A Shyamaprasad film that didn’t drag you into the depths of desolation and gloom along with it used to be a rare phenomenon until he supposedly went commercial with Ritu close to a decade back, yet it was far removed from the usual fare that you came across in Malayalam cinema though the veil of melancholy that almost always hangs over Shyamaprasad’s themes was absent in it.He explored the dark recesses of the human mind and the complexities of human relationships in Ore Kadal, Akale and Elektra and in the meantime he surprisingly chose to expose the lighter side of his creative mind to the audience with a short in the anthology Kerala Cafe.He went down that lane again in English and Arike but it’s with Hey Jude that he has truly picked off from where he left off in Off-Season i can’t but help feel.Or maybe it’s the common backdrop of the ocean and the beach that’s giving me those vibes.
This is Nivin Pauly’s third outing with Shyamaprasad who has not had frequent collaborators in the past and it looks like its third time lucky for Nivin.Set in Goa, Hey Jude is a breezy feel-good film considering what Shyamaprasad could’ve instinctively done otherwise with the story of a man with Asperger’s Syndrome and a woman with bipolar disorder and the credit i think goes here to the scriptwriting duo.Shyamaprasad’s deviations from his favorite themes have always been when he associated with other writers.Interestingly Nirmal Sahadev who was Chief Associate in Ivide has co-written the script for Hey Jude with George Kannat and he’s also set to make his directorial debut with another story set in the U.S, Ranam which has Prithviraj playing the lead.
Nivin was at the receiving end of some unfair criticism in Ivide where he shared screen space with Prithviraj but he has silenced his detractors in Hey Jude with his inspired portrayal of the troubled charachter.Siddique excels yet again as Nivin’s father in a role that’s not too different from that of Lal’s in Njandukalude Nattil Oru Idavela.Coincidentally that film too dealt with a medical condition in a lighter vein though Hey Jude is more of a romantic comedy, which for some reason reminds of Adam Sandler’s Punch Drunk Love.Vijay Menon,whom the Malayalam film industry had reduced to the in-house psycho-drug addict over the years gets liberated here with a full length role thats almost tailor made to suit his on screen persona.Trisha gets to play a next door girl character that’s quite the opposite of the one that earned a cult status among the audience a while back, that of Jessie from Gautam Menon’s VTV.
Though the script is not without a few holes,with Shyamaprasad’s trademark unhurried approach and his skill as a director with a level of sophistication that’s not exactly at home in Malayalam cinema, Hey Jude makes for a pretty good weekend watch to unwind yourself with.
gopakumarpurushothaman 