‘Mollywood Times’ movie review: A flawed, bloated exposé of the industry’s dark underbelly

A minor act of revolt can be your undoing in the film industry, where power centres are not very tolerant of those who do not fall in line. Vineeth Madhavan (Naslen), the filmmaker protagonist of Mollywood Times, goes the whole hog in his attempt to make his first film without any compromises, a film he wants to be remembered forever. In the process, we see his worldview transform from optimistic to cynical.

Scene after scene seethes with the anger and frustration of someone who experiences his dream slipping away from grasp for no fault of his, so much so that one begins to wonder how much of the events in the film have been drawn from the life of its filmmaker, Abhinav Sunder Nayak. At least, much of the cynicism of his superb debut film, Mukundan Unni Associates, is very much visible here too.

In this world filled with fake smiles, selfish interests and ulterior motives, Vineeth is almost a lonely warrior for his vision, with his passion for the art almost consuming him. Conveniently, the characters are written in a way that there is not a single trustworthy soul around him. Sometimes, Vineeth radiates a mild superiority complex, especially in how the other successful filmmakers are even made to gloat to him of their success despite their mediocrity.

Although the struggles of an aspiring filmmaker in a cutthroat industry make one want to root for Vineeth, he also carries the vibes of Howard Roark, the problematic protagonist of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, in his uncompromising and obsessive nature. If the architect Roark blows up a building because it was against his vision, Vineeth here deletes a film he created. Filmmaking, in his worldview, is an individualistic pursuit, with Vineeth having lines that downplay the efforts of every other crew member other than the writer-director.

Some of the other ideas also do not sit well with the film’s theme, especially the protagonist’s claim that some filmmakers are celebrated despite their mediocre work only because they belong to underprivileged backgrounds — an unfortunate claim to make, especially when only few from such backgrounds make it in cinema.

These missteps almost take the sheen away from the genuinely nice touches in the film — from the protagonist’s childhood fascination with cinema and the portrayals of his ambition to evoke fear in the viewers as an aspiring horror filmmaker, to the many depictions of the ills in the industry, especially the sequence explaining why some producers willingly bankroll flop films to fool the tax authorities. The fictionalisation of insider stories will have quite a few people nodding in approval while leaving a few squirming in their seats.

Abhinav employs voice-overs as extensively as in Mukundan Unni Associates, but here, it only works partly. The editing in quite a few scenes was top-notch, but the filmmaker also being one of the editors means that not much trimming seems to have been done. This is most felt in the latter half, when things get tiresome and repetitive, almost as if we are caught in a loop. A much leaner film with better writing in the final act could have left a more defining impact.

Marketed as a “hate letter to cinema”, Mollywood Times would have worked better as an exposé of the dark underbelly of the film industry if not for the stretched phases that make it a bloated work.

Mollywood Times is currently running in theatres