A colorful blast of pork, wine and drool-worthy shots of food. These are the opening images of this lip-smacking film that will give you a taste of the lifestyle and culture of Angamaly, a small but crowded town in Kerala.
Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Angamaly Diaries is a tale about the rivalry between two local gangs (called ‘teams’ here) from Angamaly, those who can pick on fights with each other for the smallest/childlike issues, resulting into amusing and realistic fight sequences.
While it doesn’t offer anything new with the story, the execution is raw and fresh. This is a film where the hero is likely to lose more than anyone else. A film where the scuffling gangs sort out their issues with one another celebrating the union drinking together without any hesitation, which makes you feel that these are not really gangsters but a bunch of hot-headed youngsters who have to pick up fights for survival in the small town.
More than anything else, the film works big time due to its crackling background score and great casting. This is a film with 86 newcomers(!) with every one of them delivering great performances. They do not act, they behave as the characters. Through the course of the film we are introduced to many characters, almost all of them with gray shades, who may or may not have any significance to the plot. Like how in the first scene, we are introduced to a gay character on a bright red and white scooter wearing a floral pink shirt, who goes to meet a gangster who boats of hunting a python while offering its delicious meat to his unsuspecting visitors. Both these characters do not drive the plot forward and yet it’s so much fun to watch these unique characters for whatever time they are on-screen. It’s a film where your favorite character could be the one with the least amount of screen time.
It has some really crisp editing. There are so many characters, so much stuff going on and yet it never feels long. Through the tight, pacy and energetic narrative you won’t even find the time to check your watch before it’s over. There’s a particular coffin scene including karate chops which I found to be the funniest of them all in this film filled with ample amount of black humor. Its highlight is its incredible climax, an 11 minute single shot chase sequence at the backdrop of a festival featuring thousands of extras, ending in an explosive finish.
Angamaly Diaries is a raw gangster drama which can also be called a PG-13 brother of the R-rated Gangs of Wasseypur and City of God. The influence on Lijo Jose’s confident direction is quite evident of the two films. Like Anurag Kashyap’s gangster epic Gangs of Wasseypur, there’s a similar scene of desi bomb making, and bomb not exploding when needed the most; while Gangs of Wasseypur didn’t boast of as many as 80+ debutantes, it had many new or lesser known terrific actors in important roles. (Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Richa Chadda, Huma Qureshi, Rajkummar Rao, Zeishan Quadri, Aditya Kumar) Fernando Meirelles’s terrific City of God also dealt with rivalry between gangs in Rio and it also had mostly newcomers in its big cast. The camera action through Angamaly’s narrow crowded streets is reminiscent of the dynamic hand-held scenes through Rio’s Favelas. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that director Lijo Jose Pellissery has himself made a movie with the same title. All the three movies give a feeling that the makers know the city in and out around which they have based their films.
Whenever you plan to watch this film, please don’t go in with an empty stomach, make sure you eat well beforehand as there are lots and lots of cooking shots, food and food conversations which can cause serious food craving!
Rating:
3.5/5
CineMumbles 