Alternate Movies

This is yet another beautiful malayalam movie. Like i said in gehrayee.Many of the indian movies that dealt with paranormal topics in india were pretty much horror movies.Gehrayee was one movie that was very different and another movie that comes to our mind is Lekin,a movie that came 2 years before manichithra thazhu. Both Lekin and gehrayee dealt the story in a non scientific way, by making the supernatural things as part of the story rather then looking at them from a scientific view. Manichithra thazhu is one unique movie that weaved a story with the rural beliefs, fears and tries to explain the story from a scientific point of view.




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Nakul(suresh gopi) and ganga(shobana) are a couple who come to spend some time in their home town in kerala. Nakul decides to live in his old house which is supposed to be haunted by a devil. He does not head to his uncle's(Nedumudi venu) advice of not residing in an haunted house. His uncle advices them not to open the door, that is locked and sealed with sacred threads. But the curious ganga opens the door and strange things start happening in the house. Everybody suspect sridevi(Vinaya Prasad) his uncles' daughter.Sunny joseph(Mohanlal) a psychologists and friend of nakul is asked to solve the problem.how he solves them is the rest of the movie.
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This is a movie which encompasses some of the best features of a malayalam film industry. They make some of the interesting movies that get lost within the regional limits. The superstar of the kerala film industry mohanlal, comes only in the middle of the movie. Almost at the interval, this is just unimaginable in any other south indian or for that matter in indian movie. Adding to that fact, the movie has more acting scope for the female character than the male character, which any big star would think twice to accept. But mohanlal did all that.The movie is clean with no unnecessary masala addition and the film sticks to the story. Realistic performances and interesting screenplay, another aspect of the malaylam film industry is also in display in this movie.

This is a strong story based movie, with lot of characters. The movie starts slowly in a typical malayalam movie fashion, after introducing the various characters and hooks us with the strange incidents at the house and comes to a nice climax.



Credits:

Mohanlal .... Dr. Sunny Joseph
Suresh Gopi .... Nakulan
Sobhana .... Ganga
Vinaya Prasad .... Sridevi
Nedumudi Venu .... Thampi



The movie has sterling performance by shobana. This beautiful bharathanatiyum dancer, niece of the famous padmini, ragini,lalitha pair was at her best in this movie.As i said before the acting scope for the hero is less in the movie and mohanlal has given a nice performance as needed by the character.

Mohanlal and suresh gopi

Another person to mention is Fazil.He is a director who has given many hits in both malaylam and tamil. His strength is his brilliant screenplay and manichithra thazhu is a beautiful example for that.

Music:
Music is by MG Radha Krishnan, who has done a wonderful job with the BGM'S.Apart from the regular malayalam songs.There is one whole tamil song in the movie.Another aspect of malayalam cinema, its openness towards other languages.Listen
to the songs here.

watch the "oru Murai" song here.

Awards:
shobana

Shobana was awarded the first of her two National award for best actress in 1993 for her performance in this movie.

Trivia:
The movie was remade into hits films in all the south indian languages.All the versions except the malaylam one was totally messed with lot of masala elements.None of the other versions bettered the original.

Links:
shobana profile
shobana interview

*The Manichithra thazhu DVD might not have subtitles. check it out before you buy/rent it.