Shinas K

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkum (NNM) is as soothing as that light afternoon nap you take after a meal. It reminds us of a carefree time when your thoughts -- especially on cinema -- were not coloured or corrupted by social media. When watching movies used to be a more pleasing experience; when you didn't get into arguments with random strangers after sharing that experience when you savoured it on your own without being judged for it. Lijo Jose Pellissery's new film is cinema at its purest, reliant more on visuals and sounds than dialogues to produce an immersive experience. In that sense, NNM evokes the quality of a silent film. There are dialogues, of course, but you can still get the gist of what's happening without those. When an ordinary man experiences an extraordinary phenomenon and starts acting strange, everyone around him is baffled. NNM is the journey of James (Mammootty), a cantankerous Malayali with a bias towards Tamilians. When he slips into a siesta while travelling by bus with a group comprising his family members and friends, little do his companions know that he is about to wake up and become a completely different person. Now, this is not one of those stories in which the main character wakes up in the body of another character and takes over his life. It is not about a doppelganger swapping identities (as in Daphne du Maurier's The Scapegoat) or a living man assuming the identity of a dead man (as in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger). In NNM, what happened to the other man is left open. It is a simple case of James inexplicably becoming 'Sundaram' and walking into the latter's home in a village detached from the chaos and noise of the rest of the world. Lijo forgoes the typical establishment shot in favour of a simple approach: following Sundaram as he takes in the sights of the village -- the residents, their homes, flora and fauna -- and ambient sounds, thereby creating a very tactile atmosphere. NNM does the same thing as the two Avatar films but on a minuscule scale.