If you were to tell someone the story of Njandukalude Nattil Oridavela in one line, chances are that they will carry a few tissues to wipe their tears, when they head to the cinema.
In one line, you can probably say it like this — ‘It’s the story of how a family copes with the situation, after one of them is diagnosed with cancer’. The tissues will probably be wasted, for there is hardly any let-up from humour.
Althaf Salim, who played a side character in Premam, does his directorial debut in style with Njandukalude Nattil...’, which he also co-wrote with George Kora. At the centre of the story is Sheela Chacko (Shanthikrishna). Her life goes on in a perfect routine, until she notices a lump in her body, which she fears could be cancerous. Soon, her son Kurian Chacko (Nivin Pauly), working in London, gets a call to head home. Unaware of the reason, the eager-to-get-married Kurian arrives on ‘vacation’, thinking that the mother has found a girl for him.
Each of the family members has their own quirks, be it the father Chacko (Lal), who is frightened at the smallest challenge that life throws at him, or Kurian, who is clueless except when he is munching on Lays chips. His two sisters (Srinda and Ahaana) are too lost in their own worlds. It is on them that Sheela has to bank on, for emotional support. The story being set around an upper class family, financial troubles and issues of unaffordable healthcare are not the film’s concern. All its concern then is about the emotional support part.
For a debutant director-scriptwriter, Althaf Salim displays a tight control of the narrative flow. From one situational comedy to the next, there is never a jarring moment or anything artificial. Even the most inconsequential character leaves a mark. For instance, Sheela’s young granddaughter who runs around the living room chanting ‘chemo, chemo’like a nursery rhyme, having picked up the word from the grown-ups, readying for the first chemotherapy session.
The shifts to the more emotional scenes also happen seamlessly, like that scene where Kurian recounts a memory from his younger days to his sisters, to tell them how mentally strong their mother is. The best testament to the film’s use of humour, though, are the scenes where Chacko is trying hard to break the news of Sheela’s illness to their children, and failing hilariously at it every time.
It was an occasion waiting to be milked for tears, but the scriptwriters chose to make some laughs out of it. The Emperor of all maladies has hardly ever got such a screen treatment.
S.R. Praveen