Traditionally the end of December is festive season in Kerala with Christmas and the New Year celebrations happening with gusto across the state. So this is also considered as a good time to release movies and this time one of the movies that has reached out to the audience is Ividam Swargamanu ( It’s heaven here – IS from hereon ), directed by Rosshan Andrrews and written by James Albert. Mohanlal ends the year 2009 with a fairly engaging film in IS. What is it that first strikes the mind when we think of Kerala? It won’t be wrong to say that for the majority of us the thoughts could be something related to Kerala’s lovely natural beauty, for after all isn’t Kerala referred to as God’s own country? So it’s not surprising that the tourism industry flourishes so well in Kerala.
Speaking about Kerala’s natural beauty and the tourism industry it’s also important to note that the threat of land mafia is looming large in Kerala where people who are forever trying to make a fast buck in the name of tourism are trying to capture land (mainly agricultural) from people by various means. For those who are wondering why I’m mentioning all this, the connect would be very evident soon as I write more in detail about the movie now. IS talks about Mathews (Mohanlal) who is a new age farmer having a large farm and dairy named after his father, Jeremias . It was always the ambition of Mathews to have such a farm and he loves the land as much as his parents ( Thilakan and Kaviyoor Ponnamma). As a new age farmer Mathews adopts organic farming and even uses windmills to generate electricity.
The farm is the cynosure of all eyes and soon invites the attention of a lot of people. Their peaceful existence comes under threat when a real estate developer Aluva Chandy (Lalu Alex) expresses his desire to buy the farm from Mathews. Mathews refuses to part with the farm as that’s their heaven while Aluva Chandy decides to use all the tricks of the trade to fulfill his desire. From then begins an interesting game of wits between Mathews and Aluva Chandy. What is interesting about the movie is the way the story unfolds. Right from the very beginning one can see a lot of realism in the proceedings. Though there are a lot of characters there is no special attention bestowed to character buildup. Rather the characters tend to flow with the narrative.
The leading ladies- Lakshmi Gopalswamy,Priyanka Nair and Lakshmi Rai with Lal ettan
In the beginning the easy going pace of the narrative can even be a bit distracting but this is something to be overlooked. The best part of the movie is the climax which is quite funny without venturing into slapstick territory. Mohanlal is at his restrained best throughout the movie and those who are expecting to see some larger than life stuff from him will end up disappointed. It’s nice to see Thilakan finally acting with Mammootty and Mohanlal once again these days after a gap of a few years. Kaviyoor Ponnamma and Sukumari perform their elderly roles without much fuss. What’s interesting is the line up of other actors in the supporting roles. I would be committing a major sin if I fail to acknowledge Lalu Alex’s contribution to the movie. As Aluva Chandy,Lalu Alex is extremely convincing as the bad guy but with a comic streak. Also seen in a reasonably good role is Shankar the yesteryear star as Sudheer, friend of Mathews. I was reminded of films like Manjil Virinja Pookal, Sukhamo Devi, Poochakkoru Mookuthi and many more where Mohanlal and Shanker acted as a combination.
There are 3 leading ladies here and all of them have reasonable screen time. Lakshmi Gopalswamy plays Maria, a Manager in a Govt.bank, Lakshmi Rai plays Advocate Sunita and Priyanka Nair plays a T.V reporter, Betsy. The pick of the lot is certainly Priyanka Nair who plays adequate foil to Mohanlal whenever they are on screen together. Priyanka who first shot to fame with Vasantha Balan’s acclaimed Tamil film,Veyyil ( paired with Pasupathi ) is fast becoming popular with some unconventional roles in films like Bhoomi Malayalam and Vilapangalkappuram. What’s also commendable is the fact that the movie is devoid of the usual set of comedians (read Suraj Venjaramoodu, Salim Kumar, Harisree Asokan etc) and the comedy element doesn’t appear forced here. Jagathy Sreekumar leaves his mark playing a fairly interesting character called Bhuvanachandran (saying anything about his character will spoil the fun). Manian Pillai Raju in a cameo is very good and will win the heart of the audience in the climax.
Mohanlal- Sreenivasan, the evergreen comboAfter Udhanayanu Tharam Rosshan Andrrews once again brings back the magical combination of Mohanlal and Sreenivan in IS. While this time Sreenivasan has only a cameo, nevertheless as Prabalan he brings in the surprise element in the film wonderfully.There is no scope for any song in the movie and Rosshan Andrrews has not tried any sort of gimmicks over here. Overall this is nowhere close to a path breaking movie but then the movie was never intended to be one. It was targeted as a family entertainer for the festive season and in this respect it certainly works reasonably.
Originally posted in PFC-check it out here- http://tinyurl.com/y4jro5f
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