FRIDAY

                                          FRIDAY MALAYALAM MOVIE REVIEW

     

          Friday is a movie that came out to form a link in the chain of new generation movies in Malayalam. It represented a great theme and idea. But this theme and idea couldn’t be well supported by its script.

          Since ‘Friday’ being only the first movie from its director ‘Lijin Jose’, its failure in living up to the expectations could only be seen as a first timer’s starting trouble. Lijin Jose has done well in his short film ‘Conditions Apply’, but ‘Friday’, as a feature film couldn’t be a fully satisfying venture.

          The movie came out as a new generation venture. But it couldn’t be fully called so. There were instances that made it feel like one, but the screenplay was very weak in establishing the new generation trend.

          The initial phase of building up of the story was too lagging and dragging, as was the end. ‘Najeem Koya’, couldn’t make his screenplay strong enough to make the audience feel the story and the intensity of the situations. There was a kind of dryness in the whole script and the character sketches. It even included unwanted characters. Like a pregnant beggar roaming around and giving birth to her second child and then again walking around with her two children. Apparently, this character never forms a link in any part of the story.

The story was moving forward with great drag and so even the songs couldn’t generate much interest in the movie. The movie represented the great theme of the incidents occurring during a single day around a few people in a town. So, there were a great lot of dramas expected from it. The main failure of the movie was in not realizing the expectation of huge drama from the theme it represented.

Like in all his ventures, ‘Fahad Fazil’ has done absolutely well in ‘Friday’. Only the scenes with him showed the only traces of the new trend. Well, it seems that the moviemakers now think that including Fahad, pregnancy and delivery scenes, and making the whole story roll around within a day would make a new generation hit. But they fail to realize that it needs to be supported with a strong screenplay.

With the first movie from Lijin Jose being an above average venture, the hopes for better movies from him are still on.

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

          Christopher Nolan is one of the most brilliant and successful filmmakers in the world. Every movie from him is always eagerly awaited. They are a class apart due to their excellent scripting. First among his feature films is ‘Following (1997)’ and the latest being ‘The dark knight rises (2012)’.

Although ‘Following’ was the first movie from Nolan, he gained a notable position among the brilliant filmmakers through his second movie Memento (2000). Chris Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan co-wrote the movie based on the short story ’Memento mori’ (written by Jonathan). Since then, every Nolan movie came with great expectations and apparently none of them break it.

‘Insomnia’ (2002) was the next in the Nolan movie list. It did reflect all aspects of a typical Nolan movie, but couldn’t make much commercial success or public attention. A break to this fate was brought about by the first Nolan movie in ‘Batman series’ (i.e., Batman Begins (2005)). Since then Nolan movies were inevitable from commercial successes lists.

‘The prestige’ featured Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Hugh Jackman in the lead roles. All Nolan movies succeeding ‘The prestige’ casted Michael Caine and Christian Bale (Bale was not casted in Inception though). Nolan has a peculiarity of casting actors from a Nolan movie to the next. Michael Caine and Christian Bale serve the best example while Marion Cotillard, Joseph-Gordon Levitt and Tom Hardy had been casted in ‘Inception’ as well as ‘The dark knight rises’. Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman were repeatedly casted in all Batman movies by Nolan.

Another sound peculiarity of Nolan scripts is that they move forward with scenes representing the main characters in different instances of time or levels in their life. Different situations encountered by the characters are represented through these scenes and are played in parallel with the total flow of the story. Nolan thus, represents a highly intellectual and psychological way of story telling.

All Nolan movies have highly metered and emotionally touching dialogues. They have a high-end effect in the story as well as the audience. In other words, Nolan writes highly influential dialogues for his characters.

Nolan movies feature characters not interested in materialistic earnings like money. They are visualized as least bothered about it or with an interest to play hard mind games on others with it. Apparently, even the anti-heroes of Nolan movies are least bothered about money.

Now, it’s a big wait for ‘The man of steel’ from Nolan with Superman as its central character. The expectations are up high from the man who made the ‘Batman series’ great and success for the first time.