Manjadikuru: Talk About Films #1
Starting with a personal love…
Manjadikuru (Malayalam: മഞ്ചാടിക്കുരു, English: Lucky Red Seeds)
2012, India
Director: Anjali Menon
Writers: Anjali Menon & Paliyath Aparna Menon
Cinematography: Pietro Zuercher
Editor: B. Lenin
Music: Ramesh Narayan, Francois Gamaury (BGM)
Language: Malayalam
Talking about ‘Manjadikuru’:
Manjadikkkuru is a film that has become a personal favourite of mine, as special as the director of the film Anjali Menon is. The film portrays the outer and inner currents flowing among a set of characters in a typical Nair family in Kerala, in India. While the story encapsulates the commotions and emotions in a typical Indian joint family, it is said through the point of view of a young member of the family settled abroad and is visiting his homeland and being introduced to his roots. Although I’m somebody who was born and brought up in Kerala, I currently live outside and I’ve been away from home for a few years now and the connections I make from life in and out of Kerala has a great deal of similarity to be made with that of the protagonist in ‘Manjadikkuru’.
Moreover I’m currently a student of London Film School, of which the maker Anjali Menon is an alumni and she was in fact a factor that inspired me to LFS. I watched ‘Manjadikkuru’ after its long wait in my watchlist and I believe it was the right time for me to watch it, to make it even more special for me personally.
The characters I met in the film were people whom I have actually met in my life. Being a Malayali and Keralite, I could see the characters and their real behaviour in various situations that the film takes you through. The film shows the coming together of a scattered Malayali middle class family, who portrays themselves as the old royals or high class of the locality in many aspects, which is indeed the very story of many families in the modern Kerala society. Being one of the most educated and migrating communities of India, most of Keralite families have people settled in different parts of the world, who comes in for family get-together sessions to revoke their collective traditional conscience, but at the same time also bringing with them their diverse prejudices they picked from their new lives, many times to compare and grade with each other.
The film has beautifully portrayed the diversity of characters under the same roof. From the ones who left the family for their revolutionary ideologies in youth, to the ones who was left back to take care of the family, to the opportunists, the escapist, the helpless and more, the family has a very typical collection of characters that you might find in just another ordinary kerala family of the time. The story travels through the surface and inner characteristics of these characters, the dualities in them and the many permutations and combinations between all of them.
However one aspect where I felt the narrative could’ve been more convincing is probably in the dialogues at some points in the film. While the protagonist, a young boy living abroad and now being introduced into his roots, would naturally have a bit of broken Malayalam mixed with English, I did feel certain dialogues could’ve made that balance more convincing. The dialogues at certain points feel forced to have made in a way to project the mixed character and conflict the boy is going through.
The film however shows the many conflicts in and out of the characters and the family itself. It’s beautiful to see the diversity burning with the friction in between within the family juxtaposed with the the broader cultural conflict Malayalis face as a society, being one of the most migrant community of India for decades. I feel Anjali Menon has done a commendable job in her debut feature, bringing the nuances of her own life experiences and diverse cultural identities and perspectives to craft a beautiful story about families, relationships and memories.
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