of ghosts and vampires

This week while I was coming back home, a movie was put on in bus. It was the recent Malayalam movie kaaNaakaNmani (കാണാകണ്മണി) directed by the Veruthe Oru Bharya fame Akku Akbar. It had a powerful message against young couples purposefully aborting their pregnancy just because they are not ready for parenthood. But the movie as a whole is executed very badly. The director has brought in a concept, where the restless soul of the aborted child (named Shivani) enters into the couple's present child (Anagha) and wows to kill Anagha since Shivani never got the care that Anagha got from the couple. The parents realise their mistake and as per the elders advice apologizes to their aborted child. But Shivani is not so easily tamable. She takes Anagha to a waterfall to drop her, but seeing that her parents are crying and devastated at Anagha's plight, decides to give Anagha back.

I am not dwelling into the details of the movie as the movie lacks a good script. There are lot of loopholes and no wonder it bombed in the box office. But what made me write this post is the different way in which the director treated the restless soul (ദുരാത്മാവ്) of the kid. I almost expected a Thilakan or some other meledam namboodiri or a Kathanaresque Father (the couple are Christian-Hindu) making an entry and killing(or removing) the haunting Shivani. But there was nothing like that. The trouble goes on its own.

That made me wonder why is that it is necessary that restless soul needs to be treated with a sorcerer. While Manichitrathaazhu brought in science and sorcery to tame Nagavalli , some of the Vinayan movies like Vellinakshatram and Aakashaganga entirely depended on the well known sorcerers for taming the vampires. Why one never thought that the restless souls encroached onto the human mind may go on its own? In this movie the vengeance, which actually should be towards the parents (because they took the decision of aborting), is against the sibling child who is raised with great care by the couples. May be that is why Shivani decided to leave Anagha alone. But why she didn't kill her parents then? How can she sit calmly with out fulfilling her vengeance? Aren't all ghosts/vampires supposed to get satisfaction by killing the person they intend to? Or am I totally lost here :-)

Kaanakanmani for sure is a pathetic movie, but this twist on the restless soul abandoning the human soul without any problem is what surprised me. Akku Akbar takes out a very valid message out to the viewers, but in a pathetic way.

Long Live Manichitrathaazhu!!