Santhoshathinte Onnam Rahasyam (Joyful Mystery) takes place entirely inside a car and that's the first metaphor that Don Palathara plays with; that all personal issues are closed and even when there's an external stimuli, it only makes things worse. Where this young couple is starting to fight over an unwanted pregnancy. You can relate to the arguments these two people have as you reflect on your own life and wait to see what could be the number one secret of happiness. By the end of the film, you find it out. Brilliant little film.
5 Reviews
Santhoshathinte Onnam Rahasyam, On Neestream, Is A Well-Written And Superbly Stylized Argument Between A Couple
shefali-5924430 July 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Don Palathara's Santhoshathinte Onnam Rahasyam is a one-shot film set during the 2020 pandemic. We exclusively focus on Jithin (Jithin Puthenchery) and Maria (Rima Kallingal) as they take a car ride to a hospital. They live together without their families knowing and Maria is getting a pregnancy test. On the surface, the entire film is about the argument they have about their serious situation: she's not ready and mulling abortion while he feels ready to marry her and face the families. Don Palathara exploits two cinematic devices: a single continuous take and a fixed camera facing the couple in the front seat. They superbly elevate a banal argument into an intricate portrait of conflict in a modern relationship.
A different road movie
srd-3065927 August 2021
Palathara comes up with a winner in a fly-on-the-dashboard pip into a car journey that takes a man and a woman to a clinic for pregnancy test. Acid exchanges between the two under tension is brought out by a taut script, sharp dialogue and excellent performance by the two characters, especially Rima Kallingal.
DULL & BANAL - Pretentious At It's Most Distasteful...!
samxxxul11 October 2021
I know that the South Indian film industry during the Covid pandemic churned out movies after movies with magical run. It has some memorable titles, the boiling point for me was the OTT flagbearers (Fahad Fasil, Vijay Sethupathi, Prithviraj Sukumaran) cashing in the status but slowly getting exposed and repetitive.
Here is the template - dysfunctional family/couple, isolated house with lush landscape, psycho Fahad, countryside-dwelling oddballs and slow paced. It's so funny seeing critics rave about what is called "newwave" these days. Majority of Malayalam movie under the guise of 'Newwave' calls itself realistic cinema. I got so tired of all these films, it's like a filmmaker peeps Yorgos Lanthimos, Robert Eggers movie for the first time and their thought process is to rip it off and create their own covid constraint versions.
So, coming to Santhoshathinte Onnam Rahasyam (Joyful Mystery), it is road trip disguised as an arthouse film. I don't mind arthouse either but it was utter, pointless trash and a total bore to sit through. This is an example of a director who wants to kill time just like other filmmakers capitalizing on covid. And it's disappointing that's like 85% of movies these days and every other Malayalam cinema banking on newwave/experimental tag.
The trailer was interesting and i'm a sucker for films that don't have a narrative, where characters wander aimlessly and absolutely goes nowhere in terms of plot but it's worth the trip. I needed a break from the same geography set movies and watched this one. Oh man, bad has a new definition and so do pretentious. Director Don wants to be the torchbearer of Malayalam newwave but is actually really bad at it. I love Don's Shavam and 1956, Central Travancore but this and his latest outing Everything Is Cinema (2021) has been dreadful. It oozes of pretentious chemistry, putting on an imperfect couple show with metaphors and forced dialogues including Don's self-indulgent take on meta cinema. It has very few moments and raises above the standard throwaway road trip romp, but still fails to deliver anything of much nuance (cliched religious names).
Don Palathara channels the memories of Sam Mendes's Away We Go (2009), Richard Linklater's The Before Trilogy to the style of Angela Schanelec, Hong Sang-soo, Ramin Bahrani, Chantal Akerman, Eric Rohmer and Mumblecore films to deliver a lukewarm piece about a pretentious urban couple and their antics with a largely boring result.
It bored me to death, nothing against Malayalam movies, but the fatigue is staggering. It is a total dud and ranks in my list of worst films ever made along with Vipin Vijay's Chitrasutram (2011), Jis Joy's Bicycle Thieves (2013), Sanal Kumar Sasidharan's S Durga (2017), which uses Metal genre and a train as a metaphor for all the piles of misery and becomes gruelling for all the wrong reasons.
Here is the template - dysfunctional family/couple, isolated house with lush landscape, psycho Fahad, countryside-dwelling oddballs and slow paced. It's so funny seeing critics rave about what is called "newwave" these days. Majority of Malayalam movie under the guise of 'Newwave' calls itself realistic cinema. I got so tired of all these films, it's like a filmmaker peeps Yorgos Lanthimos, Robert Eggers movie for the first time and their thought process is to rip it off and create their own covid constraint versions.
So, coming to Santhoshathinte Onnam Rahasyam (Joyful Mystery), it is road trip disguised as an arthouse film. I don't mind arthouse either but it was utter, pointless trash and a total bore to sit through. This is an example of a director who wants to kill time just like other filmmakers capitalizing on covid. And it's disappointing that's like 85% of movies these days and every other Malayalam cinema banking on newwave/experimental tag.
The trailer was interesting and i'm a sucker for films that don't have a narrative, where characters wander aimlessly and absolutely goes nowhere in terms of plot but it's worth the trip. I needed a break from the same geography set movies and watched this one. Oh man, bad has a new definition and so do pretentious. Director Don wants to be the torchbearer of Malayalam newwave but is actually really bad at it. I love Don's Shavam and 1956, Central Travancore but this and his latest outing Everything Is Cinema (2021) has been dreadful. It oozes of pretentious chemistry, putting on an imperfect couple show with metaphors and forced dialogues including Don's self-indulgent take on meta cinema. It has very few moments and raises above the standard throwaway road trip romp, but still fails to deliver anything of much nuance (cliched religious names).
Don Palathara channels the memories of Sam Mendes's Away We Go (2009), Richard Linklater's The Before Trilogy to the style of Angela Schanelec, Hong Sang-soo, Ramin Bahrani, Chantal Akerman, Eric Rohmer and Mumblecore films to deliver a lukewarm piece about a pretentious urban couple and their antics with a largely boring result.
It bored me to death, nothing against Malayalam movies, but the fatigue is staggering. It is a total dud and ranks in my list of worst films ever made along with Vipin Vijay's Chitrasutram (2011), Jis Joy's Bicycle Thieves (2013), Sanal Kumar Sasidharan's S Durga (2017), which uses Metal genre and a train as a metaphor for all the piles of misery and becomes gruelling for all the wrong reasons.
Pseudo intellectual experiment failed
SPHariSP15 July 2022
Clearly the movie is made with a hope that the feminism angle and climax message would impress certain audience and hopefully fetch some awards.
But it did not work neither as an entertainer nor as any great art.
It is super boring, was hard to finish even with fast forward . It is a Covid movie with limited resources, so it appear in a amateurish way.
But it did not work neither as an entertainer nor as any great art.
It is super boring, was hard to finish even with fast forward . It is a Covid movie with limited resources, so it appear in a amateurish way.
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