'Sarkeet' Movie Review: Asif Ali Stars in Affecting Drama About Two Lost Boys And Their Boyhood

Director: Thamar KV

Writer: Thamar KV

Cast: Asif Ali, Divya Prabha, Ramya Suresh, Deepak Parambol, Orhan

Language: Malayalam

Release: Theatrical

If there’s one feeling that binds all the central characters of Thamar KV’s Sarkeet, it’s helplessness. In their efforts to make the most of the Malayali dream of making it big in the Middle East, we find a group of people who are just one bad day away from falling and breaking apart. You sense this helplessness the most with Balu (Deepak Parambol) and his wife Steffi (Divya Prabha), who are trying to have one normal day with their son Jappu (Orhan). 

He has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and the early portions of the film are built over montages that ease you into realising just how impossible it is to live with Jappu. Sarkeet even opens with Jappu knocking over a birthday cake at a friend’s birthday party. You notice how the wife doesn’t get a second to socialise before it’s time to look after Jappu again. Even when Jappu knocks over the cake, you’re amused that there’s no explosive reaction from either parent; their expressions suggest that they’ve surrendered to their circumstances years ago, unable to muster the energy it takes to scold him yet again.  

This family of three lives in one of the smaller towns of the UAE, and it’s evident that both Balu and Steffi must work to keep their family afloat. Theirs was also a marriage that took place against their parents’ wishes, further distancing anyone who may have helped take care of Jappu. So, when Balu and Steffi are forced to go to work by locking Jappu in his bedroom, we’re not judging them for the negligence. We’re only empathising with their helplessness.

Sarkeet takes it time to establish the inherent nature of this family and the tiny moments of joy they steal from what’s otherwise months of desperation. Into this mess enters Ameer (Asif Ali), an even more desperate migrant trying to find a job in the UAE. Unlike the sub-plot of Jappu and his family, Ameer’s is a story we’ve seen before in the dozens of other films set in the Middle East. But even his familiar story is told to us through a series of powerful scenes. In one, Ameer’s roommates escort him out of their dormitory, but not just because he hasn’t paid the rent; they do this because they feel he’s also stolen their money.

It’s a heartbreaking sequence, one in which we see how low Ameer has fallen in his own eyes. But given where his story meets Jappu’s, this scene also works like a clever bit of foreshadowing. And later, when we witness the unlikely friendship developing between the two, what we feel is warmth and the joy of witnessing two lost people trying to find one another. 

From a timeline that gives us the routines of both Ameer and Jappu’s family, the film then switches mood to tell you the events that unfold across one night. This is where the titular ‘Sarkeet’ (trip) comes into play, and we get a narrative that aspires for the wholesome goodness of a sweet Iranian film. Some of these moments, like the way in which Ameer builds a mini movie theatre to entertain Jappu, hit you right in the feels, as does a lovely stretch in which Ameer tries to find Jappu fresh clothes after a “bathroom accident.” 

But it’s also in these portions that you wish Thamar had written a few more drafts. Instead of the smoothness in the narration we got in the film’s first half, we feel a certain abruptness in the way it moves from one dramatic moment to the next. Just as abrupt is the way Ameer’s father gets reintroduced, as though he casually walked straight into the screenplay. From a distance, you get what the film’s trying to say about Ameer and the father figure he has longed for throughout his life. But such profound ideas deserve to be whispered rather than shouted. 

Still, despite these underwhelming and predictable turns, you never doubt the inherent goodness with which the film says what it wants to. Through all the events that take place in one night, you’re constantly reminded of how everyone in Sarkeet is simply trying to do the best they can despite the challenges stacked against them.

Asif Ali does his best as well to keep us involved and invested in their journey, even in moments when we feel they’re nervously close to the edge. But it’s eventually a film that belongs to young Orhan (he plays Jappu), the misunderstood darling who deserved a little more kindness and a lot more attention. Despite their tiny detours, we’re glad to have joined both Jappu and Ameer in their walk to remember.