A nonetheless from Ariyippu.(courtesy: YouTube)

Cast: Kunchacko Boban, Faisal Malik, Danish Husain, Kannan Arunachalam, Sidharth Bhardwaj, Lovleen Mishra and Divya Prabha

Director: Mahesh Narayanan

Rating: Four stars (out of 5)

Mahesh Narayanan’s fourth directorial enterprise, Ariyippu(Declaration), a Malayalam movie with a liberal smattering of Hindi, opens with a video on a cell phone. The face within the recorded footage – that of a girl worker of a medical gloves manufacturing unit close to Delhi – is hidden behind a surgical masks. Uncovering the id of this girl is the focus of a plot centred on a migrant couple positioned underneath extreme duress by an unlucky flip of occasions.

This prelude to the story factors to 2 details. The apparent one is that Covid-19 continues to be raging and components of the world are nonetheless underneath partial lockdowns. The not so apparent one is what the masks, actual and figurative, conceal. Ariyippu, which has an array of characters whose masks disguise the reality that lie buried of their souls, lets the opacities and ambiguities linger till the very finish.

Ariyippu, competing for the Suvarna Chakoram on the twenty seventh International Film Festival of Kerala, is now streaming on Netflix. It is a story of an ethical disaster and its penalties on a Malayali couple who work within the medical gloves manufacturing unit that serves because the movie’s principal setting.

The man, Hareesh (Kunchacko Boban, who can be a producer of the movie together with Shebin Backer and Mahesh Narayanan), does evening shifts at Neelam Rubber Factory, the place his spouse Reshmi (Divyaprabha), too, works. They hope to be in Delhi quickly. They have utilized for visas for jobs overseas. The pandemic intervenes and scuttles their plans.

To make issues worse, an previous video surfaces and circulates rapidly among the many staff of the manufacturing unit. It places Hareesh and Reshmi’s jobs and marriage on the road. They file a police grievance on the danger of overturning many apple carts, together with their very own.

Tension and intrigue abound in Ariyippu as a can of worms is opened. The unsuspecting couple tries to wriggle out of the tight spot that they’re in. As they dig deeper into the thriller of the video, the extra filth and misery they unearth.

Narayanan builds up the story one layer at a time, detailing the causes and fallouts of Reshmi and Hareesh’s troubles. With their jobs underneath a cloud, recriminations multiply between the 2. Cornered and assailed by confusion, Hareesh resorts to determined steps solely to irritate issues for himself and his spouse.

Neither speaks sufficient Hindi to have the ability to make their emotions clear to people who run the manufacturing unit. Being migrants grappling with a critical language barrier is definitely the least of their issues. The mess attributable to the emergence of the video is infinitely extra irksome. It threatens to stymie their plans for good.

The manufacturing unit has a pair Malayalam-speaking senior staff, together with the avuncular Suresh (Kannan Arunachalam), who double up as their interpreters and sounding boards when the necessity arises, however so intractable is the issue that it triggers nervousness and impulsive acts.

The masks that individuals put on not solely conceal faces, but in addition disguise the realities of a office the place a lot is amiss. Supervisor Smita (Lovleen Mishra) strives to uncover actions that look like at odds with the manufacturing unit’s high quality management procedures.

As the story unfolds, Ariyippu brings to mild the yawning hole between what’s seen and what lies beneath the floor. Informed with disarming simplicity, Narayanan’s screenplay can be marked by psychological depth, which aids in sustaining viewers curiosity within the plight of the couple.

Besides extracting unwaveringly strong performances from Kunchacko Boban and Divyaprabha, Narayanan makes use of actors like Danish Husain, Faisal Malik, Saifudheen and Sidharth Bhardwaj (enjoying a cop) in impactful supporting roles. Lovleen Mishra fleshes out her half with out having to overstretch herself.

The technicians at Narayanan’s disposal are all their greatest in a movie that permits them the scope to display their craft with out taking recourse to self-conscious strategies. The technical and visible vim and vigour of Narayanan’s Take Off, C U Soon and Malik are changed right here with craftsmanship of a much less flashy however no much less efficient form.

Among the principal technicians is, after all, the director himself performing enhancing duties with Rahul Radhakrishnan. The chopping offers Ariyippu a way of tempo and a pulsating rhythm even when what is occurring on the display tilts in the direction of the minimalistic.

Cinematographer Sanu John Varughese lights and shoots each the interiors and the exterior settings with an eye fixed on what is especially productive in highlighting the morally dodgy, emotionally stifling atmosphere. The roar of the manufacturing unit machines, the wails of the manufacturing unit siren, and different variegated ambient sounds intensify the visible and aural atmospherics.

Thanks to an strategy that rests extra on the inconspicuous than on the obtrusive, the backdrop – the badlands of Delhi NCR – is not only a handy backdrop. It has a germane function – displaying the viewers the core of the shadowy environs that breed sleaze and skulduggery on one hand and despair and agony on the opposite.

Ariyippu is an understated however telling gem from a director on the prime of his sport. An absolute should watch.