Shaiju Khalid's camera work makes its mark in the opening shot as it pans down to the football ground where Franky is playing with his friends. That evening as the kids in the hostel go to sleep, we learn of Franky's reluctance to take his friends home.
We know why when we get introduced to what I think is a character in the movie - the house. Frankys' revulsion as he gets back to his house which has apparently been neglected while he was away shows as he finds a cigarette butt and then washes the house down. He prepares a meal for people we slowly get introduced to - his brothers, 3 of them. The relationship between the brothers remain a little hazy till the second half of the movie. Whatever be the relationship, we know that their life is pathetic and their house is the "worst in the panchayat". While Saji and Bobby don't seem to share any special equation with Franky, Boney does.
They don't seem to have anything going for them-unemployed with no real means to a good life. They are so despondent,that they don't even seem to aspire for a better quality of life, unlike the youngest one who has a better chance at a better life having a scholarship to see him through school. This even incites a sense of jealousy in Bobby and Saji.
After we get to know this band of brothers and thier depressing house, we see the self proclaimed " Raymond, the complete man". He takes really good care of his moustache that is his pride. His sign of masculinity.Fahad Fahsil is sinister as Shammy and his deliberate attempts to be polite adds to it. Sushin's background score adds to the change in Fahad's expression as it changes from a polite to quietly threatening. With Fahad's character, we see an entitled patriarch who finds it perfectly alright to control the women in the family and insist on hearing their secrets and all the while being the "provider". Before we see Shammy, we are introduced to another character who is probably the least sketched out - the barber. His role seems to be that of the one character who reinfoces Shammy's character.
We know why when we get introduced to what I think is a character in the movie - the house. Frankys' revulsion as he gets back to his house which has apparently been neglected while he was away shows as he finds a cigarette butt and then washes the house down. He prepares a meal for people we slowly get introduced to - his brothers, 3 of them. The relationship between the brothers remain a little hazy till the second half of the movie. Whatever be the relationship, we know that their life is pathetic and their house is the "worst in the panchayat". While Saji and Bobby don't seem to share any special equation with Franky, Boney does.
They don't seem to have anything going for them-unemployed with no real means to a good life. They are so despondent,that they don't even seem to aspire for a better quality of life, unlike the youngest one who has a better chance at a better life having a scholarship to see him through school. This even incites a sense of jealousy in Bobby and Saji.
After we get to know this band of brothers and thier depressing house, we see the self proclaimed " Raymond, the complete man". He takes really good care of his moustache that is his pride. His sign of masculinity.Fahad Fahsil is sinister as Shammy and his deliberate attempts to be polite adds to it. Sushin's background score adds to the change in Fahad's expression as it changes from a polite to quietly threatening. With Fahad's character, we see an entitled patriarch who finds it perfectly alright to control the women in the family and insist on hearing their secrets and all the while being the "provider". Before we see Shammy, we are introduced to another character who is probably the least sketched out - the barber. His role seems to be that of the one character who reinfoces Shammy's character.
As the movie takes us through the characters and their lives, it seems to be making a contradiction between men as they are and as they appear to be - specially in relation to women.
We aee beautiful women characters in the movie - each one of them well etched and effectively potrayed. None of them are weak. Shammy's mother in law from an earlier generation carries some of the baggage of having lived in a patriarchy after having lost her husband early and having to bring up two girls, the eldest of whom is the 'complete man'. Apearing suave and neat, he makes the safety of the women in the house a burden on his shoulders. The burden he likes to espouse whenever he gets a chance. He directs how they eat and what they watch. He literally controls the women and when they put up some resistance to his male ego, he uses muscle power and ruthlessly ties them up. He literally ties them up showing how a man can and does use his physical power to tie a woman's liberties.
Our complete man seems the perferxt kind who goes to work and returns home. He doesn't smoke or drink or galavant. As opposed to this one complete man, the movie has other imperfect ones. They have no jobs, aren't educated and appears to be the smoking drinking kind that loiter around doing nothing. They can't even seem to be civil with each other getting at each others throats when they can. Saji's ego is hurt and in a twist of fate, as he tries to end his life, he ends up killing someone who he had taken under wings and nurtured. This man cries. He accepts he has mental issues. He smokes. He drinks. He breaks down. And then he stands. He gathers strength and picks up the pieces many of which he broke himself. He pulls himself together and also takes the woman whose husband died trying to save him, home.
And while this happens, his two younger brothers find their women too. Baby, who is in love with Bobby stood up to the complete man when he tried to dictate terms of her life. And this called upon the imperfect men who just found out that they cared for each other to bond and fight the idea of perfection. They fight him ingeniously and wrap him in a fishing net. They liberate the women he was so vaingloriously trying to protect.
The movie ends with the men and the women they care for being happy. No one judging another. The idea of the perfect man broken down and laid straight.The perfect man has nothing to do with that perfect moustache.
