‘Kishkindha Kandam’ Movie Review: A flawless screenplay drives this intriguing mystery drama

A still from ‘Kishkindha Kandam’ Photo credit: Special Arrangements

‘Layered’ is a word we throw around lazily to describe any screenplay that has a little more depth than meets the eye. But where does one begin when describing a screenplay, where the impression of peeling an onion, layer by layer, can only be finished with an orange? Do we begin with the sheer joy of marveling at the genius of the writing or with the pain of its three main characters that seep into us and stay with us long after?

Kishkindh KandamDirected by Dinjith Iyathan, is characterized by a continuous flow of events, almost none of which take a familiar route. It started from a routine government order before elections for firearms license holders to surrender their weapons at the nearest police station. From a missing gun to a missing person to the changing color of relationships and startling revelations about its characters, the film slips seamlessly between genre boundaries, eschewing any easy categorization.

A quiet serenity characterizes events as Ajayan (Aasif Ali) begins life with his newly wedded wife Aparna (Aparna Balamurali) in an old mansion on the edge of a forest, constantly serenaded by a gentle breeze and inhabited by monkeys. Ajay’s father Appu Pillai (Vijayaraghavan), a retired army man, is another resident of the house, where every activity seems to be in sync with the grumpy old man’s rhythm. Aparna is at ease in this situation, almost like a fly on the wall, but the audience is equally curious as we are about what lies beneath the old man’s calm and quirky habits.

A still from ‘Kishkindha Kandam’ Photo credit: Special Arrangements

In contemporary Malayalam cinema, we have interesting set-ups, only for the screenplay to waste all efforts in the third act (like Asif’s Kuman) Here, screenwriter Bahul Ramesh achieves a near-flawless payoff, worthy of the painstakingly crafted set-up. There are hardly any red herrings thrown at us to distract, but every other sequence is meant to add to our understanding of the characters or give us more to do. He also doubles as the cinematographer, thus having the luxury of visually translating what he envisions onto the page, while editor Suraj ES masters the smooth transitions. Mujeeb Majid’s background score hits all the right moods.

Elevating the hard work in almost all other departments are heartwarming performances by the three central characters and some supporting characters like Jagadish and Ashokan. Vijayaraghavan internalizes a character who is trapped in his life’s false pride and frailty of old age, while also burdened by secrets that are too much for one person to bear. Asif Ali has got an interesting character arc that requires him to draw deep from his emotional reserves and he manages it extremely well. Aparna Balamurali pulls off a convincing performance as a woman who is slowly getting mixed up in a situation that many would consider running away from.

In the end we are left to wonder if what we were seeing was a battle of memory against forgetting or a battle of forgetting against memory. A true mark of any timeless work of art is a place of uncertainty, which is difficult to achieve Kishkindh Kandam Masterfully occupied. It will easily find a place among the best mystery-dramas that Malayalam cinema has produced.

Kishkindh Kandam is currently playing in theatres