ഈ.മ.യൗ (Ee.Ma.Yau) (2018)

Director: Lijo Jose Pellissery
Writer: P.F. Matthews
DOP: Shyju Khaled
Cast: Chemban Vinod Jose, Vinayakan, Pauly Valsan, Dileesh Pothan
Language: Malayalam

A day and a night in a fishing village following the death of an old guy, to whom his son promised a funeral worthy of a King's.

The first half of the film moves in a sedate manner and I was kind of underwhelmed by it at halfway point. The pace picks up considerably in the second half and by the end you understand why the former half had to be that way. The entire premise of thet film can be told in about three sentencess but the trick is to it do it in an engaging manner in a different setting. After the film got released, the maker of an indie-film called Shavam accused LJP of plagiarism. Even without watching that film, I can safely say that the accusation is without merit because LJP films are never about storylines but always about their treatment. It is possibly career best performance from Chemban and Vinayakan and Dileesh are cast against type.

Technical excellence is a given in Lijo Jose Pellissery films and let me get it out of the way by reiterating it. Be it the night sequences which has a neon feel in some places or the rainy sequences during the day with the noise from sea being a constant background throughout. Music is used sparingly but very effectively, especially during the closing credits which had an incredible effect on me. The idea is to place the viewer in the same atmosphere as its characters and they manage to do it quite effectively. It is basically a dark comedy but the ending just pulls the rug out from underneath you all of a sudden in a way that cannot be explained. Not sure if all will have the same experience.

I can see quite a lot of people hating it if they go with the expectation that you are going to watch a typical LJP film. The reaction could be similar to what a few people had for Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum after watching it with a Maheshinte Prathikaram hangover. P.F. Matthews is the writer of Doordarshan's 'Mikhaelinte Santhathikal' and the award winning film 'Kuttisranku', which I couldn't watch past thirty minutes of it. In my opinion it is LJP's second best film with Angamaly Diaries of course being the top. There are throwbacks to it as well as Amen in this film. He is getting better and better with each film and Double Barrel clusterfuck seems to have taught him the importance of having correct length for a film with both the films after that clocking just two hours.

Rating: 4.5/5

City of God (2011)

Director: Lijo Jose Pellissery
Writer: Babu Janardhanan
DOP: Sujith Vasudev
Cast: Indrajith, Prithviraj, Rima Kallingal, Parvathy
Language: Malayalam

Lijo Jose Pellissery's second film features an ensemble cast and has multiple storylines with them getting linked throughout the film. Some of the characters in it are involved with the local land Mafia, one of them is an actress and some are Tamil migrant workers from construction sites.

One big question in multiple storyline films is how often do all of them come in spatial contact in the film. The ones that does it best, like Haneke's Code Unknown and Iniaritu's Amores Perros, keep it minimal but when they do they make it count. My biggest problem with City of God is that the characters from different storylines seem to be coming across each other quite frequently and unnecessarily. The narrative that LJP goes for is very non-linear and quite ballsy. Very often he first shows a scene and goes back to show how different characters arrived at that scene. For a Malayalam film, it must have been quite novel when it came out. It is very chaotic and enjoyably so during the first hour of the film as you are figuring out its characters and storylines. But once you figure it out, it becomes really tiresome and boring and it doesn't help that the heavily caricaturised Tamil storyline takes more of screen time.

Nayakan, despite all its faults, was a good first attempt but you won't be as forgiving for CoG. He seemed to have been wanting to do a lot of things all at once and the result is not always coherent. He was more grounded in Amen, a film I didn't enjoy, which was his first and only commercial success till his masterpiece Angamaly Diaries came out this year. On the whole I've only enjoyed Double Barrel and Angamaly Diaries, last two films in his filmography comprising of 5 films so far. Those are the ones I could watch at the cinemas and I don't know how big a factor that is. Anyway, he seems to have come leaps and bounds as a director and is the most experimental among mainstream Malayalam film directors.

Rating: 2.5/5