There is something enchanting about the sound of a tape popping out of a player, when little doors of audio and video recorders open to swallow in a new cassette. Moonwalk, a film that quietly slips into the lost era of cassette players and land phones, has that effect on you, partly because it does not come with a forced coating of nostalgia. It simply tells a story of that time, and lets you into that world, without black-and-whiting or sepia-toning.
AK Vinod, debuting in feature filmmaking, brings in waves of originality with the story, his choice of a predominantly new cast of young men leading the film, and by putting dance as the central guiding theme.
Break dance sprang into the campuses of Kerala in the late 80s, English pop music becoming hugely popular among the young. Moonwalk owes its title and inspiration to the American king of pop and legendary dancer, Michael Jackson, who managed to sway the young protagonists in a faraway Kerala, even as they are little exposed to a world outside their small town in Thiruvananthapuram.
The leading characters become easily familiar, even as they are all new faces, with their marked personas. Smartly, the cast is introduced only minutes into the movie after they have all become identifiable as a leader, a joker, a fitness freak, a smoker, a worker, and two siblings.
Jake, Shibu, Shaji, Arun, Varun and others are awestruck by a performance of break dance at the local temple festival and begin to train with the help of another youngster familiar with the moves. Their homes and families and romantic crushes set their individual characters, even as they mostly stick out as a group. A grownup man who works for one of their parents is their constant companion, while his assistant, a less privileged youth, joins the gang.
The ease with which the young actors turn into a bunch of 80s teenagers, their respective characters slowly falling in love with break dance, sets the tone of the film very early. In their naivety, their inexposure, their sprightliness of youth, you sense the magic of a lovely script - written by Vinod with Sunil Gopalakrishnan and Mathew Varghis.
When the characters speak about the ‘steps’, do their ‘waves’, fall for girls, fight their enemies, you realise these are sequences that could have easily gone wrong in the hands of the wrong actors and director. There is a particularly appreciable thread on class and caste, told through the film and taken to the climax, expressed beautifully in action than words.
It helps that the film opens with a song that draws you into the lives of these youngsters, Prashant Pillai weaving his magic, letting the tunes adapt to the times they’re set in. Kiran Das and Deepu Joseph do wonderful work on the edits or the sequences quickly switching between dance practices and college lives and homes could have become disastrous.
But the most credit goes to the bunch of young performers who give little clue of their newness. You need to accommodate their freshness before you judge. There are a few new young women too making short but noticeable appearances, but this is not their story.
The only gripe you may have is for missing out on an actual Michael Jackson footage after all that talk about him, with even the video tape of Thriller failing to show up on screen. But that could just be me.
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.