Tom Thomas has never ceased to amaze me and this time his new Malayalam Short movie seems ambitious. It has got a good blend of suspese, thriller, humour and Tom has played an anchor role in this short film. The film opens to the scene where Mathukutty, a key ingredient in a drama crew wakes up following a dream. His roomie Jojo, also a part of his drama crew expresses his displeasure because of Mathukutty’s lackadaisical attitude. He is never serious most of the time when Jojo talks about the drama. Cyriac and Gouri, couples, also a part of this drama crew had to be trained vigorously by Jojo as they were new. Jojo tries his best to assemble his crew and get the most of them. But aforementioned Mathukutty’s carelessness annoys Jojo to some extent but he takes it easily. Ammu is the little daughter of Cyriac and Gouri. All hell breaks loose when Ammu calls for Papa one day and shows her doll to him. One leg of the doll called as ‘Kashmiri Doll’ is torn. Doting Papa Cyriac asks his beloved daughter to say the truth if it was her who did it deliberately to make fun of mom and dad. But she blatantly refuses. Mathukutty also present at that time starts investigating the matter like an Agent. According to Mathukutty, Kashmiri dolls are signs of bad omen! It was Ammu’s uncle Tony who once brought the Kashmiri dolls from a local market at a discount of buy 2 get 2 free. One after the another , the dolls get severed leading to utter confusion at home. Seena, who is Cyriac’s younger sister and also Tony’s sibling plays an important role in this short film. These ancillary characters have helped in building the suspense element. Mathukutty, played by Tom Thomas does a Dr. Saravana of Chandramukhi or rather does a Sherlock Holmes, in order to unviel the hidden mystery. All eyes roll around Seena, Tony, Gouri, Cyriac and even Jojo on who was the culprit after Mathukutty shares his findings with his crew. He winds up his investigation by exposing the culprits who were also a part of that very family. The movie ends with the characters introspecting over their mistakes. Pin pointing and blame game comes into picture too! But later the cuprits realize their mistakes. Tom has done an incredible job as a movie maker. I some how fail to understand the logic behind Kashmiri Dolls being a bad omen. And then everyone starts talking about knowing something about Kashmiri dolls. That didn’t crack me up! The suspense could have been better especially at the scene where Mathukutty plans to reveal his investigation findings. The actors could have shown a little bit of seriousness especially in that scene as a viewer I could very well realize the importance of that scene. I was a bit disappointed here. The actors had done justice to their roles. They performed it well especially Cyriac seemed to me like a professional actor. There is a thin line between amateur acting and mature acting. Even Jojo played by Sreyas Narayan’s acting seemed natural to me. Tom’s earlier short film Password was theme wise natural and execution wise dramatic. But the brain behind Kashmiri dolls states that this film was theme wise dramatic and execution wise natural. No doubt the theme is fresh and new, but I expected a little more after watching his previous film PASSWORD!
In a casual tete-a-tete with Tom on Whatsapp, he revealed some insights about the team that worked in Kashmiri Dolls. It seemed that most of the actors in this film were new and Tom had a great opportunity to train and guide them. Isn’t that amazing to be a mentor to the actors?
I would still give a 3 star rating to the Kashmiri Dolls. 3 refers to ‘Interesting and could have been better’
Watch this or the Dolls will come in your dreams to haunt you 😉
Signing off,
Ste
Watch the movie here. Just in case if you are a non Malayali like me then you may like to turn on the English subtitles for the same. It’s available in this video!
A Quality Analyst by day and a dynamic blogger by night, Ste is an out-of-the-Box thinker whose thinking cap is never on the resting mode. The real feather on his thinking cap is his creativity which you can see in all his works, be it short stories, poems or sketches. He is a very big fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Most of his short stories are inspired from real life and things that fascinates him. His blog “The Solitary Writer” is a central repository of his entire creative spear.” . Did you like this post? Get The Solitary Writers updates via Facebook or Twitter, better yet, subscribe to it via RSS Feed. It’s easy, and free!Also you can discuss in the Forum. Comments are just another way to let me know how you feel.Don’t forget to comment.
