Idhayam Murali Movie Review:
Nostalgia is when you yearn for the melancholic aftertaste of a sweet past. Idhayam Murali is about yearning for a future that could have been. No wonder the film throws ample homages to 1991’s Idhayam, the poster boy for unrequited yearners, with ‘Idhayam Murali’ (referring to the late Murali’s protagonist in the film) becoming a trope on its own. Aakash Baskaran, in his directorial debut, does justice to the central theme of unrequited yearning. There is a sequence at the beginning where the childhood version of Idhaya (Atharvaa) is shown to be infatuated with his school teacher. Even though the depiction treads on slightly uncomfortable territory, a dialogue from Kaali Venkat, which goes something like “Who didn’t have a crush on their teacher? Isn’t that our first unrequited love?” shows you how the film understands (what has come to be known as) the ‘Idhayam Murali’ trope on a fundamental level. It is this understanding that makes it easier to overlook the generous lathering of (the now tiresome) 90s nostalgia-bait in the first half. Yes, we do remember kuchi ice, the Smackdown video game, adjusting TV antennas, and the supposed innocence and lightness of the era; now, can we please move on? Apparently not, because some nostalgia bait does work, and you have to admit (rather begrudgingly) that you did sink back into your seat when ‘Pottu Vaitha Oru Vatta Nila’ hits you like a ton of bricks.
Direction: Aakash Baskaran
Cast: Atharvaa, Preity Mukundhan, Kayadu Lohar, Natty, Thaman S, Niharika
Idhayam Murali continues the longstanding tradition of clean shaving actors and awkwardly shoving them inside classrooms and hoping you don’t notice how they look like the teachers. It is less noticeable here because the actors are thankfully not directed to overdo the “school payyan” act. The biggest strength of the film is Atharvaa and Preity Mukundhan; the supporting cast deserve special mention for not getting in their way when it is easy to do so in films of this genre. Thaman, Sudhakar, Dravid, Niharika, and the rest of the gang exhibit incredible chemistry and are believable as a group of friends. On the other hand, Jonita Gandhi, who plays a teacher, reminds you of those amiable mothers in soap advertisements made in Hindi but are then awkwardly dubbed into Tamil by the same Hindi voice actors for some reason. This isn’t about Tamil pronunciation either because Niharika struggles in that regard as well, but the effort in performance makes up for it.
We cycle through Idhaya’s major lovestruck moments, from school to college, and then his career phase. The film moves rather predictably until the story pleasantly surprises us with a twist involving Preity’s character. Idhaya’s inner conflict as he struggles to understand his own feelings at the moment deserves a film on its own. It is a refreshing change because we know a twist is expected at that point and films usually go the route of “she never actually liked him” or “she had a boyfriend all along” tropes. Idhayam Murali, thankfully, takes another route. The film does borrow heavily from romantic subplots in popular American sitcoms. But, to the film’s credit, they try their best to ground it in local sensibilities. They do overdo it to a painful extent sometimes, like when they mirror the real-world criticisms against Indians from other countries, of being loud on aeroplanes and spontaneously breaking into dance in public places in foreign countries, the latter ironically making us nostalgic for old-school KTV films. Aakash Baskaran takes quite a few leaps in storytelling, which may or may not be a criticism, depending on which point in the story you are. Who would have expected Idhayam Murali to start with Preity Mukundhan floating in space or for her character to magically let go of her issues with Idhaya because Fahadh Faasil said so? There are storytelling leaps that are too much to bear, leaps that wink at the audience, and then there are leaps that add to the entire fantasy. The film works because the latter leaps outnumber the other leaps. The terrace on which Idhaya and gang often hang out is noticeably a film set, and the moon is obviously enlarged in VFX ,but there is beauty in such exaggerations, and Idhayam Murali gets it. If Idhayam (1991) was all about showing the pathos of an anxious yearner who crumbles under the weight of his own unsaid love, Idhayam Murali is a rose-tinted fantasy, in which, all the world conspires to give a yearner as many chances as possible until he finally gets it. Idhayam Murali isn’t perfect, but aren’t fairytale love stories more about the “happily ever after” (the warm fuzzy feeling they leave you with) than the messy dragon-infested road (the storytelling leaps) they took to get there?
