There are movies which I mean to watch which I never watch. And that would have been the fate with Yavanika too had not one of those days again come into my life – a day when I and sis grew sick of the things we had been watching and wanted to watch something that would not let us down. I suddenly remembered Yavanika whose story I had read as part of an article on K.G. George’s movies. It had then made me look up the wonderfully sung and picturised song from it, ‘Bharata muni oru kalam varachu’, which definitely sealed the fate of the movie as one I wanted to watch.
However, that also meant I knew what was coming (including who the murderer was and the reason) and that is not the best way to start a movie, especially a murder mystery. My sister who (fortunately for her) had not read the article and had no clue as to what was coming was the ideal target audience. Even then, I can say it was a delight to watch for to call Yavanika just a murder mystery would be doing it a great disservice.
In fact, the movie begins with a close up shot of Bhavana theatres as a bus waits for the drama troupe to enter it (now I know where Ramji Rao Speaking got much of its source material from). The interactions of the different members with each other (each interesting in her/his own right) is a delight to watch. Thus we have the quick-tempered troupe owner Vakkachan who usually scolds almost everyone around him. Then we have Varunan (Jagathy), the wit of the troupe, who is as much a joker as a vidooshakan in the sense that his humour sense is as good as his common sense. Nedumudi plays the harmless flirt Balagopalan who has to be at times pried away from the company of the women in the troupe and is usually found whispering sweet nothings into the ears of at least one of them. No wonder, his nickname in the troupe is Rahasya Gopalan. Venu Nagavally plays Joseph Kollappally, a man who tends to keep to himself most of the time. Sreenivasan plays the role of Chellappan, Vakkachan’s efficient assistant.
The blot in the otherwise happy picture is the absence of the tabla player Aiyappan (Gopi). His wife Rohini (Jalaja) who is the main actress enters the bus in tears and does not know where her drunkard husband has disappeared. She is comforted by her friend and heart-keeper Rajamma (Thodupuzha Vasanthi), an older actress for whom the theatre is her sole livelihood after her husband left her soon after marriage and went somewhere, never to return. The members believe that Aiyappan, who has a habit of being unpunctual when drunk, would turn up later at the venue. So they all leave for the programme with Vakkachan instructing Chellappan to send Aiyappan to the venue as soon as he is found.
And we get to see the wonderfully ludicrous play within the movie – “Karuppum Veluppum” (Black and White). The play itself is nothing to write home about, but is a brilliant prototype of the dramas that were hits during those times (about 10 years back, I saw something similar in Changampuzha Park!). The humour of the movie largely comes from this play which is about two star crossed lovers. Jalaja plays a girl who loves the poor, but sincere poet played by Nedumudi. Her parents, as drama conventions dictate, oppose the match and want to marry her off to their rich nephew played by Venu Nagavalli. In between these two opposing factions stands the golden-hearted grandfather played by Jagathi, a ramanan who lives in the throes of the memories of his tragic love and wants his grand daughter’s at least to succeed,
The play begins with Vakkachan’s futile attempts to lend some dignity to it, introducing it as an exploration of the intricacies of man-woman relationship and admonishing his audience not to miss out on even one word of its deep meanings. Of course, his purple prose does not work on the unruly audience who just wants it to start somehow and their sarcastic rejoinders to Vakkchan get much mock appreciation from Varunan. And thus begins our true-to-type overdramatic play ‘Karuppum Veluppum’. The metatheatricality of the play had me in splits as we watch Varunan (Jagathi), busy with his beedi, nonchalantly watching the play from the sidestage, transform into the pious and golden-hearted, hobbling grandfather as he moves from the sidelines to the stage space when his turn arrives.
The play of course acts as a parallel narrative to the main mystery of Ayappan’s disappearance (does it also mirror it at some level?). It begins with the scene where Rohini, who looks much disturbed after her husband’s reverie, has to be called twice to take her cue and enter the stage. The play’s climax where the mystery gets revealed happens during the same scene played out in another venue where Rohini again has to be called multiple times to take her cue. In between, we have a ‘who-dunnit’ mystery as Jacob Earaly, the police inspector (Mammootty in his early days) tries to understand the murdered man Ayyappan’s life better and his interactions with the members of his troupe. A vile womaniser who had wives wherever he went (and treated all of them like dirt), as a drunkard who used to pick fights with most members of the troupe and as the father of a daredevil son who despised him completely, Ayyappan had plenty of enemies. Eeraly tries to reconstruct the events before Ayappan’s disappearance and poke holes in the testimonies of his many suspects.
To me, who knew the story beforehand, the revelation of the murderer came as no surprise and think that it ought to be pretty apparent by the end. What made the movie work for me was the wonderful camaraderie of the incredibly talented cast whose characters all seemed so life and blood. Bhavana Theatres with its wonderfully diverse members, each with an interesting backstory, seems at times to have stepped out of a drama troupe playing at that time. Much of the authenticity of the theatre set up is thanks to the director K. G. George’s insistence on having a man from the theatre help him with the dialogues, his search finally ending in S.L. Puram Sadanandan. Each of the actors chosen for their particular role played it close to perfection (Ashokan as the stubborn son of Ayyappan was a revelation) and the synergy of the cast just took the movie to another level. I was also impressed by how tight the script was, how it wove the play within the movie into the murder investigation so cleverly and how it did not stray at any point into anything that took away from the story at hand.
The movie, while it ends on a tragicomic note, raises pertinent questions about practices of exploitation that go unheeded and unreported (there are things which I wish one of the characters had done differently). There are scenes which strike you with their pathos like the one where Rohini’s ailing mother, sending her off with their benefactor Ayappan entreats him to take good care of her as she has heard that the world of theatre is full of bad people. Totally a Tess of the d’Urbervilles moment as Rohini, the girl, tragically ignorant of the outside world, steps into a future of doom and gloom.
themorningbus 