Muthalaq

Story: Muthalaq is the story of Musthafa, a rich and generous socialite his marriages and talaqs. How he loses his money, status, and the grounds of each talaq form the plotline

Review: Written and directed by Vijayakumar KG, Muthalaq is a logically disjoint and heavily melodramatic narrative that blatantly sentimentalizes ‘triple talaq’. The film has a mostly unfamiliar cast, like Varghese Moyalan and Rasheed Ponnani. Most of the actors are from theatre background, and are not over the ‘drama hangover’ yet. Neena Kurup and Geetha Vijayan are the few familiar faces with previous movie experience in the cast. But even their experiences have scarcely helped them in this film. The songs and the background score seem archaic and are distracting to say the least. The low budget locales, dimly lit frames and the breathy dialogue delivery all make you wish you had a fast forward button in the theatre.

The film opens with a song sequence in Varanasi as an aged, desolate man takes part in his ablutions according to Hindu rites. Soon, it shifts to an ashram where Amina comes seeking something/someone. There on, Amina a Christian orphan, raised as a Muslim by a single woman, narrates the story about her earning her living as a rag-picker. But, Muthalaq is the story of a well-to-do socialite named Musthafa, his marriages and more specifically his talaqs. Mushtafa, inspite of his high social standing, marries quite late in his life and is often unlucky in his marriages with Rukhiya, Ramla and Safina. How he loses his money, status, and the grounds of each talaq make for the story by dubbing Mushtafa as the quintessential tragic hero.

The film makes for shoddy writing and shoddier making. Many characters are placed to deliver sermons on humanity and religion even when it is least relevant to the central plot. The heroine doesn’t look a day older inspite of a 15 year leap in the story. The hero goes through periods of ill health-often coughing his lungs out- and yet is seen in the pink of health in the very next scene. Logic and reason have simply been ignored all throughout the narrative.

Apart from sentimentalizing and validating triple talaq, it also makes sweeping generalizations about women, their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Muthalaq is the kind of film reviewers are made for- because they endure, so that you don’t have to.