When Aashiq Abu’s Naradan ends, it’s almost like you have finished watching a rather long television news show. Two and a half hours slip by too soon when you have mostly been on your toes. Without a murder, a crime, or even a car chase, the film manages to take the tone of a thriller, simply by baring the way news channels work. And it does it rather well. At the beginning of the film is a rather long disclaimer refuting any similarities to real or existing entities. But you can’t help looking at Tovino Thomas, who appears in a suit midway in the movie, shouting and unsmiling, and think how eerily similar he is to many a national news anchor and particularly one person who has made this brand of loud journalism infamous.
Tovino plays Chandraprakash, who initially appears as a rather calm and fair reporter, the face of the number one news channel in Malayalam. He lets his panellists talk and corrects them when they make false or exaggerated claims, is assertive, and smiles off comments. At the Press Club bar where male journalists meet at the end of a day’s work, he is friendly, casual, though not all that chatty. You get a hint of his competitiveness only when a smaller rival channel breaks an interview that his channel didn’t and he has to answer to the boss.
Sharaf U Dheen wonderfully plays the ethical reporter of the smaller channel, frustrated because he’s not paid on time, another reality in the world of journalism. At the bar, a middle aged journalist, who makes long drunken tirades, asks why no one was reporting the loss of jobs in the media. Writer Unni R has diligently included many major happenings in journalism in recent years, including honey-trapping of a politician for the launch of a channel.
Even Chandraprakash’s transition from the calm and fair anchor to an aggressive, dominating one, modelled after many prime time anchors, is shown to result from the pressures of the job. After two breaking interviews, the journalist from the smaller channel gets his job. He is quickly sidelined by a condescending boss (Joy Mathew in a different avatar).
Watch: Trailer of Narada
But job pressure alone doesn’t change one inside out. You are not all that surprised at his drastic shift because you have watched him as he goes home to his parents and the dad lets slip why the son has lost interest in his girlfriend. Even as the fair journo, Chandraprakash didn’t seem to care much for personal relationships. Inexpressive, you get a whiff of all that’s burning inside only when he jogs aggressively across the roads of Kochi.
The script doesn’t lag, but becomes a tad exhausting and uncharacteristically melodramatic as it throws in a personality development guru to transform Chandraprakash into CP. The unruly curls are pressed down, the beard disappears and an angry geek-like man emerges as the face of a brand-new news channel launched by the rich and powerful. CP starts showing his new priorities as he questions new recruits. “Caste is a reality, why don’t you own it?” he asks a woman who had discarded ‘Menon’ for her dad’s first name. On air, reporters are called by their dominant caste surnames. The casteist thinking that lurks among many is slipped into the script in a minor exchange between a lawyer and his client – “I’m not going to plead with the judge (who is from an oppressed caste), I’m a Menon.”
Through the quick-paced film, even as you watch with understanding the ‘lows’ certain media outlets stoop to, you also realise the power they wield in tarnishing anyone’s character, in creating new norms, making moral policing appear legit and nudging awake such tendencies in others. Smartly, CP is mostly framed inside a television screen, suggesting how controlling a voice in your living room can be, guiding your decisions and forming your opinions.
Most of the second half of the film shifts to a courtroom and Anna Ben plays a smart young lawyer with enjoyable comebacks. Indrans is lovely as a magistrate and it is just sweet to watch him walk slowly to the court, holding a copy of the Constitution. Only the staccato English arguments by the senior lawyer (Renji Panicker) appear out of place.
The film finds space for a bit of humour, and the edgy music (DJ Sekhar, Neha and Yaksen) makes sure you are tuned in, even as the story risks losing audience interest with extended focus on a single subject.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film's producers or any other members of its cast and crew.