And it's incomprehensible why Mammootty's performance here wasn't nominated. I hear only Paleri and Pazhassi were contenders.
Forget Pazhassi, one of the three characters in Paleri is vintage Mammootty. But Paleri is comfortably short of complicated role-playing in Kutty Srank. The character's life as filtered through different perspectives is given subtle hues by his acting (not just by the subtle changes in his looks. Have to appreciate the sets too. I'm amazed how Shaji gets the budget for the locations, props, etc without even a major release ?!), in reflection of the respective narrator's POV (not to be confused with POV shots in formal terms. Using it a bit liberally. Which you will understand when you watch the film). To hold the different fragments of Kutty as realized by the three women (and for brief glimpses in between, the director breaks the elliptical pattern and actually shows Kutty's screnes on his own.) together is a noteworthy achievement. There's also a fable-like POV of another writer, female again, who at different stages exposits the two-way kinship between the one who is writing and one who is being written about. At a lot of stages, we cut to objective POV (in narrative sense) as I say before. And there are lot of directorial touches to visually express the state of mind. Especially the first stages centering around Padmapriya seemed to be a lot more showy and loud, and yet a bit arcane. And all of this seemed to connect a bit to the opening quote from Upanishads on dreams/waking-up.
Not that any of this would matter. For there's Ramesh Sippy any way. :hammer:
