Carbon Movie Review
If greed were to lock horns with fear, if despair were to wrestle adversity and if man were to defy the forces of nature, what awaits them all at the end of the tunnel? Or is it more important to know what puts them against each other in the first place? Carbon puts the very paradox of such thoughts into perspective and how!
The ideas in this film are sophisticated but how skillfully they are communicated matters more. Sibi(Fahad Faasil) is an overzealous yet down-on-luck nobody, who wants to prosper in life by hook or by crook. He goes on a bleak treasure hunt, where the real and unreal give him a run for his money. This fluidity between Sibi's reality and fantasy is the kind of magical realism cinematographer-turned-director Venu seems to be in complete grasp of. He takes care of it with a superb interplay of motifs, connotations, surrealism, legends and character relationships, all of which add great value to the dialogue between the filmmaker and his audience.
Carbon is another of Venu's lyrical films, almost four years after the phenomenally head-scratching character study that was Munnariyippu. But, this Fahad Faasil starrer doesn't want to be a carbon copy of that offbeat drama, instead opting to be rich in action, adventure, thrills and myths. The film even inserts a couple of musical numbers composed by Bollywood's Vishal Bharadwaj, irrespective of their purpose in the script, in a bid to enhance its commercial appeal.
Yet, Carbon is not a star-driven film either, but a director's film, from head to toe. Right from the self-written screenplay to the carefully chosen cast and crew he collaborates with, the director's thought process is all-encompassing. So, you might not experience Fahad's greatest performance on screen, given how distracting his gesticulations and enunciations sometimes are as the leading man here, but you will see how he does what is asked of him, more or less, and how receptive he is of the film's vision. And the fact that this supremely talented star is willing to undress himself more and more on screen- in the figurative sense- with each film, is testament to his hunger and perseverance, similar to the character of Sibi himself.
Carbon may not have the best of drama or entertainment to keep you hooked, but it has a mischievous and teasing soul that will leave a cerebral afterthought. One that is riddled with a maelstrom of deep, intense theories and ambiguities.
