Saheed Arafath’s directorial Thankam is recently released in theatres. It was written by Syam Pushkaran and had Biju Menon, Vineeth Srinivasan, Girish Kulkarni, Vineeth Thattil, Aparna Balamurali, and others. It deals with the gold agents, who transport gold ornaments from Thrissur (the gold capital of India) to Mumbai, facing certain unexpected events that spiral them down further as they try to unravel it bit by bit. What (Why) it happens is what the film is about.
That’s it. That is ‘How I Felt’ (HIF) about the film.
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Listen! I cannot write anything more without revealing at least some parts of the film.
What?
You are okay with it?
You want me to dig deep into it?
Alrighty then!
*clears throat*
DISCLAIMER: This movie, for me, cannot be dug deep or put forth my views without spilling some beans. And here, I might spill an entire jar of it. So, I advise you to watch Thankam before reading it. If you care any less about the details slash information of the film that is being represented here, then go ahead and read it (but seriously, bro?!?).
I’m sure most of you have friends that you care about, buddies that you look after, and homies that you jam well. But how far (well), do you know about your friend? Let me rephrase it properly, do you even know about your friend?
Well, this film questions (asks) us that, at least that’s HIF.
Thankam follows the lives of gold agents who take pure gold from the merchants, make ornaments mixed with copper, and transport them back to the merchants via roadways. The percentage of copper that is mixed is what they earn as commission, the gold agents. This happens even today and is slightly a shady business, but not completely illegal.
Two people, Kannan (gold agent played by Vineeth Srinivasan) and Muthu (goldsmith played by Biju Menon) are in this business, while it seems fruitful and lives are happy, only Kannan (the smart one) knows what is happening really. He strives hard to make ends meet from the business front yet makes sure that his family is having everything.
On one such fateful night, Kannan sets out to deliver finished ornaments to the merchants in Mumbai, he encounters some dire situation forcing Muthu and his friend to lock in that situation and what comes out during the investigation slowly unravels who Kannan truly was. As time pass by, Muthu gradually understands the pain behind his best friend’s smile but it took a crime to happen, and only with the help of Maharashtra Police and TN Police he understood it bit by bit as they were investigating it, especially the inspector, Jayant Sakhalkar (played by Girish Kulkarni). Though on the screen we get to see the inspector’s chase for Kannan’s character but metaphorically, it seemed like we are chasing for our loved ones to know who they really were and what kind of sadness they had that could’ve clouded their life filled with fake smiles and facetious happiness.
This film digs into the psychoanalysis of a person and lets us think and question the very fundamentals of friendship – do we ask them how are they doing? It shows us the importance of asking the whereabouts of our closest friends, especially male friends – again that’s HIF. Because, between male friends, conversations are often filled with masculinity, girls, sports, cars, politics, and everything else but our personal trauma, tragedy, and depressive thoughts. We (men) often feel that we are too cool to talk about this, too strong to show our weaknesses, and too grown-ups to cry in front of our other male friends.
And that’s how Muthu thought about Kannan that there was no shallowness to give a shoulder for him to cry, no sorrows to ask “nee okay-aano?” (you okay?), or not enough troubles to enquire about his financial well-being.
We all are Muthus in this perpetually hard-hitting world that we forget to ask our friends how are they doing until it’s too late to ask. But also, we are Kannans too amongst these skewed beings because we seek someone to ask us how we are doing but all we get is, “let’s party, bro!”. When Muthu finally understood Kannan’s situation and offered his shoulder to cry, it was too late to make Muthu’s shirt wet with tears.
This movie didn’t dig deep into the troubles/back-story of Kannan and instead revealed it all in the last 20 minutes of the film which made some of the viewers a little underwhelming to feel for that man or get to know him more. That is understandable. I felt that those 20 minutes of character reveal is enough for Muthu to understand Kanna, given their lifelong friendship, more than we understand Kannan. Actually, 20 minutes is too much time for a friend to know his best buddy. That’s where my respect for Saheed Arafath and Syam Pushkaran multi-folded 100x because the way they led us to the pre-climax and dropped some truth bombs to question Muthu (and us) was pure brilliance. Those 20 minutes of the film had what stood out the most for me as it made my heart the heaviest because of obvious reasons.
In some moments, you feel it is a perfect whodunnit investigative film.
In other moments, you think this is the best dark humour film in recent times.
And in another instance, you might consider this a purely performance-driven film.
If you’ve made it this far that means you’ve read the entire thing and I assume you’ve seen the film already. If that’s the case, I’d like to ask you, “Are you okay, my friend? Want to talk about anything? I’m here for you if you want to talk. I may not solve your problems but I’d hear you out with all honesty.”
PS: I’d ask you even if you haven’t watched it. Hang on there, Colm…I mean Kannan! You’d sail through the storm, you will.
