Ranjith once again came up with the narrative he tested in Palerimanikyam , this time for his introspection on KTN Kottoor. A film that demands careful depiction of time and space and a much more from its actors.
First thing that comes to my mind while thinking about this film is its over used soundtrack that felt loud and disturbing. The subdued identity of characters in the present was a big letdown in a film that switched between two different eras. I must admit his guts for the close ups but the period characters at least for some scenes towards the end ended up in melodrama that was too dingy for a film like this. Amidst these narrative flaws I saw a filmmaker who once wrote dialogues for supernatural heroes ,struggling to depict a failed man's life that breaks the norms of conventional cinema .
The self destructive nature of the letter 'I' in comparison with the organizational 'we' that he describes before slipping into his anarchic life and the iconoclastic intercut shots where he see his mother and other women he encountered in place of mate while having a sexual intercourse with his blind wife are the manifestations of a liberal soul trapped in between the dark shades of inherited class burden and the modernity he achieved through his interactions with a bigger world. Relevance of kottoor's life in the age of a blogger who writes in that literary double lies in the lessons of a disappeared man's history that teaches the fatalities of dualism in kottoor- both man and space and how that space affects his personal life.
A film that could have been a gem despite its cinematic flaws including its cuts.
