A still from ‘ED – Extra Decent’
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Dark comedies have a different ring to them, and a small misstep can leave them neither here nor there. Aamir Palikkal’s ED – Extra Decent has managed to fit into that space quite well, with the right mix of suspense, intrigue and some laughter.

The film opens with Binu, the protagonist, being hit on his head by his apartment’s security. He loses his memory and efforts are on at the hospital to make him remember something from the past. But his parents (Sudheer Karamana and Vinayaprasad), sister (Grace Antony) and brother-in-law (Shyam Mohan) are wary of that situation. It seems they fear for their lives. That is where Binu’s past, which is dark and disturbing, unfolds.

Binu, the jobless, subdued protagonist, is a loser in the eyes of his father, a retired tahsildar, whereas his mother and sister are sympathetic towards him. Binu’s behaviour is attributed to childhood trauma and bad parenting. But there comes a point when the embittered Binu goes into psycho mode and sets out to settle scores with his family in a ruthless way. However, for the residents of the apartment, he is that ‘extra decent,’ smart youngster who loves his family, and they do not know that he is in the process of transforming from extra decent to extra dangerous.

Even though certain actions of Binu look far-fetched, the impact is not lost on the audience, thanks to the fine actor that Suraj Venjaramoodu is. The National Award-winning actor, also the co-producer of the film, has pushed his limit as an artiste. The quirky and twisted but engaging narrative is shouldered by Suraj, whose measured performance transitions unabashedly between humour and villainy. The transition is subtle and with a smile that does not give away who he really is. It seems the actor has been let loose by writer Ashif Kakkodi and director Aamir, and his talent shines through in a scene where he loses control.

The taut screenplay has several moments that keep the viewers hooked. Even though the audience knows that all is not well with Binu, one keeps guessing about what he will do next. Just when you think the script is losing its grip, the writer springs a surprise.

Although promoted as a dark comedy, the humour is not that pronounced in the film. In fact, the film would have worked even without certain dialogues and situations.

A scene from ED – Extra Decent
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Sudheer Karamana and Vinayaprasad have done well as Binu’s parents. Grace is always a delight to watch on screen, and so is Shyam, especially after his impressive outing in Premalu.

Ankit Menon’s music is almost a character in the movie, with the tracks playing in the background, complementing the emotions unfolding on the screen. Editing (Sreejith Sarang) and cinematography (Sharon Sreenivas) add to the layers of the narrative, especially in the scenes shot inside the apartment that involve several close-up shots.

ED – Extra Decent is currently playing in theatres

The 2012 discovery of a mass unmarked grave on the grounds of the Florida School for Boys was the sort of headline that short-circuits the brain. Archeologists estimate that nearly 100 kids died from violence and neglect over the juvenile reformatory’s century in use. How can anyone process that scale of buried grief?

Author Colson Whitehead funneled that sorrow into “The Nickel Boys,” a 2019 novel about two Black friends at the lightly fictionalized Nickel Academy, and unearthed emotions so beautiful that he won a Pulitzer Prize. A straight adaption would pack power, but it’s even better that the book came into the hands of a true humanist like RaMell Ross. Making his feature debut, the director not only turns anonymous bones into people, he turns his people into the camera: The audience sees the world literally through the eyes of Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson). We couldn’t be hugged any tighter to their point of view.

Ross describes his visual style as a tribute to the “epic banal.” Small moments — a spaghetti dinner, a smiling girl, a scattering of Christmas tinsel — are shot by the cinematographer Jomo Fray with such grandeur that they become important. He’s already made a documentary with the technique, the Oscar-nominated “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” set in Alabama. The goal isn’t just to prove that the ordinary world is surrounded by beauty; it’s that his characters are active observers of it, too.

This shouldn’t seem like a radical act except that Ross uses the technique to immortalize the days of Black Americans in the South whose lives are more often looked at than through. Outsiders tend to cram people into a box, force them to fit a message that ranges from exploitative to tediously well-meaning. Ross sets them free. The message is simply that Elwood and Turner are human beings.

The script, co-written by Ross and producer Joslyn Barnes, scraps Whitehead’s opening prologue about the wretched cemetery to instead emphasize that this will be a bittersweet celebration of life. Elwood, growing up in racially riven Tallahassee during the 1960s, is introduced first. The glimpses of his world from a child (played by Ethan Cole Sharp) to a high school student flicker by with no sense of urgency, which is exactly how it should be for a boy who has no reason to suspect his freedom is about to be taken away. He’s smart — perhaps not as bright and sensitive and idealistic as he is in Whitehead’s novel, but making him more of an everyman seems to be on purpose. (Ross has even dropped the “The” from the title.)

It’s possible to read Whitehead’s book and think, “How could these horrors happen to such a good kid?” Ross instead wants us to ask, “How could this happen to anyone?” including the school’s bullies and white boys who live in a segregated part of the campus and seem to be getting preferential treatment. To be accurate, the white students were victims, too. Later on, both groups of students joined forces on a blog that gathered enough stories of abuse, a website that’s referenced when the film leaps a few decades into the future. But “Nickel Boys” is also kind to those who can’t confront their memories, even in its camerawork which refuses to record the cruelty — it’s implied, never shown. Sometimes, to endure, you swallow all the bad things and hold them inside.

Things go awry when Elwood, nearly 17, hitches a ride in the wrong car. He doesn’t know he’s getting into a stolen Plymouth and can’t fathom how this one choice will derail his future even if we could warn him what’s coming. But Ross knows that this road will lead Elwood straight to Nickel Academy, so he extends this moment into an agonizing gag in which the driver (the late Taraja Ramsess) fiddles with figuring out how to unlock the passenger door. It’s not something you’re aware of on the first watch. You spot it on the second. Like Elwood, we start naive and only later recognize the danger.

The idea that Nickel Academy is a school by any definition of the word is a bleak joke. The kids are essentially enslaved to work the fields or run illegal errands under the supervision of an employee named Harper (Fred Hechinger). It’s gut-wrenching that this tragedy is happening in the moment when Martin Luther King Jr. is leading a Civil Rights revolution not too far away. It’s worse that the school stayed open until 2011, when it was closed for “budgetary limitations.”

Elwood is written to be so watchful that it’s hard to feel like you know the character at all — he’s almost too universal. His individuality comes across best when we see him the way his classmate Turner does, chin-tucked, eyes learning to be wary. Elwood believes in MLK’s optimism for America. “It’s against the law!” he protests to Turner, the sly and funny cynic, who can’t imagine things ever improving. Elwood is convinced he can surmount obstacles; Turner is resigned to going around them. The two debate but don’t always seem to hear each other. As we take turns being inside of them, it’s up to you which one you trust.

Periodically, Ross and his editor Nicholas Monsour cut to old black and white TV images of NASA rockets attempting to beam data back to Earth. The motif doesn’t totally make sense. Is it a comment on the country’s priorities? An example of looking up rather than around? Is it just a neat way to take a breather from all the awful stuff happening under the trees? Eventually, I settled on imagining these transitions as an echo of Alex Somers and Scott Alario’s fantastic rough-hewn score with its fuzzy notes that sound as though they’re getting pinged back and forth between satellites, deteriorating as they travel through time, uncertain if their pleas will be heard.

Ross likes to feel, not tell. There are images of students teetering on stilts, of kids who look too small to be there playing with toy soldiers in a puddle of milk. After Elwood and Turner suffer permanent blows, the camera leaps out of their bodies and hovers behind their heads, particularly as the one we stay with as an adult, played by Daveed Diggs, attempts to grow into a full person. Disassociation never looked so lovely. At its most soul-stirring, the film becomes a mood piece. There’s a five-and-a-half minute montage set to “Tezeta,” a jazz track by the Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke, that would be mesmerizing at twice the length.

As good as the movie is with its visuals, it’s just as skillful with sound. In the first shot, Elwood lies in the yard looking up and when he turns his head, you can hear blades of grass tickle the back of your neck. Later, there’s a buzz — a bee? A fly? — that, as the crimes multiply, shifts into a continual hum, a plague upon the brain.

The only ding on the film is that Ross is still learning to work with actors. He’s fine when his background characters are just palling around the lunchroom, but the POV approach is hard on his leads, even talents like Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Elwood’s grandmother. When there is dialogue — which, thankfully, isn’t all the time — it’s in the form of one person staring into the lens and waiting for their turn to speak. The really clunky moments come off like an audition tape in which the off-camera casting assistant running lines is late on their cues.

The one great conversation scene comes when Diggs sits across a bar from a fellow Nickel alumni, played by Craig Tate in a phenomenal cameo where his nervous twitches show us the broken boy inside the man. Now old, the two survivors are siloed in their grief — alive and lucky, sure, but still entombed. They’re so damaged that they can’t, or won’t, really connect about what they went through. It’s too hard to see past their own trauma, but Ross has shown us how they once simply saw themselves as teenagers, with the promise of a better future ahead. We remember. We saw it, too.

BOTTOM LINE
Visually Stunning, Not Timeless

CENSOR
U/ 1hr 58m

What Is the Film About?

Mufasa: The Lion King traces the origin story of two lions, Mufasa and Taka (who later becomes Scar), focusing on their childhood and the events that led to their eventual rivalry. Mufasa is an orphaned cub, befriended by Taka, a young lion prince, near a waterbody. Over time, as Mufasa’s true origins are revealed, it affects his friendship with a resentful Taka.

Performances

It’s absolutely delightful that a leading star like Mahesh Babu chose to dub for Mufasa. He complements the character with his trademark wit and dialogue delivery, excelling both at humour and intense situations. Satyadev, as the voice artiste for Taka, is equally impressive and gets adequate scope to showcase his vocal modulation as per the transformation of the character. 

The artistes who truly bring the roof down with their delightful comic timing are the legendary duo Brahmanandam and Ali as Pumbaa and Timon. Their improvisation, while staying within the boundaries of their scenes, is impeccable and yet again reiterates the value they could bring to a film, even if it’s through their voices. Ayyappa P Sharma brings a new dimension to villainy as Kiros.

Analysis

It’s interesting how franchises are ruling the roost in world cinema – helping studios ensure a minimum guarantee sum at the box office in unpredictable times through glitzy technological upgrades. One also can’t deny the prospect that franchise-driven cinema limits the avenues to tell newer stories. Is there a middle ground though, where the producers and film connoisseurs are equally satisfied?

The iconic ‘The Lion King’ got a new lease of life with its 2019 reboot, which may have lacked the soul of the original but was successful in capturing the imagination of a new generation of filmgoers. The idea for a spinoff in this universe is by all means redundant and exploitative, though you give it a chance because of Mufasa – and the desire to know him beyond the obvious. 

Mufasa: The Lion King transports you back to Mufasa’s childhood, where he’s separated from his parents during a flood and eventually bumps into a young lion Taka. Much to the disappointment of Obasi (Taka’s father), Taka and an orphaned Mufasa are raised by Eshe (Taka’s mother). While Mufasa wins over their family, his rise eventually threatens his friendship with Taka. 

The film is constantly on the move, taking the viewers through many critical junctures in Mufasa and Taka’s journey towards Milele, how they forge an unlikely friendship with a lioness Sarabi, a hornbill Zazu and a mandrill Rafiki. The visual world-building is meticulous and jaw-dropping, alternating from a musical to an action-adventure, integrating drama with humour.

The heart of the tale lies in Mufasa’s childhood portions, which simply sweep you off your feet. From exploring Mufasa’s vulnerabilities as a child to his playful friendship with Taka and the action sequences that establish his leadership skills- you truly get a sense of his genius and instincts in crises. However, the film takes a turn for the worse as the stakes are raised.

The subplot portraying the supposed animosity between the white lion Kiros and Obasi is hurried and doesn’t grow on the viewer. The screenwriting choices are particularly absurd – in how Taka is reduced to a staple antagonist (due to Mufasa and Sarabi’s growing affinity). It’s baffling why a film that tries so hard to create a visual extravaganza fails to liberate the plot from its obvious problems.

As films chase photorealistic remakes of iconic films with posterity and attempt to give them a believable visual exterior, they sacrifice the idea of ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ (while chasing something realistic). If The Lion King aims to be more relevant with times, writers must relook at the franchise’s storytelling tropes, altering gender equations and reanalysing animal behaviour. 

Mufasa: The Lion King has the story of an Indian potboiler that takes its audiences for granted. Many a time, you end up feeling if the creators simply replaced humans with animals in a typically massy story. How else can you explain the adopted son-true son conflict, betrayal between friends and a love triangle among lions? This spinoff has the scale but is devoid of magic and soul. 

Music and Other Departments?

If there’s anything that keeps the film together in its direst situations, it is Nicholas Britell’s emphatic music score and the terrific imagery – constructed photo-realistically using CGI, under the expertise of James Laxton. However, the same can’t be said about the ‘musical’ aspects of the film. 

Neither are the songs catchy nor do they add much value to the proceedings. The Telugu dialogues for the film are inconsistent at best, the slangs keep changing conveniently and the wordage is hardly appealing to its target audience. 

Highlights?

Dubbing of Mahesh Babu, Satyadev, Ali and Brahmanandam

The visual imagery and music score

The first hour focusing on Mufasa’s younger years

Drawbacks?

Too many illogical, cinematic liberties

The humanistic behaviour of lions 

Musical portions

Did I Enjoy It?

Yes, in parts

Will You Recommend It?

Yes, if you’re a hard core fan of The Lion King universe

Mufasa: The Lion King Movie Review by M9