Readers Write In #851: Lokah and a Note on Naslen

By Aman Basha

When the Kerala filmmakers capture specks of your reality in a superhero fantasy

Amidst the plethora of more personal writing that has become frequent on this blog, I have felt often adrift. This is not just to do with the wonderfully evocative and moving quality of the writing, but also at how uncomfortable I am at revealing aspects of myself and the world around me through words, content instead to ruminate on works of art and political events, which although revealing of my sensibilities and ideologies more than I would care to admit, have kept up my zealous guarding of the personal from the pen. 

Part of this has to do with my deep fear that any moment that my thoughts about myself would convert to text, it would just be a moment of self hate, an opportunity to relentlessly badger myself over the gap of my reality from my aspiration, the blow ups, the self inflicted wounds and missed opportunities. Instead, it was more fun to muse over how the rise of fantasy and period films in India mirrored a society that was simply unwilling to reflect on itself and chose to soak in a glorious past or unreal land so that filmmakers didn’t risk making a statement in a polarized world. When art had moved from the personal and political, I had little risk of exposure.

Ironically enough, it was a fantasy, a superhero one to boot, that finally loosened my resolve to not talk about myself. Enough has been said about Lokah, a film most elegantly summed by our own BR as the “movie equivalent of a keyhole”. I could choose to ruminate on how magical the world of the movies is, when a Malayalam superhero film reminds one of a scene from the French Lieutenant’s Woman where two actors rehearsing is intercut with the mise en scene from their film, mirroring the thrilling and rousing reveal of Chandra’s powers and how just like Meryl Streep magically switches from actor to character, Kalyani Priyadarshan moves from essentially playing a charming version of herself in most films to suggesting a gravitas with her stoic presence that suggests a lifetime’s difference from her co-star, who in reality is just three years younger than her (Perhaps I’m too high on Kiliye Kiliye to compare Kalyani with Meryl).

Against my own ideological thrill at seeing a woman lead the show and kick ass in a superhero movie that posits its bad as your everyday misogynist in a position of power, I was most invested in the fate of Naslen as Sunny. It is this young actor with his distinctively Kerala cadence and on screen persona who not only roots this film but made me so personally relate to a character on screen that I cannot help represent myself with my words. 

Most actors I’ve liked on screen are out of a curious mix of nostalgia and aspiration, the burning ambition of a SRK whose anti-materialist Yes Boss even has a lyric where the small wish of the lead is to rule the world, but with Naslen on screen, I feel represented. From the minor anxiety in Premalu about how he may have topped in his life during High School to that wonderful stretch in Alappuzha Gymkhana where he fails 12th (which would have surely been me in Physics if not for Modiji’s timely intervention) and how he accurately brings the hormonal confusion over which girl he truly likes and even more amazingly, the maneuvers one has to make to find the right time and place for your first kiss, to how this most sweet and tender of actions can seem a daunting ordeal due to sheer overthinking.

This time, this most lovable of slackers was in the city that has been home to me most of my life, mouthing the one Kannada phrase everyone in Bengaluru knows, yet again pursuing a woman way out of his league with the mix of embarrassment and excitement that is the cornerstone of love (or) affection (or) infatuation at a certain age. A feat of production design and writing from the team of Lokah is in using tiny details from the viral ground of MG Road to my distaste for HSR to shoot Bengaluru in Kochi, a city that enamored me in 24 hours like all the girls I’ve gone head over heels for, and as Naslen here is swept in just his first look of Kalyani.

I enjoy him because as much as he represents facets of me, the films he is in, treat him with a sense of kindness, shorn of pity, I should show myself at times.  At an age where success and failure is relative, and even the most sincere of intention and effort can seem overwhelmed by the vagaries of fate, one should just count on the fun they have with your friends as in the end of Gymkhana and sometimes you’ll hear a most unexpected confession of love as in the end of Premalu. But most importantly, you shouldn’t chug too many beers and weed with your dopey friends to lose out on immortality.

I am curious about Naslen’s future, as earlier actors who represented youth (SRK, Pawan Kalyan, even Vijay) had certain physical abilities that pushed them to superstardom. For now, I want to feel good about myself and buy some of the cool jackets Naslen wears here. Of course, I am also excited about seeing (SPOILERS) an impish Tovino, an intense Dulquer and a regal Mammootty enter this universe (SPOILERS END). That’s it for now about me and the movies.