Manichitrathazhu

Nakulan and his wife Ganga move into Madampalli, his ancestral house. The house is large and has been shut for a long time. One room is never opened; its lock and door are particular and the family has forbidden anyone to enter. According to the story told, the spirit of a dancer is in there. Ganga is drawn to the story and opens the room. Then strange things begin in the house. The family calls in a specialist. Sunny is a psychiatrist and does not accept supernatural explanations; he stays in the house and starts watching who does what. Fazil directs. Shobana plays Ganga and Mohanlal plays Sunny; Suresh Gopi and Nedumudi Venu are in the cast. The language is Malayalam. Shobana won the national award for best actress in India for the part. The film uses horror and psychiatry together; the narrative refuses a supernatural explanation and gives the diagnosis directly. It was remade in many Indian languages and those versions found wide audiences too. The matter it treats is a suppressed past; the source of the illness is not the story of the house but the character's childhood. The music and dance work inside the narrative and are decisive in the final section. Its limit is length; the narrative is long and the comic strand stands apart from the main story. Another limit is viewpoint; the handling of mental illness may be found problematic by present measure. Who it is for: viewers who like Malayalam cinema and psychological thrillers. Who it is not for: it is long, the register uneven, and the comic sections interrupt.