Roshan Mathew plays a married man who runs into his ex, played by Zarin Shihab. A night of conversation follows, but before you think this is another ‘96’, there’s a genre change, with observations about relationships and masculinity. The film isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly interesting. That’s the short take. A longer review follows, and it may have spoilers.
At the opening of Prasanth Vijay’s new film, we see Roshan Mathew as a podcast host named Anish. He is talking to a guest about relationships. The guest says that society has become a factory that produces human beings without any personal freedom. And the rest of Ithiri Neram becomes a riff on this thought. What is personal freedom? Can we remove our social shackles and do whatever the heart desires? Anish is married. He cares about his wife and his wife cares about him. But “something is missing”, he tells Anjana, his ex, when he runs into her. Actually, strike that. Anish doesn’t run into her. He decides to meet her. Anjana merely called to say that she is back in Trivandrum for a brief visit, and this information sparks something in Anish. He invites himself over to her brief visit in his city. Is this acceptable behaviour for a man whose child is about to be baptised the next day?
Baptism marks the formal entry into a faith. It’s for the child, but you can also say that Anish has been formally inducted into the social institution called marriage and family. By following his heart and deciding to meet Anjana, he’s doing something whose right and wrong can be endlessly debated. On the one hand, how can you blame someone for wanting to see the woman he had an intense emotional relationship with, the kind he does not share with his wife? On the other hand, what about the blameless wife, who assures her mother that Anish is not like other men in this regard? Roshan Mathew gives a magnificent performance, a symphony of hesitant smiles and awkward looks and hurting thoughts and semi-expressed feelings. Technically, what Anish is doing can be called emotional cheating, but Roshan reveals Anish’s vulnerability to us and makes us see a flaws-and-all human being.
Zarin Shihab plays Anjana. The writing does not support the character as much as it does Anish, but it’s a solid (if tentative) performance. Unlike Anish, Anjana has moved out of this place. She’s moved to Delhi. She has extraordinary academic achievements. But her personal life isn’t quite there, which is probably why she made that call to Anish. Their conversation starts with generalities, and then we realise that she has been tracking his show and he has been tracking her on her college web site. As Anish calls it, some amount of stalking has happened. They may have moved on, but they are not fully out of that earlier relationship yet. There’s some hostility in the way Anjana speaks to Anish, in the way people say insulting things to friends and then add a “just kidding” disclaimer. Does she blame him for having a personal life when she seems to have nothing but her career?
For a while, Ithiri Neram is a more political version of 96 or the Before Sunrise series of films. It’s not just that Anish and Anjana were Communists back in college. The film itself examines issues like what it means to be an independent-minded woman. It examines Anish’s statement that men often don’t know how to open up. Anish tells Anjana, “I wish I knew how to talk openly… We could have talked over a drink like this.” Had that happened, they might still be together. Much later, Anish says that his ego and ignorance have come down in the eight years since they last met. Through Anish’s friends, nicely played by Nandu and Anand Manmadhan, the film examines how different types of men look at male-female connections. One of them buys Anish’s statement that he and Anjana are just friends. The other friend, a porn-watcher, labels it an affair.
These kinds of conversation-based films are tricky to pull off. One, we have to buy the characters and find them interesting enough to keep listening to them. And two, when a film is a collection of memories, these detours have to be interesting enough for us to care. The setup of Ithiri Neram is shaky, but once Anish and Anjana meet, it becomes better. And there’s an interesting genre shift that puts Anjana in the backseat (literally) as the three men are forced to go on a road trip. Jeo Baby makes an appearance as an auto driver. This genre shift is important because it says that drinking may be fun, but too much of it can make you vomit. To extend the metaphor, flirting with an ex may sound good, but it brings with it a whole set of complications. Ithiri Neram is too long and it doesn’t fully live up to the ideas that it explores, but these ideas are interesting enough to keep thinking about. Sometimes, that’s enough.
