While explaining his writing process after the success of Kishkinda Kaandam, writer Bahul Ramesh said he tries to break cliches by pushing away ideas that easily come to him. And he has also said that he gives the first half of his script to his father, who would predict all possible ways the story could move forward, and Bahul would try to avoid all that. The tricky part about such a strategy is that, since Bahul has written one film and a series, anyone who closely follows him would have a track running in their head in order to predict what he has in mind. The beauty of Eko, his second collaboration with director Dinjith Ayyathan, is how he still manages to deceive the audience through writing and create a climax that gives you the high through emotional layers rather than mere shock value.
Set against the backdrop of the late ’80s, this story is about a mysterious man named Kuriachan who loved dogs more than humans. His love for them was such that he even traveled to Malaysia to bring dogs. Even though he loved dogs, his relationship with humans was not that great. And hence, there were several people who wanted to take revenge. Since that man was missing for a really long time, all his enemies monitored his wife, a Malaysian-born woman, who was living alone on top of a mountain protected by dogs. What we see here are the efforts to find out where Kuriachan actually is.
When compared to Kishkindha Kaandam, I would say Eko is much more cinematic in its structuring. The level of extreme subtlety we have seen in Kishkinda Kaandam is not here, and that really differentiates Eko from that one, even though the way it creates certain high points has some similarity. The first half of Eko invests a lot in world-building rather than creating a suspense element. We are getting to know the history of Kuriachan, and in my opinion, an area on first viewing where the energy sort of drops is in that flashback portion. But at the end, the screenplay shows us why that whole sequence was really important.
The second half is perhaps the area where Bahul Ramesh applies his cliché-breaking strategy at best. One could see him tweaking every track at the penultimate moment to break our prediction. The deception technique inside the writing of this movie is what makes us applaud at the end. Even though the second half is shifting gears compared to a flatter first half, I was getting a feeling that the closure we eventually get might be too obvious. But the layering Bahul has given to the reason for the twist element throughout the film enables the movie to flip things in just one moment. Without necessarily going deep into each of the subplots associated with the characters, it manages to crack a closure.
From a production point of view, the fact that they managed to use animals and also shoot some of the significant scenes in difficult terrain would make you wonder how they pulled it off. In many scenes, one could see that the blocking of scenes is very fluid as they use gentle rack focus to show the characters and developments. Dinjith Ayyathan uses the landscape’s mysterious, eerie feel brilliantly to hold the mood. Since the screenplay moves from one essential sequence to another, the movie rarely shifts into deep silences. Much like Kishkindha Kaandam, the scores by Mujeeb Majeed elevate the scenes to a whole new level. Combined with the handheld and mostly dynamic visuals of Bahul Ramesh, each scene gets that depth. The intercutting really aids the movie in creating that element of intrigue. With the dogs and the landscape having a major role in transporting us into that world, the immersive sound design from Vishnu Govind plays a key role. The cinematic enhancement of the growls and the sound elements in the atmosphere was captured pretty effectively.
We almost get to see three shades of the Peeyos character in this movie. Sandeep Pradeep was excellent in performing each of those versions. Since there is an evident contrast between each version, the performance feels even better. Biana Momin plays the part of the crucial character Mlaathi Chedathi. The innocence in her face adds a grace to that character, and the dubbing by KPAC Leela is pretty soft and fitting. Saurabh Sachdeva, as Kuriachan, was a great casting choice as he has the ability to keep us guessing about the true nature of the character. Vineeth gets an exciting character in this movie. While Narain felt like an apt choice, I thought in some of those moments where he had to be absolutely gruesome, his inherent softness was coming in the way of that performance. Ashokan as Appootty was fine, and Binu Pappu, in his typical slang, did his part neatly.
At a time when people easily opt for bigger scale after doing something commercially successful, it is actually heartening to see filmmakers opting for grandeur in concepts. Dinjith Ayyathan’s movie invests completely in making the idea get everything that would make it look authentic. Be it the locations, casting, and the lack of greenscreens or invisible use of CGI, Eko offers the satisfaction of having seen something cinematic and unique.
