VARSHAM MOVIE REVIEW

Loss, and the effect it leaves on the people concerned, is a regular plot line seen in cinema. But, what makes Varsham different from the crowd is the inherent honesty and importance with which it treats the subject. With stellar performances from the lead actors, the movie feels disturbingly real and leaves the audience in tears on several occasions. 

 

In the heart of Varsham is a nuclear family - consisting of Venu (Mammootty), a man with blurred vision of what's right, his wife, Nandini (Asha Sarath), whose chief preoccupation is to get the better of her neighbor, and their son, Anand (Prajwal Prasad), a goodhearted chap unlike his parents. An unforeseen tragedy descends, and the grief-stricken family's path to recuperation is what the remaining of Varsham is about. 

 

Director Ranjith Sarkar's script packs the calamity early on, and after that takes its own sweet time, filled with mood swings of the bereaved, before the lost smile on the couple's lips crops up - one reason why the like-it-fast moviegoers might find Varsham too long. But, even for them, the movie has its moments. The movie also has a subplot involving the world of businessmen, where for one to commit an act of good, the will of others too become necessary.  

 

Varsham has to be Mammootty's most precise performance in recent times. The star's agony over the irreplaceable loss is raw and affecting. His character undergoes various transformations throughout the movie, ranging from a brittle self-centered man, to a lips-trembling-and-sullen-eyed head of a family to a self-assured altruist. For those who had been missing the actor, Varsham - moments such as the one in which he gives a cold look when he learns of a character's happiness, when his life has hit a dead end - would be a grand treat. 

 

A nagging Asha Sarath contributes to a few humorous scenes in the beginning, until the tragedy, from which her role undergoes a sharp turn to being gloomy and bereft. Even in her changed phase, she delivers a compelling act.

 

Mammootty's line, “I don't fear death anymore - that's my courage to live”, marks the essence of Varsham - that loss can also be a source of strength to do the 'right' things which one never would have attempted in a life centered on 'me, my family and my life'.