Varaal, director Kannan Thamarakkulam’s new film, starts off jerkily, much like the fish it is named after – the snakehead. It begins with a chase and some beating up in a college hostel, followed by a young man walking dejectedly into his room, and another jumping off a fence. Just as you shake your head and allow things to fall in place, you are given one important character after another – you know they are important, because the heavy background music with its dramatic highs and lows never stops playing. There is a plethora of politicians dropping on screen, with little attempt to hide the similarities to their real life versions. Varaal, in its attempt to take digs at Kerala politics and carve out a new leader, becomes a wannabe political thriller, unable to shake off the filmmaking tactics of a decade long gone by, stuck on punch lines and mass comebacks.
To give it credit, despite the volume of characters, the script is crisp. Since most of them have real life counterparts, it is easy to remember the roles. Prakash Raj with his back turned could easily pass off as Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in his trademark white half-sleeves. Suresh Krishna, with a Malabar accent and lecherous eyes for a young girl, is easily identifiable as the famous leader of an ally party of the Congress. But Anoop Menon, the hero, scriptwriter and lyricist of the film, gets the longest introduction. You have to look at the back of his black shirt for a very, very long time before he turns and lets you see his face.
Anoop plays David John Medayil, the man who is expected by the Congress High Command to bring the many warring factions together in a bid to defeat the Communists, and stop them from coming back to power for a third term. David’s father was a staunch Communist. But after a terrible accident killed him, young David switched sides. Shanker Ramakrishnan, playing another Congress man, drops the history before ‘the man in black’ shows up. That is how “Rajeev”, son of “Ammachi” at the High Command, calls David, who is chosen to be the next CM candidate of the party.
Watch: Trailer of the film
There are so many references to real life that after a while you are not sure if every passing character is a caricature. In the film is an actor called Anjana Kurup, flirting with Shanker’s character, telling him that David was known to be a womaniser. To which Shanker’s character responds, “isn’t everyone”? Needlessly, he calls her an actor who brings out activism just by sneezing. By then you’d have raised all your brows, because the film has given a permanent office-bearer of the Malayalam actors association A.M.M.A., Edavela Babu, one of the longest screen times he has had in years. The activist actor, who carries a caste surname, could easily refer to any of the women actors who had fought the A.M.M.A. for its many misogynistic views.
The script has quite a lot stuffed into it, and it doesn’t dwell for a long time on any one little snippet. Shanker and his actor friend are left behind as Anoop Menon takes things into hand, like he has decided to make up for the lost time he wasted showing us the back of his shirt. To be fair, the film does take off into a different tangent, stopping itself from being the predictable mess you fear it’d become. More new characters drop by – Sai Kumar, playing a nice Muslim leader, Ranji Panicker, David’s friend with a ridiculous long plait of hair he keeps twirling around like a bored ballet dancer, Priyanka Nair, David’s wife who is on a wheelchair but forever pleasant.
The characters also stop mimicking their real life parallels. Prakash Raj as Achuthan Nair (carrying a dominant caste name, unlike Pinarayi who hails from an OBC community) is shown to be always reading a book, in his chamber or otherwise, spurting out English every now and then. It is not, however, Prakash Raj’s voice, but a dubbed one trying to sound like his and sticks out badly. The Leader of Opposition, played by Hareesh Peradi, shows symptoms of OCD, obsessively rubbing sanitiser on his hands.
With the unexpected plot twist, the film gains some momentum, although it still doesn’t shake off the use of cliché dramatic effects – long pauses, slow smirks, and the never-ending BGM. Not to miss out on anything old-school, you also get a romantic song, with Madhuri Braganza, another character that drops by and helps with the twist. But then again, some bad dubbing here.
In its own way, the film tries to address several wrongs in the society, stressing on the secular fabric of the state, Islamophobia, and so on, though it appears to take a lukewarm view of women’s issues. Varaal is bearable if you squirm through the beginning and block out the cringeworthy one-liners, otherwise, not so much.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.