AMEN is one of the biggest hits in Malayalm cinema in 2013. AMEN aspires to be a magical love story set against the backdrop of the beautiful Kumarankari village which has a colorful and boisterous Syrian Christian culture. The director Lijo Pallisery is obviously inspired by Emir Kusturica's BLACK CAT WHITE CAT and Fellini's AMARCORD.
The script and the performances are so weak that the director has to resort to slapstick in slow motion and beautiful visuals to shore up audience interest. The film is like a collection of every single cliché in Malayalam cinema - the feuding families, cruel priest, star crossed lovers, naughty kappiar and the supportive grandmother. The first 40 minutes of the film is used up in introducing the boisterous, naughty and hard drinking but highly devout villagers of Kumarankari. Some of the characters are just there to get excreta thrown at them or fall off bridges or get chicken curry thrown at them by fiery and defiant Christian women. Some of the comedy scenes seem to have been added only to increase the length of the movie or because the writer did not know what to do with the main plot which is the love story between two individuals that can be fulfilled only if the bumbling guy can pull up his socks and lead his church music band to a victory in a fierce domestic clarinet competition. So you have the usual cringe worthy scenes where the heroine and the hero grin at each other and the hero's sister reprimands them and the heroine and the hero's sister lash out at each other for no obvious reason. Most of the villagers are loud imbeciles and the writer cannot come up with even one witty or biting piece of dialog so every other line is filled with expletives and all of the dialog has to be delivered at the top of the actor's voice almost as if the actors could shout the audience into liking the movie. The whole film is a bunch of beautiful visuals strung together by banalities.
The performances indicate the continued decline in acting standards in Malayalam cinema. None of these new character actors can hold a candle to nedumudi or tilakan or jagathi sreekumar. I have been watching malayalam movies for the last 25 years and as far as acting performances were concerned, it was like travelling in a mercedez benz but nowadays its like going around in a Marathi 800. Fahad Fazil is his usual dull and flat self. Swathi Reddy doesn't do much except smile with her crooked teeth (which is nice to look at) and act defiant. Indrajeet does a decent job as the liberal minded priest. John Paul was mostly convincing as the cruel head priest. But the guy looked like he was hammered most of the time. Everyone else was below average.
Anyway, this is a huge opportunity lost. If the director had paid as much attention to the script as he did with the visuals and the sets, this could have been a very entertaining and magical film.
(3/10)
