations and brotherhood of extraordinary individuals divided by language, faith, and borders. The Christian neighborhood, which had come to loosen up and relaxation in a small Tamil Nadu village, is ready to empathize with these from a special tradition.
NNM may very well be Lijo’s most refined and maybe his best work. Things transfer at a leisurely tempo, with no try to repeat info or any deliberate try to indicate subtext, such because the cavemen epilogue sequence in Jallikattu. Certain tropes are paying homage to his earlier movies. His ardour for bringing collectively giant teams of individuals inside a body is seen right here as effectively. Though it’s not choreographed in a intentionally chaotic method and doesn’t throb with a way of escalating violence, like in Jallikattu or Churuli, the staging is generally set towards partitions of small homes the place individuals are moved out and in of a wonderfully composed body inside a body; or whereas they’ve a dialog or when sleeping on the verandah with patches of afternoon daylight that at instances reminds us of a renaissance portray.
NNM’s unhurried tempo is flawlessly supported by Theni Easwer’s static digital camera, which is uncharacteristic of Lijo’s earlier movies. Like Anwar Rasheed used sound design to type and uplift the narrative in Trance (2020), Lijo makes use of the potential of sound to reinforce the viewing expertise. Old Tamil movie songs, ads, and dialogues always play within the backdrop, typically as a subtext and somewhere else, feels a bit of overused.
In a superbly staged scene set in an area bar, an inebriated Sundar lip-syncs and switches between characters from the traditional Tamil movie Gauravam (1973), as the favored dialogues uttered by the nice Sivaji Ganesan (who performed a twin position on this movie) loudly performs in a close-by native cinema. While switching between two characters, Mammootty turns into the pink and inexperienced lights. Sundar/James is performing for himself and his solely consuming companion, standing subsequent to him amidst a crowd of people who find themselves not observing this. Apparently, the dialogue features a line like “We both can’t stay at this house together; you better leave this house,” which is definitely uttered in NNM. This explicit scene may very well be a visible abstract of your complete movie’s try to touch upon duality.
Lijo’s fascination with what’s actual and unreal, the borderline the place dream and actuality collide, can be current in NNM. Like the newly appointed pastor who seems to be the Saint/God on the finish of Amen, the supernatural presence within the climax of EE.MA.YU, the place the angels are proven approaching a seashore in small boats, the climax of Churuli, the place the hunter and the hunted each levitate in a jeep to a realm that looks as if an unknown dimension to people, Lijo tries to herald the presence of the supernatural or the divine in NNM via refined symbols of death-like crows that await the final chunk, or a canine that follows his favourite spirit.
When we see James having reminiscences, desires, and dwelling Sundar’s life, we’re reminded for a cut up second of the cosmic fact, i.e., all of us share the identical stardust. Despite their linguistic and cultural variations, James and Sundar are one. We consider we’re witnessing one thing greater than a narrative or a drama; we consider we’re witnessing the oneness of humanity via the medium of movie. Another second that solely a cinema can obtain is the shadow of an individual remaining in a wall the place the precise individual leaves the body throughout one of many movie’s peak moments.
When powerhouses like Mammooty and LJP collaborate on a movie like NNM, expectations skyrockets. Mammootty is tasked with portraying two characters, which he does with ease and ease. Though Malayalam cinema is praised for its ‘content,’ only a few Malayalam movies make use of or improve the probabilities of the cinematic strategies, the few exceptions being movies like 1956 Central Travancore (2020), Vith (seed, 2020), and Prappeda (2021). Suppose Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (NNM) does effectively on the field workplace. In that case, it may very well be a recreation changer for different filmmakers to make movies that innovatively use and discover the language of cinema. It might push filmmakers to play with ambiguity and area, which might have interaction the viewer moderately than spoon-feeding them.