Aanandam: a light-hearted, ‘college days’ drama

October 22, 2016 03:46 pm | Updated December 02, 2016 11:00 am IST

Campus movies, unless when made by veteran filmmakers who are too old to catch the zeitgeist, have been markers of the way the campuses have evolved at that particular point in time. Every decade has had such markers, from the intense, poetry-filled romance of ‘Ulkkadal’ and the other politically charged campus movies of the 1970s and 80s and traversing through the creeping in of political disillusionment of the 1990s, we have reached the depoliticized zones of ‘Premam’ and now ‘Aanandam’, where we are told to cherish the little happy moments, the beautiful sunrises and the beachside parties.

In ‘Aanandam’, the debut directorial of Ganesh Raj, goes back to the ‘picnic’ genre of Malayalam movies, a pre-cursor to the travel movies of today. We are at a private engineering college somewhere in Kerala, where the students are excitedly planning their industrial visit, a euphemism for a pleasure trip with a namesake factory visit thrown in. They have four days and two places to visit – Hampi and Goa.

After being crisply edited to 2 hours, we have half-an-hour exactly divided for each of the four days, over which the internal bonding and romances within a group of seven play out before us. There is no story, nor a plot here to speak of, rather it progresses over a series of small incidents during the trip. Even the conflict in the end does not appear very serious, which quite goes with the light-hearted treatment.

Ganesh probably drew his inspiration from one of Richard Linklater’s early films ‘Dazed and Confused’, in which we follow a group of Texas teenagers during their last day of school in 1976. But of course, Linklater’s mastery of dialogue writing cannot be matched, which is where ‘Anandam’ lacks a bit too. The influence of his mentor Vineeth Sreenivasan, who has produced the movie, is visible, in the overdose of syrupiness and pleasing visuals, which forces us to look away from the lack of a substantial core. The performances of the whole crowd of debutants kept the tempo going.

And going by how the predominantly young college crowd in the theatre who were rapturously celebrating some of the sequences, the filmmaker seems to have served them what strikes a chord with them. Whether it has anything to be celebrated, the same crowd will probably introspect in the years to come.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.