Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam

<p>A group of tourists are returning to after visiting the in , . While the other tourists are asleep, tour leader James stops the bus at a remote village in Tamil Nadu. He takes a stroll around the place, enters a house and starts acting like a member of the family, behaving like a and speaking in . An old blind woman in the house appears to recognize him as her son, based on his voice and mannerisms. Not finding James, the other tourists come looking for him. His familiarity with the community confuses everyone who travelled with him, as well as the villagers. Eventually the people realize he has taken on the character, mannerisms and language of Sundaram, a member of the family who had disappeared two years earlier. The family of Sundaram starts to believe that he has been reincarnated. But James progressively gets confused when people don’t accept him as Sundaram. He doesn’t recognize the changes in the village, such as the new temple that had not been built when Sundaram went missing. He also chances to see his face mirrored for the first time, when he visits the barber, which shocks him into reality. James’ real family and friends plot to sedate him in order to get him back to Kerala, and get him help for his presumed mental disorder. They plan to give him the sedative with his coffee after his afternoon nap. However, after falling asleep James regains his true identity and willingly goes with them to board the bus. The ending is open to interpretation. The character named Sundaram and the entire escapade could merely be a dream that James had on the bus all the while. On 7 November 2021, officially announced the film by sharing the title through social media. is the first-time collaboration between and Lijo Jose Pellissery. The film was produced by Mammootty’s newly launched production house Mammootty Kampany. On 7 November 2021, took place in the village of Manjanaickenpatti, near , . Filming was wrapped up on 7 December 2021. The movie premiered at 27th (IIFK) on 12 December 2022. The film received positive reviews and huge demand for world premiere. Audience praised both and . On 19 January 2023, went into general release on theatres. The streaming rights of the film were sold to . It released on 23 February 2023. received mostly positive reviews from critics. On the website , 80% of 5 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.4/10. , reviewing for , described the film as “magical” and “an instant classic” and continued that “to experience a film like this – at once muddled and filled with clarity – is to feel transcendentally alive.” Simon Abrams from gave the film 3.5 out of 4 and wrote that ” feels like a deep and abidingly strange trip to Pellissery’s memory palace” and that “Pellissery confirms his prominence among a new wave of Malayalam-speaking Indian filmmakers.” of gave the film 3 out of 5 and wrote “Apart from the music and sound design, the highlight of is its immersive central performance…the thespian does not give either James or Sundaram any quirks, yet masterfully conveys their divergent personalities leaving us in no doubt as to who is who and when. This team-up with Lijo confirms that Mammootty is steering his career into a whole new experimental phase, embracing not just the sort of middle-of-the-road, slice-of-life ventures that have endeared Malayalam cinema to a pan-India audience, but also entering an unapologetically philosophical arena.” Prem Udayabhanu of reviewed the film as and wrote “The orchestrated chaos we see in or is amiss. But through the interplay of hallucination and trance Lijo’s scriptwriter S Harish infuses into Mammotty’s character, the master craftsman pulls the actor and the audience to a lofty plain of cinematic excellence. We cannot but embrace this irrational reel exuberance.” Analysing the movie, Sajesh Mohan of wrote In ‘Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam’, must have asked cinematographer to observe the actors like a master of mindfulness. For that’s what his camera does. The shots are static yet the frames are dynamic and once the film enters Sundaram’s village through James’s siesta dream, the shots acquire an aura that makes it resemble the visualisations of a Tao master. In lieu of adding haze and glow or grading the dream sequence differently, Theni Eswar achieves a differentiation relying on the aesthetic method of frames within a frame. Manoj Kumar R. of rated the film 3.5 out of 5 and wrote “The visuals are almost meditative. Every frame tells more than one story.” The film grossed ₹1.02 crore at the Kerala box office on its first day of release. The film grossed ₹4.5 crore at the Indian box office in the three days. In the two weeks, the film grossed ₹9.7 crore at the Worldwide box office.</p>