Movie Review: Celluloid - Poignant Story Poor Script/Direction

I by chance heard, 'Kate Kate' while I was visiting my friend, SK.  He told me that it was from the movie Celluloid that was going to release soon.  The tune stayed in the mind and I'd hum it and that created a desire to watch the movie too.  Sure enough SK reminded that the movie's released and we both went to watch it (SK being a Malayali and my hold on the language is next to nothing).

Celluloid - directed by Kamal, supposedly one of the better directors of Malayalam Cinema - is the story of JC Daniel, the first movie-maker of Malayalam and is based on a book called, 'Nashta Nayaka' (meaning, Hero of Loss or the Hero who Lost).  It attempts to tell Daniel's journey in making his first (and only) movie - a social drama, an unheard of thing during the days of silent cinema where every movie was either a fantasy or a historical or based on mythology - and his life thereafter.  For a long time, JC Daniel (until 2004, as the movie brings out) was not acknowledged as the father of Malayalam Cinema.  It took a long struggle to make this happen.  The travails of a man who's set out on big dream surely are many.  And, there would be many interesting facets to this visionary too.  A tale behind a tale - on why and how he wanted to make cinema - surely would be there? And, how did he cope with the heartbreak of his inability to take his movie to the watchers beyond the first few shows? How did he get his recognition at last and when? There certainly is a heart-rending story in Daniel's life.

JC Daniel made a social-drama (The Lost Child) in 1929 and cast an untouchable girl as the heroine resulting in the movie being boycotted by the caste-and-class-conscious Nair society of Kerala.  Daniel's dream is shattered and he moves on to study dentistry, becomes successful and is again redrawn to movie-making much against the advice and counsel of his doting wife.  He faces complete ruin as he pursues his dream and dies in penury, unacknowledged at the first-ever filmmaker of Malayalam.

Kamal does a great job in recreating the 1920s in the movie - be it the clothes that people wear (except when Mamata is seen sporting some extremely trendy sarees) or the vehicles of the era or even the roads of the time.  The music - just two songs - stays in the mind long after you've left the hall.  So does the last scene of the movie.

But, the movie is a disappointment.  The director fails to recreate the magic of making a movie. The excitement that one must bring out in the scenes or the characters reflecting the history that they're creating is completely amiss. The characters are all one-dimensional.  And, the actors portraying the roles (barring some) are absolutely wooden.  Prithviraj, playing JC Daniel, has just one expression  - eye-brows raised with a lopsided smile - for the entire first half of the movie.  Ditto Mamata Mohandas, who plays his wife, Janet.  But, Chandni, as Rosamma (later Rosy) who plays the heroine in JC Daniel's movie is very good as the Dalit girl who becomes heroine and then vanishes into nothingness.

The story held such promise.  It's a pity that it doesn't deliver.