Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (English: Like An Afternoon Dream) is a 2022 Indian Malayalam-Tamil bilingual drama film directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery and written by S. Hareesh. It is produced by Mammootty Kampany & Amen Movie Monastery. The film stars Mammootty, Ramya Suvi, Ramya Pandian and Ashokan.

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam was released theatrically on 19 January 2023 and received critical acclaim. At the 53rd Kerala State Film Awards, it won two awards, including Best Film (Pellissery and George Sebastian) and Best Actor (Mammootty).

Plot
A group of Malayali tourists are returning to Kerala after visiting the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health in Velankanni, Tamil Nadu. While the other tourists are asleep, tour leader James stops the bus at a remote village in Tamil Nadu. He takes a stroll around the place, enters a house and starts acting like a member of the family, behaving like a Tamilian and speaking in Tamil. An old blind woman in the house appears to recognize him as her son, based on his voice and mannerisms. Not finding James, the other tourists come looking for him. His familiarity with the community confuses everyone who travelled with him, as well as the villagers. Eventually the people realize he has taken on the character, mannerisms and language of Sundaram, a member of the family who had disappeared two years earlier. The family of Sundaram starts to believe that he has been reincarnated. But James progressively gets confused when people don't accept him as Sundaram. He doesn't recognize the changes in the village, such as the new temple that had not been built when Sundaram went missing. He also chances to see his face mirrored for the first time, when he visits the barber, which shocks him into reality. James' real family and friends plot to sedate him in order to get him back to Kerala, and get him help for his presumed mental disorder. Whether they succeed in drugging him or not is left to the imagination. However after falling asleep, James regains his true identity and willingly goes with them to board the bus. The ending is open to interpretation. The character named Sundaram and the entire escapade could merely be a dream that James had on the bus all the while.

Production
On 7 November 2021, Lijo Jose Pellissery officially announced the film by sharing the title through social media. Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is the first-time collaboration between Mammootty and Lijo Jose Pellissery. The film was produced by Mammootty's newly launched production house Mammootty Kampany.

On 7 November 2021, principal photography took place in the village of Manjanaickenpatti, near Palani, Tamil Nadu. Filming was wrapped up on 7 December 2021.

Release
The movie premiered at 27th International Film Festival of Kerala(IIFK) on 12 December 2022. The film received positive reviews and huge demand for world premiere. Audience praised both Mammootty and Lijo Jose Pellissery.

On 19 January 2023, Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam went into general release on theatres.

Home media
The streaming rights of the film were sold to Netflix. It released on 23 February 2023.

Reception
Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakam received mostly positive reviews from critics.

Baradwaj Rangan, reviewing for Galatta Plus, described the film as "magical" and "an instant classic" and continued that "to experience a film like this – at once muddled and filled with clarity – is to feel transcendentally alive." Simon Abrams from RogerEbert.com gave the film 3.5 out of 4 and wrote that "Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam feels like a deep and abidingly strange trip to Pellissery’s memory palace" and that "Pellissery confirms his prominence among a new wave of Malayalam-speaking Indian filmmakers."

Anna M. M. Vetticad of Firstpost gave the film 3 out of 5 and wrote "Apart from the music and sound design, the highlight of Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam is its immersive central performance...the thespian does not give either James or Sundaram any quirks, yet masterfully conveys their divergent personalities leaving us in no doubt as to who is who and when. This team-up with Lijo confirms that Mammootty is steering his career into a whole new experimental phase, embracing not just the sort of middle-of-the-road, slice-of-life ventures that have endeared Malayalam cinema to a pan-India audience, but also entering an unapologetically philosophical arena."

Prem Udayabhanu of Onmanorama reviewed the film as post-siesta drama a lofty cinematic experience and wrote "The orchestrated chaos we see in Jallikattu or Churuli is amiss. But through the interplay of hallucination and trance Lijo’s scriptwriter S Harish infuses into Mammotty’s character, the master craftsman pulls the actor and the audience to a lofty plain of cinematic excellence. We cannot but embrace this irrational reel exuberance."

Analysing the movie, Sajesh Mohan of Onmanorama wrote In ‘Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam’, Lijo Jose Pellissery must have asked cinematographer Theni Eswar to observe the actors like a master of mindfulness. For that's what his camera does. The shots are static yet the frames are dynamic and once the film enters Sundaram’s village through James's siesta dream, the shots acquire an aura that makes it resemble the visualisations of a Tao master. In lieu of adding haze and glow or grading the dream sequence differently, Theni Eswar achieves a differentiation relying on the aesthetic method of frames within a frame.

Manoj Kumar R. of The Indian Express rated the film 3.5 out of 5 and wrote "The visuals are almost meditative. Every frame tells more than one story."