In a scene from Tiyaan where Indrajith and Murali Gopi confront each other, Murali Gopi first utters 3-4 words. Then Gopi Sunder puts an annoyingly noisy BGM. The camera shows the faces of both the actors alternately. Then Murali Gopy utters his next 3-4 words. This goes on for several minutes. In another scene, Indrajith is having his morning prayers near a lakeside. The camera zooms in, out, left and right and shows all the surroundings. It then goes to sky, takes an aerial shot and comes back . Gopi Sunder’s bgm keeps playing loudly all the while. This again takes away few minutes.
This sums up the problem with Tiyaan. It not only has an insipid story to tell , it further tests our patience with its extremely slow paced narration. We have two wonderful movies in Hindi, Oh My God and PK, which handled the theme of fraudulent God-men in a brilliantly satirical manner. So it comes as a surprise that Murali Gopi takes a similar theme but tells it in a fashion that reminds of movies from 70s or 80s.
This is actually an year where more and more Malayalam movies have followed a refreshingly realistic route. But here Murali Gopi writes such complex and philosophical dialogues for all his characters that no common man would ever use in their real life. In the first half, there are at least some scenes where relevant issues are touched upon – One where even the bad guys hesitate to touch or hurt a Brahman . Second where a normal man is punished for eating beef while a business tycoon is shown eating beef inside an ashram. But the second half goes bizarrely wrong with unexpected fantasy elements popping up in the story.
Indrajith shines in a couple of scenes but mostly has a single expression throughout. He is a better actor than that ! Murali Gopi is mostly loud. Prithviraj has a very poor character to play that you wonder what made him sign this movie in first place. He has absolutely nothing to do in the first half than appearing in shots where he just simply sits on the rocks of a hill. His flashback sequence in the second half is among the worst segments in the movie.
Indrajith’s daughter, who was in the news for making debut in this movie, just has to smile in one or two scenes – That’s it ! No clue why Padmapriya agreed to do this movie or what was the need for Paris Laxmi’s character .Gopi Sunder has created some of the most soothing BGM in Malayalam in recent years . But the background score in this movie is shockingly deafening. The one that is used for Remakant (Murali Gopi) is honestly a pain to ears.
Satheesh Kurup’s camera work is perhaps the only good thing about Tiyaan but he deserved better than just being forced to take beautiful shots when the story doesn’t tell anything. The movie’s director Jiyen Krishnakumar has clearly no tricks under his sleeve to make this story work.
In a scene from second half, Indrajith has come to the hills to meet Prithviraj and express his plight. Prithviraj keeps on mouthing so many philosophical quotes one after another. At the end of it, Indrajith had a face which pretty much explained that he did not have a clue on what he just heard. That clueless face is what we have when we leave theaters too.
Tiyaan is shockingly disappointing.
