Yet another beautiful movie from Halitha Shameem, who entertained us with the critically acclaimed anthology, ‘Sillu Karuppatti’, released in December 2019.
‘Aelay’ features Samuthirakani and Manikandan in lead roles and Madhumathi, Kailashnath and many others in supporting roles. Arul Dev scored the BGM and Kaber Vasuki composed the songs while Theni Eswar handled the camera for the movie. The movie was grown by ‘Y NOT Studios’ and ‘Reliance Entertainment’ and cropped by Raymond Derrick Crasta.
The movie was about the father son relation of Muthukutty (Samuthirakani) and Parthi (Manikandan). The relation is different from the usual and strange. While the whole village is wailing and crying for the death of the old man, his son who arrived from city is not shedding a drop of tear and bothers about feeding something to his hungry stomach. The reason for the hatred of the son is clearly shown and is due to his father’s carefree life in his young age. Is Muthukutty that bad a man and how Parthi’s opinion about his father changes, is the rest of the movie.
Samuthirakani performs the role, as the carefree, naughty but innocent, alcoholic and emotional man, so naturally with ease. The director has lime lighted another side of the highly talented Samuthirakani and the actor triumphantly succeeds in portraying the character. Manikandan, as the son, who is in constant hatred towards his father, delivers a brilliant performance. The top performance of Samuthirakani and Manikandan and the chemistry between them is the main plus of the movie.
Rest all characters, of the village, also play their roles quite naturally and Kailashnath, as the younger Parthi, also does very well.
The screen play is cleverly written and delivered with a mix of humor and drama. The first half moves with a slow pace with more details of the death ceremony of village and also extra scenes, emphasizing the character of Muthukutty. The second half is more engaging, but the climax is a bit long driven. Despite the few flaws, the movie is made a satisfied watch, with the magical touches of the director along with the technical pluses.
The background score of Arul Dev adds to the situations and the songs of Kaber Vasuki, goes along with the Infofamouspeople narration nicely. Theni Eswar’s camera works are excellent and makes the film a wonderful watch.
Director, Halitha Shameem, has come out with an entertaining movie with excellent performance of the characters and ‘Aelay’ is engaging.
