Wonder Women & Zachariayude Garbhinikal

I had posted this a few days back after watching Wonder Women, Anjali Menon's very short opus (just around 80 mins long) about prenatal care, pep talk for expectant mothers who go through a lot of physical and mental discomfort during the nine months of pregnancy or to put it more esoterically in the process of bringing a new life into this world and everything imaginable in between.

This is not a review of the film. I will just say that this film is utterly disappointing as to say in cricketing parlance; a batter gets a Free Hit but she just blocks the delivery. Same way, Anjali squanders the opportunity of having a stellar cast and a subject with a depth that could be dwelled up on for many seasons as a web series.

Here is a full-blooded review of Wonder Women by Aswathy Gopalakrishnan that fluently echoes my thoughts about the film.

And, watch Zachariayude Garbhinikal online here for free.

Given below is my nearly a decade old review of this excavated from an old hard drive (haven't corrected the typos and other errors).

Zachariayude Garbhinikal

Paresh C Palicha

Pregnancy is the flavour of the season in Malayalam Cinema, as it has released two films related to pregnancy in the gap of few weeks. First, there was Kalimannu, the much hyped film featuring a pregnant Swetha Menon, now there is Zachariayude Garbhinikal a film by Aneesh Anwar telling the story of a gynaecologist named Zacharia and most of them are complicated.

There are five of them that he is dealing with now. One of them is a middle age woman and and a former nun played by Geetha, who after getting out of the seminary wishes to be a mother so she gets impregnated medically by our doctor. Sister Jasmine Jennifer (Geetha) gets lot of attention from the media for her decision.

Then there is Anuradha (Sandra Thomas) who has got pregnant in an extramarital affair. Her husband played by Joy Matthew is on the deathbed after a car accident. So, Anuradha is undecided whether to terminate the pregnancy or to keep it as it will be something to live for after her husband's death.

Saira (Sanusha) is a bold teenager who comes to Dr. Zacharia pregnant and wants his help to deliver the baby safely and give it for adoption. But, on the condition that she will not reveal the identity of the person responsible for her condition.

Fathima (Rima Kallingal), who works as a nurse in Dr. Zacharia's hospital fakes pregnancy to win the sympathy of her employer who is otherwise very harsh on indisciplined employees.

With the plot laid out like this with Indrajith's voice-over. He also informs us that the typical irony of fate that Dr. Zacharia is still childless in spite of being happily married to Susan (Asha Sharreth) for a long time. And, as we expect the couple decide to adopt Saira's baby on delivery.

Sister Jasmine is the first to deliver and it is in the most dramatic way, she herself drives the car to the hospital at the height of labour pain as one of her brothers refuses to help her.

As we move ahead in the story we see Saira being taken care by the future parents of her baby. We see her change from a rebellious youngster to a responsible expectant mother.

Zacharia is a person with morals, with 'no abortion, no caesarian' values. He gives a lecture to Anuradha against abortion that too when she is carrying twins. But, his character do not go beyond this. One question lingers in our head much after the film is over as to why he did not opt for a medical solution for his childless life despite of being a gifted professional in this field. This is one of the most controlled and silent performance of Lal in his acting career.

The other characters who demand our attention are Saira done by Sanusha, where the young actress has to be switching gears swiftly from being jovial one moment to being angry or vulnerable in the next, which she does impressively well. Fathima is another one where Rima has to spread mirth using a peculiar slang that seems to be coming naturally to her. Aju Varghese playing Ajmal, a colleague of Fathima who is besotted by her is a surprise package. Here he does a role of a conventional hero, yet he leaves his humorous stamp on it.

These are the people who keep this uneven project afloat when it hits the rough whether a few times.

Zachariayude Garbhinikal is complicated in some places and overly simplified in others leaving the viewer confused by the end.

2 1⁄2 stars.

BroDaddy – Not A Review

Just a few rambling thoughts…

The first thing that came to mind in the pre-release teaser/trailer days was “this is ghost directed by Priyadarshan” or a more appropriate way to put it would be “Prithviraj tipping his hat to the master director of his growing up years”.

The feeling that one gets as we get into the story: “Oh! This maybe a truly New Gen movie where youngsters grapple with issues of Living Together, premarital sex, contraceptive malfunction, unwanted pregnancy and its aftermath (I almost gave it a thumbs up thinking that how much we have progressed from the naivety of Bangalore Days, where an anxious Dulquer asks Nivin after he has spent a night at Isha Talwar’s place what were they doing there whole night? To which Nivin replies with childish excitement “we were playing Antakshari”).

Prithviraj and Kalayani Priyadarshan play the young couple, he is a top ad guy and she an IT person. Their parents are friends. They pretend to be hardly knowing each other in front of their folks let alone being in a relationship or being together. So, the unwanted pregnancy is the bone of contention or conflict quotient of the story? Not really, it is an incident that will pass before the youngsters get a chance to grapple with the issues pertaining to it.

It so happens that his parents announce the imminent arrival of their second child to their son who is supposedly in his mid to late twenties. So, here the father leads the son by example on how to treat his pregnant wife/partner. And, there are no quibbles about the old couple expecting a child a la Badhai Ho (2018), nor from the gynac played by Jagadeesh (the concerns about the biological clock or health of the middle aged expectant lady fly out of the window) or the matriarch of the family played by Mallika Sukumaran challenges other men of the clan to prove their virility as her son portrayed by  Mohanlal to win her affection.

Meena is the lady paired with Mohanlal, she is a constant companion of Mohanlal from 90s (the days he was playing a guy in his mid 30s) till Drishyam 2 where he is an undefined middle-aged person with two grown up daughters. To check for such details in this film is futile. Here the sole aim is to whip up nostalgia of Mohanlal at his jovial romantic best in say films like Chitram and Vandanam.

In fact one gets a feeling that this is a course correction for Prithviraj as a filmmaker. In his first outing as a director Lucifer scripted by Murali Gopy where Mohanlal has a brooding silence and gets a couple of Mundu Maduki Naadan Thallu kind of fight sequences in the first half, then the New Gen takes over with the director leading the action sequence choreographed as commando fight or guerilla warfare in the climax, and Mohanlal seemingly sleepwalking through it in slow motion without folding his Mundu and bodies of bad guys falling around him. In the end of that fight scene he is seated on a chair in front of a huge stage where an item song is going on. For me this sequence meant that the youngsters were telling the patriarch to take a seat and enjoy himself while they takeover the action. (In fact, I find such subtexts in every Murali Gopy script and that deserves a separate post for itself).

In this film the director gives back the driving seat to the aged Star. He is the propeller of the story by being the problem solver in his son’s life. It is a race against time tale as his son should be married before the girl starts showing her baby bump. He even dispenses some life lessons like having a child will change your priorities, career will take the backseat and some such things.

Again we get the memory of director Priyadarshan when we see the villain in this film Lalu Alex (not exactly a villain but a dimwitted cartoonish character who has the potential of spoiling our Hero’s party at any given moment).

And, last but not the least - the fourth wall is broken so to speak, when he speaks about his business of building materials, specifically TMT rods and his philosophy behind its advertising (to paraphrase it he says “my target is the common man who is building his home and not the engineers building skyscrapers as you new gen boys believe”) as you can see in  the videos below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Malayalam Kambi (as TMT Bars or any other metal string, rods etc are called) is an innuendo in street lingo for arousal/erection. So, if this film was released in theatres it would have brought the house down every time this word is used, at least for the first few days when fan clubs pack the halls to cheer their stars, shower glitters and whistle whenever they appear on screen, deliver a punchline or crack a joke.

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Most of these thoughts sprouted in my head when I saw the film on the day it dropped in OTT (26 Jan 2022) & jotted them down in the next few days. But, somehow a part of me was very reluctant to make them public.