Set aside all temptations to speak about small town Angamaly as a character in Bethlehem Kudumba Unit, because even a guitar has a full character arc in Gireesh AD’s effortlessly charming film. The first scene of the film is Ashley (Mamitha Baiju) getting ready to say goodbye to her group of close friends as we hear chatter about her moving to a college in Ernakulam. They click selfies, hug each other all teary eyed and as a farewell gift, her friends gift her a new guitar.
It takes an hour more, but it’s when we see the wallpaper on Ashley’s screen that we’re told about a band named Room 17 and of how she was its lead guitarist. When her new neighbour Justin (Nivin Pauly) identifies the band that features on this wallpaper, it immediately brings Ashley closer to Justin, someone she thinks off as the only person around her who’s even heard of that band.
Several scenes later, it’s when a string from the same guitar breaks that she feels like calling Justin, who promptly arrives at her doorstep with a solution and new string m. Even when this meeting goes from gentle to utterly chaotic, the film chooses to cut to visuals of Ashley playing the guitar as the background score to all the madness on screen. Now it’s easy for a writer to jot down something as generic as calling this film “a love story in which music brings two very different people together”. But the difference Gireesh AD makes with his direction is making you feel the music that has brought them closer, without making you realise what hit you.
You cannot call this anything but superior artistry. It’s like his decision to show you a bag full of empty alcohol bottles when he first shows you Ashley’s old house. Not only does it cement the info that she’s shifting away, but it also underlines her father’s issue with alcohol and the inherent fear shared by both Ashley and her mother. Given the lightness of the film, you feel the speak of alcohol is just fun and games but as you dig deeper, there’s always the undercurrent of worry that makes Ashley so much wiser than her age. In fact, one may even surmise that her initial attraction towards a very reliable and the much older Justin could be a result of having seen a weak father at home.
None of these intensely serious matters need any highlighting in Gireesh AD’s cinema. Just like how we learn everything we need to about Justin’s past with just one dialogue and a scene in the cemetery, there’s a narrative softness that’s obsessed with making you feel, rather than telling you about it.
It’s perhaps the way he stages these scenes that make the difference. Take the case of Ashley putting on the seat belt when she enters Justin’s car after a fight. It’s a tiny detail you feel has been inserted just for authenticity. But as the anger melts away, leading to an entirely charming confession of love, it’s the release of the seat belt that gives it the epicness of a major cinematic event.
There’s no end to how far these little touches go. Even if you miss out on one, you know in your heart that you will discover something new in future viewings, something that’s become inevitable with Gireesh’s films.
And yet what makes it all tick is the unending charm of Nivin and Mamitha. Mamitha is unrecognisable compared to her role as Maddy in Vishwanath And Sons. In that, she felt the need to underline every line, every expression with an unnecessary amount of everything to make the audience understand what she’s feeling. But in this, the lines that matter most are often left unsaid and it’s her expressions that make you do all thinking.
The same goes in scenes between her and Nivin. Just when you notice the awkwardness of their age gap, they jump at us with their self awareness. Scenes in which Nivin behaves as though he’s embarrassed of the age gap, makes for the film's most precious moments. The effect of their love story is only doubled by Nivin’s minimal performance. In one scene, after an hour of seeing him in restraint, you feel a jolt of energy when you see him behaving unduly shy. We may have seen Nivin in this zone before, but he gives us a feeling that we’re seeing a side to him that’s never been explored before.
All of this is tied up craftily into a world we just don’t feel like exiting. It may meander a tad bit towards the end, and you might even feel like the conflict isn’t big enough, an issue a lot of us feel with Gireesh’s third acts. But usually when you stare at your watch mid-show, you’re waiting to see how long before the film is over. But in Gireesh's case, we look with worry, realising how quickly time’s passing by. Given the simplicity with which he makes his films, it’s often easy to call him another commercial movie director. But given what he’s done here, yet again, maybe it’s time to call him our friendliest, neighbourhood auteur.