With just two feature films under his belt, Abhinav Sunder Nayak has become one of my favorite movie directors. In Mukundan Unni Associates, he tossed all pretense of textbook morality out the window to create a delicious dark comedy that ends with a woman asserting that people love to comfort themselves with ideas of karma, but in reality, it's the wicked one who literally kills for his dream that ends up getting what he wants from life. Mollywood Times sort of looks the same, though it definitely has a different philosophy. This one cherishes hard work and integrity, and not in the usual sunny, faux-optimistic style that's calculated to generate applause in the theater and empty praise online. Nayak is averse to sugarcoating, making him the perfect filmmaker for a film like Mollywood Times, where "truth" becomes the core of a good, terrifying horror movie within the movie.
This "hate letter to cinema" says that "truth is terrifying." What's the truth? The world celebrates mediocrity. It's also run by mediocre people who easily win the hearts of the public. What does this say about us, the public? That we, too, are a bunch of mediocre people, which is why we choose to worship individuals who feed us mediocrity. Nayak doesn't explicitly state this point, but it's present on the screen and can be grasped by keen eyes. In Mollywood Times, hack authors like Vaikom David (Jagadish), who steal others' work and hire ghostwriters to write their novels, are hailed as bestselling, gifted artists. In this same universe, directors like Arjun Haridas (Sangeeth Prathap), who steal from a talented filmmaker, are acclaimed because of the carefully cultivated image of a nice, humble guy. I'd be lying if I said this phenomenon isn't visible in real life, where filmmakers often perform acts of kindness or publicly support a particular ideology during interviews before a film's release to earn praise from fans and to break records at the box office.
By telling a story in which people like Arjun are rewarded not only for their creative bankruptcy but also with the backing of powerful studio figures, Nayak wields a double-edged sword that attacks both the gatekeepers of cinema (Mollywood here, for instance) and the audience that quickly becomes an admirer of these peddlers of banality and unoriginality. And Arjun is not simply a hack; he is a poser and an intellectual thief. He builds his first feature by ripping everything—from the story to the aesthetics—from Vineeth Madhavan's (Naslen) short film. All Vineeth, as a filmmaker, wants to do is terrify his viewers with his horror film. Everyone knows he has talent, yet everyone ends up exploiting him. This thread of exploitation is ingeniously introduced through a scene in which Vaikom tells his son, Sachin (Sharaf U Dheen), that he doesn't write his own novels and that there are many young talents out there waiting to be taken advantage of. All he has to do is sell them wild dreams. Both Sachin and Vineeth have an appetite for greatness. Arjun, too, wants to be known as a great artist. The difference between the others and Vineeth is that the latter actually puts in the work to reach the highest peak. The rest, however, attain instant fame by passing themselves off as underdogs who have struggled to get a break in the movie industry.
Vineeth, though, cares less about his outward appearance and more about his creative vision. He doesn't care if he has to delete his entire film weeks before its theatrical release if the final result is imperfect or weak. This gives him a "bad boy" image in the eyes of the public. He's called out on social media for being "arrogant," and both the media and people within the industry validate that perception. Everyone is jealous of Vineeth's talent; they can't stomach the fact that he isn't afraid to be who he really is. It's the kind of self-assurance—the chutzpah—that was evident in Nayak's first film. There, he gleefully discarded traditional morality to remain true to the world of his story. Here, he once again underlines how fucked up the world is, but through the eyes of David (take Goliath to be anyone who stands in Vineeth's way, which is essentially the entire Malayalam film industry). Mukundan Unni Associates seduced you with its immorality. Mollywood Times converts that immorality into a hectic fight.
Like Vineeth, Nayak, too, started his filmmaking journey through short films. Then he served as an assistant director to Vineeth Sreenivasan on Thira, which was released in 2013. Is this why Naslen's character is also named Vineeth? (Sreenivasan later ended up playing Advocate Mukundan Unni in Mukundan Unni Associates.) If there is an "autobiographical" element in Mollywood Times, it's more intellectual than literal. Nayak enriches his feature with his strong opinions—his cinematic vision is powered by his incandescent convictions. And as far as his creativity is concerned, he conjures thrilling, dynamic images through simple techniques, such as when the camera rotates 360 degrees while Vineeth sits on his bed reading a book that provides him with a crucial insight. Even the shot of a huge, tsunami-like wave that reminds you a little of the Red Sea sequence in Exodus: Gods and Kings takes on a weighty metaphorical meaning when Vineeth is placed in front of it. Nayak's sense of style is marked by intensity, nimbleness, and vitality. His movies bounce and leap; they have a youthful energy. Combine this with his healthy dose of contempt for people, influential figures, and institutions, and you get a man who is genuinely fearless, reckless, and amazing.
Nayak's sense of humor is also delightfully dark and weird. It doesn't come alive only in the story beats but also in minor details, like how two characters in Mollywood Times sit down in a toilet to have a meeting, or how the success of Vineeth's directorial debut is measured by the number of people he sends to the hospital through the ambulances parked outside every theater screening his movie. Vineeth doesn't want to compromise any part of himself. He wants to do his work on his own terms; he doesn't want to be sucked into conformity. He is like Howard Roark from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, which is a clear inspiration behind this tale of freedom vs. submission written by Ramu Sunil. Mollywood Times is essentially about sticking to your values and following your moral compass even when doing the opposite would bring you instant fame and prosperity. It's funny that the darkness of Mukundan Unni Associates was a commercial success, while the defiant spirit of Mollywood Times didn't work at the box office. What should one make of that? If there is any honesty in Mollywood Times—and I do think there is—then Nayak won't sacrifice his sensibilities the next time around for financial gain. Vineeth turns cynical toward a world that doesn't value his individuality. He remains in love with his work, his films. I'd like to think that Nayak has this in common with Vineeth. He might not have found his audience in theaters this time, but I'm sure they'll gradually discover the film now that it's streaming online. All Nayak has to do is continue making the movies he believes in. Like Vineeth, he should remain fully in love with what he's doing.
Written by - Vikas Yadav
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Publisher at Midgard Times