Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam

Plot

A bus is bringing back a group of Malayali tourists to Kerala after visiting the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health in Velankanni, Tamil Nadu. 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 Tamil and speaking in the Tamil language. 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 travels with him, including the villagers. Eventually, the people realize he has taken on the character, mannerisms, and language of Sundaram, a family member who had disappeared two years earlier. Sundaram's family begins to believe that he has been reincarnated, but James progressively gets confused when people do not accept him as Sundaram. He does not recognize the changes in the village, such as the new temple that had not been built when Sundaram went missing. He also has the chance to see his face in a mirror for the first time when he visits the barber, which shocks him into reality. James' real family and friends plot to sedate him to get him back to Kerala and get him help for his presumed mental disorder. They plan to slip the sedative into his coffee after he wakes up from his afternoon nap. However, after waking up, 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.

Production

On 7 November 2021, Lijo Jose Pellissery officially announced the film by sharing the title through social media.

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is the first-time collaboration between Mammootty and Lijo Jose Pellissery. The film was produced by Mammootty's newly launched production house Mammootty Kampany.

On 7 November 2021, principal photography took place in the village of Manjanaickenpatti, near Palani, Tamil Nadu. Filming was wrapped up on 7 December 2021.

Release

The movie premiered at 27th International Film Festival of Kerala(IIFK) on 12 December 2022. The film received positive reviews and huge demand for world premiere. Audience praised both Mammootty and Lijo Jose Pellissery.

On 19 January 2023, Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam went into general release on theatres.

Home media

The streaming rights of the film were sold to Netflix. It released on 23 February 2023.

Reception

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakam received mostly positive reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 80% of 5 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.4/10.

Baradwaj Rangan, reviewing for Galatta Plus, 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 RogerEbert.com gave the film 3.5 out of 4 and wrote that "Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam 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."

Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost gave the film 3 out of 5 and wrote "Apart from the music and sound design, the highlight of Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam 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 Onmanorama reviewed the film as post-siesta drama a lofty cinematic experience and wrote "The orchestrated chaos we see in Jallikattu or Churuli 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 Onmanorama wrote In ‘Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam’, Lijo Jose Pellissery must have asked cinematographer Theni Eswar 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.

Box office

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.