Review by Vinoo
Language : Malayalam
Director : Harikumar
‘Who said one is alone in death? It is in life that one is alone.’ Pardon my bad translation of words from the master M T Vasudevan Nair. Ravishankar (Mammootty) is a journalist who is terminally ill, with blood cancer, and is not expected to live for more than a few months. ‘Sukrutham’ takes a look at how the knowledge that a man is on the verge of death affects life of people around him. It is a brilliant script where one is even reading his own obituary. Ravishankar loses all hope in life and he decides to head to his village so he can spend his last few days in peace, far from the city. Here, his uncle and aunt and his childhood sweet-heart, Durga (Shanti Krishna), take good care of him. His wife Malini (Gouthami) and her classmate, and Ravishankar’s student, Rajendran (Manoj K Jayan) are the other people whose lives are closely linked.
Rajendran takes care of most of the expenses for the treatment and Durga considers him a good friend and feels a deep gratitude. Rajendran confesses to Durga about his love for her and Ravishankar learns of the same. He encourages his wife to start a new life with Rajendran. While he has given up all hope Ravishankar meets a doctor (Narendra Prasad) whose philosophy is that our body has a mind of its own and so does each one of the cells in our body. ‘How else does one explain the healing of a wound, all by itself, for instance?’ he asks. He convinces Ravishankar to move to his ashram in Ooty where he is miraculously cured. Now his blood count is back to normal and he is ready to live all over again. Only, his uncle and aunt now want him dead so a relative can get his job, his childhood sweetheart has left him after being sidelined many a time, his wife is now seeing life with another man, his newspaper even has an obituary written out and ready to go into print. In short, while he has defeated death, life has taken a different turn. He is left with no choice and asks the doctor that if he can cure himself and if the cure is entirely in ones mind he should be able to reverse it too. Ravishankar rewrites the obituary which mentions the untimely death of a journalist to what he has decided to do. It ends with Ravishankar walking on the railway track and the sound of the train chugging past and through him with the words ‘Death is the ultimate truth…’
This film brings to mind another tragic classic ‘Thaniyavarthanam’ where Mammootty plays a similar role.
A good old friend of mine passed away recently. And, I believe she, like the protagonist of this film, knew right through that she had limited time. She just chose not to tell us about it. This one is for her.
* Sukrutham = doing good deeds, without expecting anything in return (bad translation again).
Useless trivia : In my opinion M T Vasudevan Nair is one of the best screenwriters in Malayalam, right alongside Lohithadas. M T as he is popularly referred to, has written over 50 scripts, scores of books and even directed seven films. His ‘Nirmalyam’ won for P J Antony, who plays the oracle, the first National Award for Best Actor for a Malayalam film. The film had a stunning climax wherein the priest spits on the deity after his family life is in tatters from his total devotion for the goddess for who he even neglects his family and their basic needs. Impossible to even think of a film like that in today’s sadly intolerant and communal society. For more on M T Sir.
M T Vasudevan Nair, winner of Jnanpith Award in 1997, has written films like ‘Sadayam’, ‘Oru vadakkan veera gaatha’, ‘Thazhvaram’, ‘Perumthachan’, ‘Nakhakshatangal’, ‘Panchagni’, ‘Kadavu’, ‘Olavum Theeravum’ etc. Each one brilliant. His ‘Randamoozham’ (The second turn) is a retelling of the epic Mahabharata from Bhima’s (the second Pandava) point of view and is being made into a film by Hariharan, with Mohanlal donning Bhima.
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