Netflix Saturdays : Muthoon (Malayalam Movie Review)

Muthoon means the Elder One, in the local dialects spoken on the islands of Lakshadweep. 

A gritty, coming-of-age story about a young boy's search for his older brother that leads him from the aquamarine blue-seas and sand-washed islands of Lakshadweep to the seedy underbelly of the dark streets of Mumbai, Muthoon is Geetu Mohandas' second directorial and it definitely hits home with its stark hard-hitting messages on gender fluidity and forbidden love. 

It 'premiered' on the OTT platforms - on Zee network yesterday and I decided to finally catch this movie as it had not released in the theatres outside Kerala, last year December. Right from the wide-angle opening shots of the sandy beaches and brilliant turquoise water that surrounds the stark island where three boys are playing out their childhood games, I knew I was in for something special here. 

Mulla is a young boy full of anger and rebellious angst who only wants to find out the truths about his older brother referring to him as the Muthoon, the elder one. His uncle Moosa is vague and dismissive about the legends about the Muthoon on the island and frequently derides Mulla on wasting his life, dreaming about becoming like his Muthoon. But Mulla is sick of the half-truths and lies that sorround this mythical figure and strikes out on his own. Luck and fate leads him to the dirty chawls of Mumbai, landing first in a government orphanage and then escaping from there, to land up at this sex-worker's home in the narrow bylines of Kamathipura. Rosy is the quintessential prostitute, loud-mouthed and plucky enough to live by herself in this dangerous world. She takes pity on the young helpless kid who only speaks a broken dialect of the island villages and is literally at sea, in this brutal merciless city. 

But the street-urchins and the prostitutes of the area are all scared of the "Bhai" who rules them all with an iron-fist. A brawny bearded man, with his kohl-eyes who is mostly drunk or shot up on drugs. He plucks Mulla off the streets with plans of making money off a child-trafficking trade but later decides to keep him on, after realising the boy has oodles of courage. [ There's this surreal scene, where Bhai tests the nerves on the young boy in a rain-soaked night, in a red haze of drug-fuelled frenzy of rage and madness, urging him on!] Startling revelations follow soon after as Mulla reveals that he is here, to seek his Muthoon. 

Secrets tumble out, demons from the hidden past come back to haunt Bhai who gets lost in the pangs of a flash-back taking him back to his youth on the islands. The cruel sick hands of fate playing havoc with their lives. 

Muthoon is not a film for the faint-hearted. 

There, I said it. Maybe it's an utterly brazen attempt at understanding the depths of the crazed human minds, the depravity that humanity subjects itself to - in the name of survival. But am talking of survival at the lowest rung of a society. featuring the forgotten and the almost invisible figures like the  street-urchins at the corners of those traffic signal stops,  mutilated beggars, loud mouthed prostitutes, transgender hijdas, the desperate con-job thugs. The grime and dirt of the streets of Kamathipura are presented in unflattering shots, an almost sickening attempt to drive home the dark dregs of despair that clings to the air that the people here breathe. The mood of the film is sombre, dark and grey. The shift from the beautiful coconut glades of the islands to the dusty, smoke-filled, dirty shovels of the Mumbai underbelly is shocking. 

Nivin Pauly plays out of his skin to bring depth and meaning to the character of Muthoon/Bhai/Akbar. Definitely one of his career-defining seminal roles, this. The manic-drug hazed kohl-ridden eyes of his speak of hidden hurt and resentment against the world in general, whom he probably holds responsible for his spiralling descent into this state. As the drunken boor of a gangster lord, he spends his days in the escapist haze of drugs, lolling uselessly in his one-room shanty hovel with multhani-mithi on his face, transforming himself almost literally into a demoniacal figure. But then we meet him in the second half - in a beautiful, almost surreal flash back sequence as Akbar, the bright-eyed devout young man who's finesse at the ritual called Kathi Ratheeb is unbelievable and his faith in humanity and his God is absolute. This transformation is amazing and speaks volumes about how mature an actor Nivin Pauly has become. A lot of the secondary characters - Shashank Arora as the manic twitchy sidekick Salim, Dileesh Pothan as the friend/uncle, Shobita Dhulipalia as the cussing but gold-hearted prostitute - all of them are effortless and terrific in their roles. Sanjana Dipu who plays young Mulla is simply marvellous and a fabulous find for the industry. 

While much of the movie is in Hindi [ the dialogues having been penned by Anurag Kashyap] the portions shot in the beautiful Bangaram and Kavaratti on Lakshadweep are delivered in a mixed dialect of Malayalam and Tamil. 

The brief flashback sequence probably is the brightest spark of the movie. Where Geethu handles the sensitive same-sex relationship between Nivin and Roshan Mathews' character with absolute finesse and aplomb. But the tragic atmospheric feel never really lifts away and we know, in this dark brutal world dreams are brittle and made of glass. Geethu's handling of the narrative actually presents us with two halves - The past set on the island is beautiful, almost surreal and dream-like. Green glades of coconuts, the azure stretches of the lovely ocean, magical flying fishes and even a mermaid. And then there is that heart-rending love story, that starts with the meeting of eyes [ trust me, this trope though has never been handled SO well!] But the present where Mulla's and Akbar's worlds collide is a violent timeline, with Bhai lives on a knife's edge, towing that thin line between irresponsibility and imminent danger, a world of drugs, child trafficking, gangsters and murder. 

But even as the final shot of the movie dawned on me, I felt heavy and sad, and perhaps a bit cheated. Like there was a feeling of "Ahhh, have I seen this before ? But..!" Rajeev Ravi's expert cinematography gives us the feeling of being an involved participant in this dark fairy tale full of magic and despair in equal measures. Watch it for a couple of things: Geethu Mohandas ' magical touch to some of the best tropes and of course, Nivin Pauly's extraordinary transformation from the lover-boy [ Premam or Thatathin Marayathu] to the beefy, drug-addled gangster lord. 

Definitely recommended viewing but be warned, this isn't going to be pretty.