Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (Spoiler alert!!!)
This is a movie of love borne out of necessity, gratitude and regret, between two helpless souls caught in highly volatile circumstances. One of the most sensitive and sensible movies of our times, this movie is a masterpiece sculpted from normal human emotions caught in the lathe of violence. The movie instead of just being a classless take on the gore that goes on in the name of religion in our country, gently prods the minds of people into starting to think about what is and what isn’t important during times of turmoil. To me this was a phenomenal effort and has come out as the best movie of its genre to be produced in India. I was particularly impressed by this movie because while we watched it with an intent to smugly malign the movie, every one of our cribs including the overly ‘South Indian’ South Indian name of Santanam were addressed and resolved.
My favorite character in this movie was of course Meenakshi Iyer, played by an ultra intelligent Konkona. She has done intense research for the role, and succeeds in playing an extremely self righteous and conservative married woman with carefully concealed passions and fails only in the pronunciation of Santanam. It was startling that she uses physics terms while narrating what happened in the forest house (screaming ‘blood spurted out of the wound’ while she was in the throes of shock). Her mood changes in the movie were extremely apparent as any South Indian girl’s thought process, and that contrasted sharply with the composure of Rahul Bose’s Raj Choudhry character.
Rahul Bose plays the suave photographer who is rudely shocked at the open hostility of an educated person towards someone from another religion and then warms up when he realizes that the turmoil inside Meenakshi is not too different from what is happening in the turbulent surrounding. She is trying to accept and handle the fact that she is being uncontrollably attracted towards this guy just as Hindus and Muslims have a hard time accepting each other into their folds because of preconceived notions and belief structures. As one learned person put it, building a belief structure around a concept is perhaps the most idiotic thing that modern man does. It is easier to change an idea than it is to change a belief.
The narration of the movie during the first half is kept very taut with intelligent dialogues interspersed between the situations. Every artist in the movie seems to suit his character to the T and has played it very sensitively, be it the frightened Jew who exposes the Muslim couple to keep his skin (HeHe) or the Police officer who takes pity on the stranded couple. The rest of the cast play themselves in the movie.
The second half of the movie takes a predictable turn with Meenakshi’s hidden yearning for excitement molding itself into a childish infatuation for the life of Raj. She tries very hard to ignore the feeling but to no avail. Every single thing he says or does increases her yearning as she compares her present life with what she could have had. The narration becomes slightly slack during the second half but the effect of the movie is never lost. Overall the movie is a tastefully conceived love story that does not make you hate yourself for having watched the mush on screen. I would recommend this enthusiastically to friends and enemies.