Neru Movie Cast & Crew
A cop comes to a house to investigate a rape complaint. He is received by the survivor’s father, a businessman who runs a curio shop. The man is also a sculptor, who has taught his step-daughter his skills. Yes, the twenty-something survivor – who’s blind – is his second wife’s child, and he has two older sons from his earlier marriage. Neru has been written by director Jeethu Joseph and Santhi Mayadevi, and it is a pure writers’ movie. This is not something you watch for the craft, the staging. You watch it because each of those details about the father, the mother, the step-daughter, the sculpting comes together in a satisfactory knot. This is the kind of movie where the leading man, the loser-lawyer played by Mohanlal, is pitted against his rich and successful ex-girlfriend, a shark of a lawyer played by Priyamani. “Dramatic” doesn’t begin to describe the setup.
The film works at a “watchable but nothing more” level, so let’s first look at why it could have been so much more. The Mohanlal-Priyamani relationship, for one, could have been exploited more. The way it plays out, she could have been a random lawyer (not an ex) and nothing would have turned out different. And oh, don’t miss her snarky smiles, namely her reaction shots. (The film has enough reaction shots for a dozen mega-serials.) The Mohanlal character is supposed to be out of form – literally and figuratively. His girth makes it difficult for him to slip into his lawyer’s coat, and he also has not been practising law for a long time. “I lost touch, I am not confident anymore.,” he says. But he seems to do just fine in court. His rustiness could have been exploited more.
But where it matters, Neru delivers. Like I said, this is a writers’ movie, and the writing works more often than not. Siddique plays the best kind of villain, the kind who makes you want to leap out of your seat and strangle him. His questioning of the survivor – he tries to slut-shame her – leads to one of the film’s best whistle moments, when we are told that today’s “new generation” of women is not the kind who will bottle up their humiliation – instead, they will talk openly about rape. Not for a moment do we see this survivor (nicely played by Anaswara Rajan) weep or wail. She has a moment of rage/frustration, and another where she fears there’s someone else in her room again. These small psychological touches make her human, instead of a “victim”. Her last scene is tremendously moving. She makes a statement without uttering a word.
Mohanlal is in good form as a man who seeks justice for the rape survivor. If he underplays his part, it’s also because – a lot of the time – the writing is understated. One of the times it’s not is when – pre-interval – the accused man is proved guilty in the eyes of the audience. Without this scene, there might have been some interesting ambiguity about what really happened. But apart from the bad guys, none of the people are shown in conventional colours. The parents of the young woman are not ashamed and they are not afraid of what society will say. The legal team they hire is nothing but understanding. Winning the case is one thing, but how lovely that she has already won in a way, by having these people around her. Neru may not be great cinema, but it’s a heck of a yarn. It’s hard not to be drawn in.
